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LIBERTY | LIBRARY

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LIBERTY

see: "FREEDOM" for related links


Liberty is not the means to a higher
political end. It is itself the highest
political end.
--Lord Acton (1834—1902)
British historian.
_The History of Freedom in Antiquity_ [1877]

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We live, my dear, in an age of trial. What
will be the consequence, I know not.
--John Adams (1735—1826)
First VP and second President of the United States.
To Abigail Adams in 1774, quoted in _John Adams_ by David McCullough.


The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber,
and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.
We must then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul
of man for its preservation. Some political institutions must be
prepared to assist this love against its enemies. Without these,
the struggle will ever end only in a change of imposters.
--John Adams (1735—1826)
First VP and second President of the United States.
Letter to Samuel Adams [18 October 1790].

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A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more
surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force
of the common enemy. ... While the people are virtuous they
cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will
be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or
internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among
the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great
security.
--Samuel Adams (1722—1803)
American revolutionary leader.
Letter to James Warren [12 February 1779].

Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism,
and despotism back again to liberty. Millions of
human beings have perished without effecting the
triumph of any of your systems.
--Honorι de Balzac (1799—1850)
French journalist and writer.
_La Peau de Chagrin_ (The Magic Skin) [1831]

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect
liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men
born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their
liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty
lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning
but without understanding.
--Louis Brandeis (1856—1941)
American lawyer and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court [1916—1939].
In "Olmstead et al. vs. United States," 277 U.S. 438, 478 [1928].

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not
willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the
state, not to General Motors, not to the CIA. I
will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every
effort to drain it away from me. I will then use
*my* power, as *I* see fit. I mean to live my life
an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient
to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the
authority of political truths arrived at yesterday
at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts,
is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep
conservatives busy, and liberals at bay. And the
nation free.
--William F. Buckley Jr. (1925—2008)
American author and journalist.
_Up From Liberalism_ [1959]

The people never give up their liberties
but under some delusion.
--Edmund Burke (1729—1797)
Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters.
Speech at County Meeting of Buckinghamshire [1784].

Liberty, Sancho, my friend, is one of the most precious gifts that
Heaven has bestowed on mankind; all the treasures that the earth
contains in its bosom or the ocean within its depths cannot be
compared with it. For liberty, as well as for honor, man ought to
risk even his life, and he should reckon captivity the greatest evil
life can bring.
--Miguel de Cervantes (1547—1616)
Spanish novelist.
"Don Quixote de la Mancha", bk. 2, part 14 [1615]

Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise
themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned
before it can be enjoyed.
--C.C. Colton (1780—1832)
English clergyman and writer.
_Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, CLXXVIII [1821 ed.]

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It is the common fate of the indolent to see their
rights become a prey to the active. The condition
upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal
vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude
is at once the consequence of his crime, and the
punishment of his guilt.
--John Philpot Curran (1750—1817)
Irish judge.
Speech on the Right of Election of the Lord Mayor of Dublin [10 July 1790].

& note:

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
--Wendell Phillips (1811—1884)
American abolitionist and reformer.
Paraphrasing John Philpot Curran in a speech before the
Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852, according to
_The Dictionary of Quotations_ edited by Bergen Evans.

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You can only protect your liberties in this world
by protecting the other man's freedom. You can
only be free if I am free.
--Clarence Darrow (1857—1938)
American lawyer.
Addressing a jury in Chicago [1920],
quoted in Arthur Weinberg _Attorney for the Damned_ [1957].

Limitation is the essence of liberty, for as soon
as liberty is complete, it dies in anarchy.
--Will Durant (1885—1981)
American philosopher and writer.
"Rousseau and Revolution" [1967], vol. X in_The Story of Civilization_.

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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase
a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor
Safety.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
"Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor" [11 November 1755]


A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in
every district — all studied and appreciated as they merit
— are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil
liberty.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
Attributed in James Willis Westlake
_Common-School Literature, English and American_, p. 109 [1877].

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He alone deserves liberty and life
who daily must win them anew.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
German poet, novelist, and playwright.
Attributed in Gyφrgy Lukαcs _Goethe and His Age_ [1967].

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
--Barry Goldwater (1909—1998)
American conservative politician.
Speech in San Francisco, Ca. [16 July 1964], accepting nomination for president.

Inequality will exist as long as liberty exists. It
unavoidably results from that very liberty itself.
--Alexander Hamilton (1755or57—1804)
New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention, major author
of the _Federalist Papers_, and first secretary of the Treasury of
the United States [1789—1795].
Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia [26 June 1787],
as quoted in _Georgia Bar Journal_, vol. 18 [1955].

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Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies
there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no
constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.
And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men
and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is
not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty,
and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men
recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a
society where freedom is the possession of only a savage
few; as we have learned to our sorrow.
--Learned Hand (1872—1961)
American judge.
Speech [21 May 1944],
"I Am An American Day" ceremony, Central Park, NYC, NY..


What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define
it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of
liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is
right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks
to understand the mind of other men and women;
the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their
interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit
of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls
to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit
of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught
mankind that lesson it has never learned but never
quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where
the least shall be heard and considered side by side
with the greatest. And now in that spirit, that spirit
of an America which has never been, and which
may never be; nay, which never will be except as
the conscience and courage of Americans create
it; yet in the spirit of that America which lies hidden
in some form in the aspirations of us all; in the spirit
of that America for which our young men are at this
moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty
and of America I ask you to rise and with me pledge
our faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved
country.
--Learned Hand (1872—1961)
American judge.
Speech [21 May 1944],
"I Am An American Day" ceremony, Central Park, NYC, NY..

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'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which
the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
--Friedrich A. von Hayek (1899—1992)
Austrian-born British economist. Co-winner of
the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
_Law, Legislation and Liberty_ [1973]

The love of liberty is the love of others; the
love of power is the love of ourselves.
--William Hazlitt (1778—1830)
English essayist.
_Political Essays [1819] "The Times Newspaper"

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Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased
at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty
God! I know not what course others may take, but as
for me, give me liberty or give me death!
--Patrick Henry (1736—1799)
American statesman, instrumental in the adoption of The Bill of Rights.
Speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses, St John's Episcopal
Church, Richmond [23 March 1775]. First published in the William
Wirt's _Sketches of the Life and Times of Patrick Henry_ [1817].


Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect
everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing
will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up
that force, you are inevitably ruined.
--Patrick Henry (1736—1799)
American statesman, instrumental in the adoption of The Bill of Rights.
(J. Elliot, _Debates in the Several State Conventions_, 45, 2nd ed. Philadelphia [1836])

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While democracy must have its organization and
controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.
--Charles Evans Hughes (1862—1948)
American professor of law, politician, and Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court [1930—1941].
Address [4 March 1939].

The enemies of Freedom do not
argue; they shout and they shoot.
--William Ralph Inge (1860—1954)
English writer and Dean of St. Paul's [1911—1934].
_End of an Age_ [1948]

No people ever lost their liberties unless they
themselves first became corrupt. ... The people
are the safeguards of their own liberties, and
I rely wholly on them to guard themselves.
--Andrew Jackson {Old Hickory} (1767—1845)
American military hero and 7th president of the United States [1829—1837].
To a Presbyterian clergyman in Pennsylvania [1824], quoted in Robert V. Remini,
_Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom_ [1981].

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The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time
to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to William Stephens Smith [13 November 1787].


The natural progress of things is for liberty
to yield and government to gain ground.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Edward Carrington [27 May 1788].


I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences
attending too much liberty, than those attending
too small a degree of it.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to A. Stuart [1791].


In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile
to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they
have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man
into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and
therefore the safer engine for their purpose.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Horatio Spafford [17 March 1814].

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Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe
alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of
Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined
by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and
unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human
rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to
which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we
shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support
any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success
of liberty.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917—1963)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1961—1963].
Inaugural address [20 January 1961].


Liberty without learning is always in peril and
learning without liberty is always in vain.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917—1963)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1961—1963].
President of the U.S. [1961-1963],
In a speech celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of
the founding of Vanderbilt University [18 March 1963].

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When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 'Stick to the Devil you know.'
--Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
English writer and poet.
_The Gods of the Copybook Headings_ [1919]

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which
the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf
denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty,
especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep
and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
--Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861—1865].
Speech in Baltimore, Maryland [18 April 1864].

The war for liberty never ends. One day liberty has to be defended
against the power of wealth, on another day against the intrigues of
politicians, on another against the dead hand of bureaucrats, on
another against the patrioter and the militarist, on another against
the profiteer, and then against the hysteria and the passions of the
mobs, against obscurantism and stupidity, against the criminal and
against the over righteous. In this campaign every civilized man is
enlisted till he dies, and he only has known the full joy of living
who somewhere and at some time has struck a decisive blow for
the freedom of the human spirit.
--Walter Lippmann (1889—1974)
American journalist.
"The South and the New Society" in _Social Forces_ [September 1927].

As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American
blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak,
to write, to publish whatever I please on any subject.
--Elijah P. Lovejoy (1802—1837)
American Presbyterian minister, journalist, and abolitionist.
Quoted in Horace Greeley _The American Conflict_ [1864].

If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and
good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.
--Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800—1859)
English politician and historian.
_Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review_, [1843] "Milton"

Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta,
eight hundred, although their citizens were armed at
all times; but many other states that have been disarmed
have lost their liberties in less than forty years.
--Niccolς Machiavelli (1469—1527)
Florentine statesman and political philosopher.
_The Art of War_ [1521]

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty
at home is to be charged to provisions against danger,
real or pretended, from abroad.
--James Madison (1751—1836)
Fourth president of the United States [1809—1817].
Letter to Thomas Jefferson [13 May 1798],
in _The Republic of Letters, The Correspondence between
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison 1776-1826_ [1995],
ed. by James Morton Smith.

Of what use is political liberty to those who have no bread?
It is of value only to ambitious theorists and politicians.
--Jean-Paul Marat (1743—1793)
French politician, physician, and journalist, a leader of the
radical Montagnard faction during the French revolution.
Letter to Camille Desmoulins [24 June 1790].

When the same man, or set of men, holds
both the sword and the purse, there is an
end of liberty.
--George Mason (1725—1792)
American statesman, wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights.
"Instructions to Delegates in the Assembly" [30 May 1783], as quoted in
Kate Mason Rowland _The Life of George Mason, 1725-1792_ [1892].

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually
or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any
of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which
power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized
community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His
own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it
will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier,
because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or
even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him,
or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but
not for compelling him, or visiting him with evil in case he do
otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired
to deter him must be calculated to produce evil in someone
else. The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is
amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part
which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right,
absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the
individual is sovereign.
--John Stuart Mill (1806—1873)
English philosopher and social reformer.
_On Liberty_, ch. 1 [1859]

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue
freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
--John Milton (1608—1674)
English poet.
_Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_ [1644]

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right
to tell people what they do not want to hear.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950)
English novelist.
Introduction to "Animal Farm" [1945].

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It
leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply
even the best of laws. He that would make his own
liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from
opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes
a precedent that will reach to himself.
--Thomas Paine [spelled Pane prior to 1774] (1737—1809)
English-American writer and political pamphleteer.
_Dissertation on First Principles of Government_ [1795]

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The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force
of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may
blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter, —
but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not
cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!
--William Pitt, the Elder, also called (from 1766) 1st Earl of Chatham (1708—1778).
British statesman, twice virtual prime minister [1756—1761, 1766—1768].
"Speech on the Excise Bill" [March 1763]

I love the Americans because they love liberty,
and I love them for the noble efforts they made
in the last war.
--William Pitt, the Elder, also called (from 1766) 1st Earl of Chatham (1708—1778)
British statesman, twice virtual prime minister [1756—1761, 1766—1768].
Speech in the House of Lords [2 March 1770].

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You and I are told we must choose between a left
or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a
left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to
man's age-old dream — the maximum of individual
freedom consistent with order — or down to the
ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their
sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who
would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked
on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real
destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who
spreads among them bounties, donations and
benefits.'
--Ronald Reagan (1911—2004)
American President [1981—1989] and former Hollywood actor.
"A Time for Choosing" [27 Oct. 1964]

All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals
set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every
additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in
the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil
liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these
liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than
the danger we are trying to avert.
--Eleanor Roosevelt (1884—1962)
American human rights activist, diplomat, and
wife of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
"Cosmopolitan" [February 1940]

There is no room in this country for hyphenated
Americanism. ... The one absolutely certain way
of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all
possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all,
would be to permit it to become a tangle of
squabbling nationalities.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
Speech in New York [12 October 1915].

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner
of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.]
_Man and Superman_ [1903] "Maxims: Liberty and Equality"

Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political
growth, — the result of free individual action,
energy, and independence.
--Samuel Smiles (1812—1904)
Scottish author.
_Self-Help_, ch. I [1859]

My definition of a free society is a society
where it is safe to be unpopular.
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965)
American Democratic politician.
In a speech in Detroit, Michigan [7 October 1952].

America, my friends, is the only country in
the world actually founded on liberty — the
only one. People went to America to be free.
--attributed to Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [1979—1990].

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is
exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself
survives. ... When liberty is taken away by force it can be
restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by
default it can never be recovered.
--Dorothy Thompson (1894—1961)
American social worker and correspondent for the "New York Herald Tribune."
In her column [May 1958].

People generally do not appreciate what they do not suffer for.
A thing is held to be cheap if it did not cost dearly. Honor is
lightly worn if it was easily attained. Inherited liberty is too
often carelessly used until it is repossessed through sacrifices.
--Fred Robert Tiffany, D.D.
Quoted in _Thoughts on the Business of Life_ [Forbes, 1950].

Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on
a people. To know how to be free is not given
equally to all men and all nations.
--Paul Valιry (1871—1945)
French poet.
_Regards sur le Monde Actuel_ [1931]

Liberty, when it begins to take root,
is a plant of rapid growth.
--George Washington (1732—1799)
American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American
Revolution [1775-83] and first president of the United States [1789-97].
Letter to James Madison [2 March 1788].

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There is no happiness, there is no liberty, there is no
enjoyment of life, unless a man can say when he rises
in the morning, I shall be subject to the decision of no
unjust judge to-day.
--Daniel Webster (1782—1852)
American orator and politician.
Speech in New York, N.Y. [24 March 1831].


God grants liberty only to those who love it
and are always ready to guard and defend it.
--Daniel Webster (1782—1852)
American orator and politician.
Speech [3 June 1834]


While I trust that liberty and free institutions, as we
have experienced them, may ultimately spread over
the globe, I am by no means sure that all people
are fit for them; nor am I desirous of imposing or
forcing our peculiar forms upon any other nation
that does now wish to embrace them.
--Daniel Webster (1782—1852)
American orator and politician.
In a speech in Springfield, Massachusetts [29 September 1847].

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Before a standing army can rule, the people must
be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom
of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot
enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the
whole body of the people are armed, and constitute
a force superior to any bands of regular troops that
can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.
--Noah Webster (1758—1843)
American lexicographer.
"An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution" [1787],
in Paul Ford, ed., _Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States_, p. 56
[New York, 1888].

Liberty never came from government. The history
of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of
liberty is a history of limitations of governmental
power, not the increase of it.
--Woodrow Wilson (1856—1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913—1921].
Speech in New York City [9 September 1912].

Liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious
that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do
not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes
awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and
then keep fighting eternally to hold them!
--Alvin York (1887—1964)
American soldier, famous as a World War I hero.
Memorial Day address at the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery [1941].


TOPICAL

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Iraq's new president, the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani ... says that Iraqis
"wonder in amazement" at the debate over Iraq in Britain today. "Britain
should be proud that the liberation of Iraq has, in our eyes, been one of
your finest hours. History will judge Prime Minister Blair as a champion
against tyranny. Of that I have no doubt."

I can think of many, many reasons to vote against Mr. Blair's New Labour
party today. But it is really depressing that his role in liberating Iraq (and
previously Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Afghanistan) is just the subject of
vulgar abuse by Little Englanders. To them anti-Americanism is far more
important than solidarity with Iraqis trying to build a new society.

--William Shawcross
"Winston Blair" in _The Wall Street Journal_ [5 May 2005]

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LIBRARY

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see: "AUTHORS"
see: "BOOKS"
see: "PEN (THE)"
see: "WRITING"
see: "KNOWLEDGE" for other related links

Photograph: Trinity College Library, Dublin

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A little library growing each year is an honorable
part of a man's history. ... A library is not a luxury
but one of the necessities of life.
--Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887)
American Congregational minister; brother of
Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher.
Quoted in "The Publishers' Weekly" [29 January 1921].

I ... had always thought of Paradise
In form and image as a library.
--Jorge Luis Borges (1899—1986)
Argentinian writer.
"Poem of the Gifts" [1959]

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There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth
as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters,
where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the
slightest consideration.
--attributed to Andrew Carnegie (1835—1919)
American businessman and philanthropist of Scottish birth.

& note:

[I]n 1901, industrialist Andrew Carnegie gave New York
City 5.2 million dollars to construct sixty-five libraries.
He had just sold the Carnegie Steel Company to J. P.
Morgan for 250 million dollars, and decided to retire
and devote himself to giving it all away. He later
donated money to create more than 2,500 libraries all
over the United States and Britain. By the time he died,
Carnegie had given away over 350 million dollars. He
said, 'The man who enters a library is in the best society
this world affords; the good and the great welcome him,
surround him, and humbly ask to be allowed to become
his servants.'
--The Writer's Almanac [12 March 2004]

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The best of my education has come from the public
library ... my tuition fee is a bus fare and once in a
while, five cents a day for an overdue book. You
don't need to know very much to start with, if you
know the way to the public library.
--Lesley Conger
Attributed in Otto Bettmann _The Delights of
Reading: Quotes, Notes & Anecdotes_ [1992].

The reflections and histories of men and women throughout
the world are contained in books. ... America's greatness is
not only recorded in books, but it is also dependent upon
each and every citizen being able to utilize public libraries.
--Terence Cooke (1921—1983)
American cardinal.
In Vladimir Wertsman _The Librarian's Companion_, p. 135 [1996].

With awe, around these silent walls I tread;
These are the lasting mansions of the dead.
--George Crabbe (1754—1832)
English poet.
"The Library" [1808]

A great library contains the diary of the human race.
--George Dawson (1821—1876)
English minister.
Address on the opening ot the Birmingham Free Library, as quoted in
John Alfred Langford _The Birmingham Free Libraries_, p. 29 [1871].

-

Memoirs are inherently wistful, but Larry McMurtry's
reminiscences of his life with books — not as a
novelist but as a reader, book scout, and bookstore
owner — are especially valedictory. Nearly every
page sounds a note of farewell, of stoic, weary
resignation, of time running out.

While McMurtry's voice remains modest, low-key,
and immensely sympathetic, no amount of charm
can disguise a pervasive melancholy in his pages.
As he says, "A bookman's love of books is a love
of books, not merely of the information in them."

But, he fears, the age of eagerly turned pages is
passing: Today the sight that discourages book
people most is to walk into a public library and
see computers where books used to be.

In many cases not even the librarians want books
to be there. What consumers want now is
information, and information increasingly comes
from computers. That is a preference I can't grasp,
much less share, though I'm well aware that
computers have many valid uses. They save lives,
and they make research in most cases a thing that's
almost instantaneous. They do many good things.

But they don't really do what books do, and why
should they usurp the chief function of a public
library, which is to provide readers access to
books? Books can accommodate the proximity of
computers but it doesn't seem to work the other
way around. Computers now literally drive out
books from the place that should, by definition,
be books' own home: the library.

--Michael Dirda (b. 1948)
"The Treasure Hunter", a book review of Larry McMurtry's _Books: A
Memoir_ [2008] in _The New York Review of Books_ [14 August 2008].

-

My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from
Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed
that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject.
They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have
here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free.
--Kirk Douglas [Issur Danielovitch] (b. 1916)
American film actor and producer.
Quoted in Vladimir Wertsman
_The Librarian's Companion: A Handbook ..._ ]1996].

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library.
A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could
be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years,
have set in best order the results of their learning and
wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible,
solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette;
but the thought which they did not uncover to their
bosom friend is here written out in transparent words
to us, the strangers of another age.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
"Books" in _Society and Solitude_ [1870].

A library is a repository of medicine for the mind.
--Greek proverb

Unlike a lot of other libraries, [the New York Society
Library] still allows you to go to the shelves yourself.
... I appreciate the serendipity of the stacks, looking
for one book, but on occasion finding another, better
one, which I did not even know existed.
--David Halberstam (1934—2007)
American journalist and author.
"When the Third 'R' Stands for Repose" in
_New York Times_ [19 December 1997].
(The Society Library is New York's oldest library.)

Every library is an arsenal.
--Robert Green Ingersoll (1833—1899)
American politician and orator know as "The Great Agnostic."
"The Ghosts" [1877]

Your library is your portrait.
--Holbrook Jackson (1874—1948)
British journalist, writer, and publisher.
_Maxims of Books and Reading_, ch. 13 [1934]

He has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the
four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique
world, —and the glories of a modern one.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807—1882)
American poet.
_Hyperion_ [1839]

Man, lots of time I wish I could just start
back in school, from about the sixth grade.
Man, I'd be the last one out of that library
every night.
--Malcolm X (1925—1965)
American civil rights campaigner.
Quoted by Alex Haley "Alex Haley Remembers" in
David Gallen _Malcolm X: As They Knew Him_ [1992].

I must say I find television very educational.
The minute somebody turns it on, I go into
the library and read a good book.
--Groucho Marx (1895—1977)
American film comedian.
_King Leer_ [1947]

I figured I'd better get it in before we waited
another ten years. Fifty-seven years would
be embarrassing.
--Robert Nuranen,
(January 2007, returning an overdue library book after forty-seven years.)

If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God,
they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree,
they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.
--Caliph Omar (581—644)
Muslim caliph.
Attributed remark after burning the Alexandrian Library in 642.

The library is the temple of learning, and
learning has liberated more people than
all the wars in history.
--Carl T. Rowan (1925—2000)
American journalist.
Quoted in Nell Minow _The Movie Mom's Guide to Family Movies_ [1999].

-

If there were no books, no written records, think
how prodigious a time twenty-three centuries would
be. With four generations per century, twenty-three
centuries occupies almost a hundred generations of
human beings. If information could be passed on
merely by word of mouth, how little we should know
of our past, how slow would be our progress!
Everything would depend on what ancient findings
we had accidentally been told about, and how
accurate the account was. Past information might
be revered, but in successive retellings it would
become progressively more muddled and eventually
lost.

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the
wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us
with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted
form Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were,
with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet
and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring,
and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the
collective knowledge of the human species.

Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions.
I think the health of our civilization, the depth of
our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture
and our concern for the future can all be tested by
how well we support our libraries.

--Carl Sagan (1934—1996)
American astronomer and author.
_Cosmos_ [1980]

-

For him that stealeth a book from this library, let
it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.
Let him be struck by palsy and all his members
blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for
mercy, and let there be no surcease for his agony
until he sinks into dissolution. Let book-worms
gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth
not, and when at last he goeth to his final
punishment, let the flames of hell consume him
for ever and aye.
--Warning displayed in the library of the Popish Monestary of San
Pedro, Barcelona, Spain. Quoted in _Old Librarians Almanack_ [1773].

-

A bloke walks into a Glasgow library and says to the prim
librarian, "Excuse me Miss, dey ye hiv ony books on suicide?"

To which she stops doing her tasks, looks at him over the top
of her glasses and says, "Off wi' ye, ye'll no bring it back!"

-


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