Category: Thought

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.”

Lord Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” 1877.

“Literature creates a fraternity within human diversity and eclipses the frontiers erected among men and women by ignorance, ideologies, religions, languages, and stupidity.”

Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Lecture, 2010

“You can’t make facts fit the rules, it is the other way round. The rules have to be adopted to fit the facts.”

Mario Vargas Llosa, The Time of the Hero, 1963

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”

I believe the preservation of our civil liberties to be the most fundamental and important of all our governmental problems, because it always has been with us and always will be with us and if we ever permit those liberties to be destroyed, there will be nothing left in our system worthy of preservation.

Earl Warren, as quoted in Lawyers Guild Review, Vol. 13-14 (1953), p. 47.

“Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world.”

Earl Warren, as speech at Columbia University, January 14, 1954

“Then join in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”

John Dickinson, The Liberty Song (1768).

“A watchful eye must be kept on ourselves lest while we are building ideal monuments of Renown and Bliss here we neglect to have our names enrolled in the Annals of Heaven.”

James Madison Letter to William Bradford (9 November 1772).

In adopting a republican form of government, I not only took it as a man does his wife, for better or for worse, but what a few men do with their wives, I took it knowing all of its bad qualities. Neither ingratitude, therefore, nor slander can disappoint expectation nor excite surprise. If, in arduous circumstances, the voice of my country should call for my services, and I have the well founded belief, that they can be useful, they shall certainly be rendered; but I hope that no such circumstances will arise and in the mean time, ‘pleas’d let me trifle away.

Gouverneur Morris to John Dickinson (May 23, 1803).

[A]ll power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty and the right of acquiring property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purpose of its institution.

James Madison served as fourth President of the United States.