#it

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#liberty #patriot-act #politics #freedom

Remember that every government service, every offer of government - financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom... In the days to come, whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forgo in return for such service. ↗

— Ronald Reagan

#freedom

The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#democracy #freedom #liberty #freedom

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#dignity #empowerment #freedom #gender #girls

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader. ↗

— Plato

#history #liberty #politics #freedom

Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of grammaticality; those who are belong in special institutions. The unity of language is fundamentally political. ↗

— Gilles Deleuze

#freedom #grammar #individuality #language #politics

The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State. ↗

— Harry S. Truman

#moral-law #political-philosophy #politics #separation-of-church-and-state #freedom

Das war ein Vorspiel nur; dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." (Almansor) ↗

— Heinrich Heine

#books #bücherverbrennung #freedom-of-thought #human-rights #meinungsfreiheit

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#fear #freedom #hypocrisy #literature #perversion

No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us. ↗

— Luis Valdez

#freedom #history #liberty #native-american #society