Civil Liberty Quotes

The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws . . . The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his Apostles . . . This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.

Where there is no law, there is no freedom.

Liberty is the right of doing whatever the law permits.

Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.

If we must die, we die defending our rights.

Public liberty, with internal peace and order, has flourished almost without interruption.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

I cannot... perceive any ground for hoping that any practical good would, while the funding system exists in its present extent, result from the adoption of any of those projects, which have professed to have in view what is called Parliamentary Reform... when the funding system, from whatever cause, shall cease to operate upon civil and political liberty, there will be no need of projects for parliamentary reform. The parliament will, as far as shall be necessary, then reform itself.

We are exercising our constitutional right to be fresh.

This system of military conscription … is not only inconsistent with the provisions and spirit of the Constitution, but also with all the principles of civil liberty.

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.

Anonymity, in some cases a key civil liberty, also enables society's worst actors.

The state is there to respect the freedom of each citizen to believe in what he or she wants to believe in.

Religious freedom is too sacred a right to be restricted or prohibited in any degree without convincing proof that a legitimate interest of the state is in grave danger.

No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state...such area well-regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen...

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.

I view it as a threat to my and my family's well-being whenever anyone seeks to erode or take away my Second Amendment civil liberty.

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

Here everyone is his own master. Civil liberty places all inhabitants on an equal footing. The humble cannot be oppressed by the mighty, nor the poor by the rich.

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district ... are the principle support of virtue, morality and civil liberty.

We can not expect to breed respect for law and order among people who do not share the fruits of our freedom.

In our view, the current storage by the government of bulk meta-data creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil liberty.

The law of England is a law of liberty .