Topic: Liberty, Matches 11 quotes.

Let us not think even for a moment that liberty is the gift of any government or any nation. Oh, no! Life and liberty are our inalienable rights and were vouchsafed unto us in that primeval council when our great champion, even Jesus Christ, said: “Here am I, send me” for he came and organized this earth as a dwelling place for the children of God, for you and me:

To live and to be free,
To worship God alone
As conscience guideth me,
As my own heart is prone;
For these are rights God given,
He gave them all to me
They emanate from heaven,
E’en life and liberty.

This is the thought that comes into my mind when I contemplate the history of the world, that Providence is over all.

Source: Elder Rulon S. Wells
General Conference, October 1926

Topics: Free Agency; Liberty

32. And now I desire that this inequality should be no more in this land, especially among this my people; but I desire that this land be a land of liberty, and every man may enjoy his rights and privileges alike, so long as the Lord sees fit that we may live and inherit the land, yea, even as long as any of our posterity remains upon the face of the land.

Source: Mosiah 29:32

Topics: America; Liberty

Liberty and Restraint

It is incorrect to think of liberty as synonymous with unrestrained action. Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal.

Source: Leonard E. Read

Topics: Liberty

Liberty and Christianity

Liberty, like Christianity, has been tried but never wholly adopted. It isn’t that these ways of life have been found wanting. It is that they have been found difficult and rejected by many. ... To the extent that government takes sides among the citizens-plundering some for the “benefit” of others, granting special privileges-to that extent has government become incapable of performing its legitimate function of protecting the life and livelihood of all citizens equally. It is a self-evident fact that no person or agency can protect the honest fruits of one’s labor while at the same time forcibly taking the fruits of one’s labor. In short, the more government acts aggressively, the less it can act protectively or defensively.

The history of government’s acting aggressively coincides with the history of government. Is there a single instance where government has been limited to the defense of creative energy and its uninhibited exchange? Even in America in 1789—the nearest known approach to strict limitation—slavery and tariffs were acknowledged as appropriate aggressive acts of government. The principle of aggression, once admitted, had either to be denied and destroyed or approved and expanded. While Negro slavery was later denied and destroyed, the principle of government aggression was not stamped out. Some of the aggressive seed remained in embryonic stage; and by 1900, governmental actions were taken which led to the development of the embryo. By 1913 this perverse principle was so thoroughly established that we inscribed on our American banner—proclaimed and adopted as national policy—the Marxian ideal. This Marxian ideal, the Sixteenth Amendment—the progressive income tax—legalized a new slavery in lieu of the Negro slavery earlier disposed of.”

Source: Leonard E. Read
Government—An Ideal Concept, p76-77

Topics: Christianity; Income Tax; Liberty

Liberty and Human Evolution

The author of that remarkable book, Human Destiny, wrote: “To really participate in the divine task, man must place his ideal as high as possible, out of reach if necessary.” (Lecomte du Noüy, p. 154.)

Faith in high ideals is, indeed, the leaven of liberty. To aim at liberty as an ideal is as high as one can go. Why? Liberty is the means, the key, to human evolution! Unless a person be free to act creatively as he pleases, he cannot participate in the Divine Task; he will be unable to achieve those other ideals—virtues—on which evolutionary upgrading depends.

Source: Leonard Read
Liberty: Legacy of Truth

Topics: Liberty; Virtue

What, then, has truth to do with liberty? Jesus gave the answer when he said to his disciples, “and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Free from what? Free from all unrighteousness and every sort of bondage that inhibits the growth and progress of the race. It requires but a moment’s consideration for any sane, logical person to reach the conclusion that there is no freedom and no liberty worth striving for and preserving that does not contemplate the exercise of free agency in truth, in virtue, and in righteousness. Any other hypothesis would mean complete frustration and ruin. This is the second foundation for liberty.

What then is the application of these doctrines to conditions in the world today? I believe it to be this: that no nation under heaven can successfully preserve this great boon of liberty and freedom unless the people of that nation have a truthful conception of the status of man in the earth and also an adequate understanding of the exercise of the options and powers of free agency in conformity with the standards of righteousness. So surely as either of these concepts shall vanish, will bondage ensue. And this applies with equal force to the enlightened of the world as to those in darkness, as witness the countries of Europe today. Philosophies are more potent than armies in the progress of civilization.

Source: Stephen L Richards
General Conference, April 1939

Topics: Liberty; Progress

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But 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 right of an individual.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

Topics: Law; Liberty

What Is Liberty?

We have been talking, and we do talk very much, about this wonderful, this glorious, this most choice principle of liberty, for which we are willing to sacrifice all that we possess in a worldly sense, and that we are also willing to add in that sacrifice our own lives to defend it. What is it? What is this liberty for which we are willing to fight, for which we are willing to sacrifice life and all that we possess in the world? Let me tell you. It is simply the liberty of all mankind to worship God in righteousness; that is what it is; for all mankind to have the liberty to do right, the liberty to do good, the liberty to pursue happiness, in honor, in virtue and in uprightness. But it cannot for one moment descend in any degree to license or to infringement upon the rights of others. No man has any liberty to impose upon his brother, to rob or to steal, to lie or to bear false witness, or to injure or wrong his fellowmen. When we are talking of this great and glorious principle of liberty it is that we may be free to worship God and to love him with all our hearts and minds and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to protect the principles of virtue and honor throughout all the world. That is the liberty that we are looking for and that we are willing to fight for.

We are not trying to defend the liberty of mankind to be drunken, to be debauchees, to advocate crime, to interfere with the rights of others. This is not liberty. The law of nations, as well as the law of God, prohibits it, and it cannot exist except it exist contrary to the laws of righteousness and contrary to the principles of liberty that we are willing to fight for and that we are striving for.

Source: President Joseph F. Smith
General Conference, April 1918

Topics: Force; Liberty

This government, the offspring of our own choice un-influenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty.

Source: George Washington

Topics: Government, Good; Liberty; US Constitution

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