The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated
the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security
deserve neither security nor liberty.
Benjamin Franklin
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much
liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791. ME 8:276
The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public
opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The
agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep
the waters pure.
Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491
The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public
papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing
army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should
be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve
the ministers.
Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp
Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632
What county can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned
from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance.
Thomas Jefferson
The true barriers of our liberty in this country are our state
governments...
Thomas Jefferson
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add
"within the limits of the law," because law is often but the tyrant's
will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal
government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State
governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised
principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and
foreign commerce: with which last the power of taxation will, for the
most part, be connected.
Publius (Madison)
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our
liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of
citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late
Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had
strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in
precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they
avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this
lesson too much ... to forget it.
James Madison
Anarchism is a tendency in the history of human thought and
action which seeks to identify coercive, authoritarian, and
hierarchic structures of all kinds and to challenge their
legitimacy -- and if they cannot justify their legitimacy, which
is quite commonly the case, to work to undermine them and expand
the scope of freedom.
Noam Chomsky
In the United States we value security more than freedom.
Hugh Daniels
I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though
she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I
worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say
'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away
from the Internet?'
Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier
Foundation
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw, Liberty
Truth : the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of
destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by
all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death.
Richard Childers
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
Molly Ivans
They came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a
communist;
They came for the socialists, and I did not speak up because I was not a
socialist;
They came for the union leaders, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a
union leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me.
Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly
unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware
of change in the air however slight lest we become unwitting victims
of the darkness.
William O. Douglas, Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken
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