Freedom Threats Quotes

Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent…the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

Nothing more threatens Vladimir Putin than not being able to track his own citizens.

Rogue states are the main threat to peace and freedom, and they require a strong, comprehensive policy response - a policy that I call 'rogue state rollback,' in which our goal is not simply to contain rogue regimes, but to drive them from power.

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the teaching of evolution or other scientific theories -- a feeble echo of medieval church tyranny and hostility to learning, but an echo nonetheless are serious threats to freedom of inquiry and should be vigorously combated.

With such a court and such men as we now have for judges neither our lives, our liberty nor our property are safe. Our State rights have been invaded by this court in one case and they will not hesitate to do so in another if it suits their convenience or is for their interest or the interest of Slavery -- of either the white or black race. What hope can we have of obtaining justice from men who have so grossly outraged every principle which we as freeman hold dear? Men who will resort to falsehood in one case will also do it in another. Men who will pervert the law in one case will do it in all cases where interest or favoritism is concerned. What chance would a free state man have in such a court if opposed by a slaveholder? None whatever.

The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.

Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

I am not one who, to quote an American author, believes that democracy and enterprise have finally won the battle of ideas - that we have therefore arrived at the end of history, and there is nothing left to fight for. That would be unutterably complacent, indeed foolish. There will always be threats to freedom, not only from frontal assaults, but more insidiously by erosion from within.

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.

It is incumbent on a great nation to remain confident, if it wishes to remain free. We need not be ignorant to real threats to our safety, against which we must remain vigilant. We need only to banish to the ash heap of history the notion that we ought to be ruled by our fears and those who use them to enhance their own power.

Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it’s realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy.