Preserving Freedom Quotes

Members of the rising new generation! The future is yours. The republic has been founded by us. It is up to you to guard and exalt it.

Fellow Americans, our duty is before us tonight. Let us go forward, determined to serve selflessly a vision of man with God, government for people, and humanity at peace. For it is now our task to tend and preserve, through the darkest and coldest nights, that "sacred fire of liberty" that President Washington spoke of two centuries ago, a fire that tonight remains a beacon to all oppressed of the world, shining forth from this kindly, pleasant, greening land we call America.

Our government wasn't created to be efficient. It was created to preserve the individual.

I think that as the guardian of justice elected by the people it's our duty to use whatever forms of force, police, army, to make sure that at least the freedom of choice is preserved.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope on earth.

Freedom is not just something with which we are born; it is something we achieve. America did not receive a perpetual endowment of freedom; it has had to struggle and fight to preserve it. Freedom is not an heirloom or an antique; it is a life that must fight against the corrosive powers of death and nourish itself on the daily bread of goodness and virtue.

We have to treasure our country, our freedom, the progress we've made, and if we see any of that threatened, we have to respond.

[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties.

Men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the executive be under the law..

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The question then will be, whether a consolidated government can preserve the freedom and secure the rights of the people.

History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.

We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.

We who are living in the west today are fortunate. Freedom has been bequeathed to us. We have not had to carve it out of nothing; we have not had to pay for it with our lives. But it would be a grave mistake to think that freedom requires nothing of us. Each of us has to earn freedom anew in order to possess it. We do so not just for our own sake, but for the sake of our children, so that they may build a better future that will sustain over the world the responsibilities and blessings of freedom.

The trouble with celebrating Independence Day is that we tend to look back at what made this the great nation that it is and give little thought to a future that threatens that which free men hold dearest, namely freedom.

There is no country... where there are not somewhere lovers of freedom who look to this country to carry the torch and keep it burning bright until such time as they may again be able to light their extinguished torches at our flame. We owe it not only to our own people but to the world to preserve our soul for that.

We have had so many years of prosperity, we have passed through so many difficulties and dangers without the loss of liberty - that we begin to think that we hold it by divine right from heaven itself ... It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.

In the effort to save America, we should never violate her.

Over our history there are always those who want to take this wall of separation and remove a brick here or there or damage it more than that. I think one has to be vigilant and constantly on the alert.

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire... or preserve his freedom.

For the sake of the troops, for the love of the troops, we must not add yet another casualty to this war. We must not let truth be a casualty of this war.

Means and ends are central. If your means are corroded, your ends will be corroded. And if you're fighting to preserve liberty and you use means that eviscerate our liberties, the end will be corroded, too.

I ask particularly that those of you who are now in school will prepare yourselves to bear the burden of leadership over the next 40 years here in the United States, and make sure that the United States - which I believe almost alone has maintained watch and ward for freedom - that the United States meet its responsibility. That is a wonderful challenge for us as a people.