These political freedom quotes will inspire you. Political freedom (also known as political autonomy or political agency) is a central concept in history and political thought and one of the most important features of democratic societies.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging political freedom quotes, political freedom sayings, and political freedom proverbs.
Best Political Freedom Quotes
- “Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise. That is the faith, the experimental faith, by which we Americans have undertaken to live.” ~ Alexander Meiklejohn
- “A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.” ~ John Stuart Mill
- “Liberalism is a force truly of the spirit proceeding from the deep realization that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved.” ~ Herbert Hoover
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“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ~ George Orwell
- “The history of liberty is a history of resistance.” ~ Woodrow Wilson
- “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.” ~ Lord Acton
- “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” ~ Thomas Paine
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“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” ~ Mark Twain
- “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
- “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“For us democracy is a question of human dignity. And human dignity is political freedom.” ~ Olof Palme
- “Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” ~ Noam Chomsky
- “There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
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“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “If the book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.” ~ Vladimir Lenin
- “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “Naturally the common people don’t want war. . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . .” ~ Hermann Goring
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“Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” ~ Hermann Goring
- “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.” ~ Aneurin Bevan
- “Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish.” ~ Neil McDonald
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“My grandfather, in 1848, had fled from Germany to find political freedom in the United States.” ~ Emanuel Celler
- “The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.” ~ Emma Goldman
- “Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.” ~ Mikhail Bakunin , Economic and political freedom quotes
- “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” ~ George Washington
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“Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible.” ~ Whittaker Chambers
- “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
- “Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“Why, of course, the people don’t want war.” ~ Hermann Goring
- “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. One’s right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote; they depend on no elections.” ~ Robert H. Jackson
- “Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” ~ Hermann Goring
- “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“Freedom cannot be bestowed – it must be achieved.” ~ Elbert Hubbard
- “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” ~ H. L. Mencken
- “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” ~ James Madison
- “In religion and politics, people’s belief’s and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination” ~ Mark Twain
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“Economic freedom is … an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion.” ~ Sam Ervin
- “Freedom is a need of the soul, and nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom. Necessity is the only ultimate justification known to the mind.” ~ Whittaker Chambers
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“If you do not force political freedom, economic freedom will be stymied sooner or later.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.” ~ Hilaire Belloc
- “It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom.” ~ Lucy Burns
- “Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.” ~ Will Durant
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“Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.” ~ Ayn Rand
- “Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.” ~ Mitt Romney
- “When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of happiness has been an unmixed blessing only in this country, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.” ~ Hannah Arendt
- “I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “I understand regicide as a means of obtaining vengeance for the ruin of our lives, but regicide as a means of obtaining political freedom I could never understand.” ~ Peter Kropotkin
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“In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “It’s all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it’s immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don’t rule it out.” ~ Niall Ferguson
- “the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.” ~ Hannah Arendt
- “Let us then repeat and firmly fix this main point: the evil, the root evil, of that to which the term Capitalism has come to be applied, is neither its functioning for profit nor its dependence upon legally protected private property; but the presence of a Proletariat, that is of men possessing political freedom, but dispossessed of economic freedom, and existing in such large numbers in any community as to determine the tone of all that community.” ~ Hilaire Belloc
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“Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “One way we exercise political freedom is to vote for the candidate of our choice. Another way is to use our money to try to persuade other voters to make a similar choice – that is, to contribute to our candidate’s campaign. If either of these freedoms is violated, the consequences are very grave not only for the individual voter and contributor, but for the society whose free political processes depend on a wide distribution of political power.” ~ Barry Goldwater
- “It is important that social, political, and religious freedoms grow in China. A society which recognizes religious freedom is a society which will recognize political freedom as well.” ~ George W. Bush
- “Thought … is still possible, and no doubt actual, wherever men live under the conditions of political freedom. Unfortunately … no other human capacity is so vulnerable, and it is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.” ~ Hannah Arendt
- “The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live. Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
