“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.” — Aristotle · Politics, Book VI, c. 350 BC
“I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · The Social Contract, 1762
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” — George Bernard Shaw · Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903
“My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!” — Thomas Jefferson · Letter to James Monroe, June 17, 1785
“For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?” — Ralph Waldo Emerson · "Boston," poem, 1830s
“In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt · Speech on the Seventy-Fourth Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1936