„Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship... To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic... The Constitution of this republic should make the special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.“
Benjamin Rush
1745 - 1813Citações relacionadas
„When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.“
— Bill Clinton 42nd President of the United States 1946
Context: When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly. That is, when we set up this country, abuse of people by Government was a big problem. So if you read the Constitution, it's rooted in the desire to limit the ability of — Government's ability to mess with you, because that was a huge problem. It can still be a huge problem. But it assumed that people would basically be raised in coherent families, in coherent communities, and they would work for the common good, as well as for the individual welfare.
Television interview on MTV's Enough is Enough (19 April 1994) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=49995
„My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.“
— Gerald Ford American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977) 1913 - 2006
Context: My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.
As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.
„By the time of the Gettysburg Address, in November 1863, the North was fighting for a 'new birth of freedom' to transform the Constitution written by the founding fathers, under which the United States had become the world's largest slaveholding country, into a charter of emancipation for a republic where, as the northern version of 'The Battle Cry of Freedom' put it, 'Not a man shall be a slave'.“
— James M. McPherson American historian 1936
James M. McPherson. The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom (2003)
„Freedom of expression is guaranteed by our constitution.“
— Maumoon Abdul Gayoom Maldivian politician, 3rd president of the Maldives 1937
„We revere that day because it marks the beginnings of independence, the beginnings of a constitution that was finally to give universal freedom and equality to all American citizens — the beginnings of a government that was to recognize beyond all others the power and worth and dignity of man.“
— Calvin Coolidge American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929) 1872 - 1933
Context: We revere that day because it marks the beginnings of independence, the beginnings of a constitution that was finally to give universal freedom and equality to all American citizens — the beginnings of a government that was to recognize beyond all others the power and worth and dignity of man. There began the first of governments to acknowledge that it was founded on the sovereignty of the people. There the world first beheld the revelation of modern democracy.
„The Constitution did not give Americans freedom; they had been free long before it was written, and when it was put up for ratification they eyed it suspiciously, lest it infringe their freedom. The Federalists, the advocates of ratification, went to great pains to assure the people that under the Constitution they would be just as free as they ever were.“
— Frank Chodorov American libertarian thinker 1887 - 1966
p. 16
„Resistants were on the right side, Salò Republic's combatants on the wrong one. (...) One cannot equate who was fighting for a right cause of equality and freedom, and who, apart of goodfaith, was on the wrong side. (...) The judgement of the Right [on Fascism] have to be negative, due to freedom limitation. (...) We cannot deny ourselves history, and Fascism was a dictatorship that denied some fundamental freedoms.“
— Gianfranco Fini Italian politician 1952
cited in «La destra si riconosca nell'antifascismo» http://www.corriere.it/politica/08_settembre_13/fini_antifascismo_ccb8bcec-8175-11dd-95db-00144f02aabc.shtml, Il Corriere della Sera, 13 September 2008).
„The Constitution is the sole source and guaranty of national freedom.“
— Calvin Coolidge American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929) 1872 - 1933
Address accepting nomination as Republican candidate for president, Washington, D.C. (4 August 1924); published as Address of Acceptance (1924), p. 15.
„Some time ago a most salutary sanction of our constitution was promulgated, which we now make doubly noteworthy by the repetition of our law. If any Jew has acquired a Christian slave or one belonging to some other religious community, and has not shrunk from circumcising him, let the circumcised person, according to this decree, attain his freedom and enjoy its privileges. It is not right that a Jew who has circumcised a slave of this kind should keep him in slavery.“
— Constantine the Great Roman emperor 274 - 337
9 March 336 according to page 38 of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land: Palestine in the Fourth Century https://books.google.ca/books?id=BXuxAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA38 by Gunter Steinberger in 1999
„There can be no constitutional democracy in any community which denies to the individual his freedom to speak and worship as he wishes.“
— Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd President of the United States 1882 - 1945
Context: And I am concerned about the attitude of a candidate or his sponsors with respect to the rights of American citizens to assemble peaceably and to express publicly their views and opinions on important social and economic issues. There can be no constitutional democracy in any community which denies to the individual his freedom to speak and worship as he wishes. The American people will not be deceived by anyone who attempts to suppress individual liberty under the pretense of patriotism. This being a free country with freedom of expression — especially with freedom of the press — there will be a lot of mean blows struck between now and Election Day. By "blows" I mean misrepresentation, personal attack and appeals to prejudice. It would be a lot better, of course, if campaigns everywhere could be waged with arguments instead of blows.
„These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.“
— Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd President of the United States 1882 - 1945
„Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature... no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.“
— William Penn English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania 1644 - 1718
First Frame of Government (25 April 1682).
„Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.“
— Dwight D. Eisenhower American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961) 1890 - 1969
As quoted in The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953–1956: A Personal Account (1963), p. 331
„And that is what the Constitution is all about -- providing freedom from abuse by those in authority. Anyone who says the American Constitution is obsolete just because social and economic conditions have changed does not understand the real genius of the Constitution. It was designed to control something which has not changed and will not change - namely, human nature.“
— W. Cleon Skousen ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist 1913 - 2006
