I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
Michael J. Badnarik
The danger of freedom is real, but enforced safety reeks of a much more odious danger.
Bryant McGill
Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
Jim Morrison
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Edward R. Murrow
The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.
Karl Georg Bchner
If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution.
Aneurin Bevan
Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.
James Baldwin
"Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.
Dag Hammarskjld
The most dangerous diminutions of freedom come from those who are convinced of their moral rectitude.
Daniel John Hannan
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
Ronald Reagan
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan
I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams.
Madonna Louise Ciccone
Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.
Emil Cioran