John Milton Quotes

It doesn't matter what color, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, etc., everyone should have the same freedoms and liberties.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

Have you not violated a fundamental principle of liberty in excluding the clergy from your Legislatures. I know their danger in a free government but I would rather see them excluded from civil power by custom than by law. They have property, wives & children, & of course are citizens of a community. Why therefore Should they be Abridged of any one privilege which Other citizens enjoy? Is it not a fact that by investing any men with more, or confining them to fewer privileges than members of a community enjoy in general we render those men the enemies of that community Perhaps all the Mischief which the clergy have done in all countries has arisen from the first of the above causes. Will not the clause in your Charter which excludes Clergymen from your Legislature hand down to posterity as well as hold up to the World an idea that you looked upon the Christian religion as well as its Ministers as unfriendly to good government? I wish our governments would treat religion of all kinds, & ministers of all denominations as if no such things or beings existed in the world. They mutually destroy each Other when any Attempts are made by either to support each other...

What, then, can we in England do for Religion ? All that in us lies to secure a form of Christianity in harmony with progress, liberty, and knowledge. How can this be obtained? By making the Church of England a church of intellectual freedom and a church of the people. What men cry, can this church of an Episcopal sect, this last obstinate remnant of a dead social system, this institution of feudalism and fierce obstruction, this church of dominant classes, dark with memories of persecution and intolerance; can such a church as this become a church of freedom and a church of the people. Yes, it can. It is for the people to decide

…a republican, or free government, can only exist where the body of the people are virtuous, and where property is pretty equally divided…

Roger Williams... successfully vindicated the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, and effected a moral and political revolution in all governments of the civilized world.

Not the Christian religion only, but nature herself, cries out against the state of slavery.

Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible.

Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the christian religion.

The last stop to protect rights and liberties is the Supreme Court.

Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? - "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free."

The War on Terror has been and continues to be, above all, a war on the most basic liberties and political safeguards that we're all taught are what distinguishes the US and keeps it free.

I fear for the democratic system. And I fear for our liberties. Only a small group of people fights for our liberties. Once we start on the slippery slope and those people are put in jeopardy, then we're really in trouble.

Liberty and equality are magical words.

The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.

Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.

Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment & enjoiment by all mankind of as much liberty as each may exercise without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have lamented that in France the endeavors to obtain this should have been attended with the effusion of so much blood.

O Luther, you had 95 theses . . . The matter is far more terrible-there is only one thesis. The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all. Here there is nothing to reform.

Freedom demands that we struggle for an extension of both equality and free expression, not regard one as inimical to the other.

I will fight to defend liberty.

We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed.

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn.

We do need great change in Burma. We are trying to build a new society, a society where basic human rights are respected, and where our people enjoy all the benefits of democratic institutions.

Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.

[Liberty] is freedom of choice, a divine gift, an essential virtue in a peaceful society.