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Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.
-Proverb
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Liberty is God's gift, liberties the devil s.
-Proverb
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Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.
-Henry Adams
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I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geograhy, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
-John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams (May 12, 1780), May 12, 1780
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Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, the right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. Those are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
-Samuel Adams
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The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.
-Margot Asquith
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I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.
-Mikhail Bakunin
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You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
-William Blake
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Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are 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 D. Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States, 1928
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There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.
-Andre Breton
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In commemoration of the fact that France was our ally in securing independence the citizens of that nation joined with the citizens of the United States in placing in New York harbor an heroic statue representing Liberty enlightening the world. What course shall our nation pursue? Send the statue of Liberty back to France and borrow from England a statue of William the Conqueror?
-William Jennings Bryan, speech regarding the the United States' conquering of the Philippines, February 14, 1899
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Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites...
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
-Edmund Burke
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
-Edmund Burke
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Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
-Edmund Burke
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The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.
-Edmund Burke
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The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
-Edmund Burke
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It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by one, broken, but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears out the rock. In like manner, whatever the struggle of individuals, the great cause will gather strength.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Peace is liberty in tranquillity.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
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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
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We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.
-Angela Y. Davis
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In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
-Will Durant
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By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn
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One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor.
-Frederick Farrar
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Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
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Where liberty is, there is my country.
-Benjamin Franklin
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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Benjamin Franklin, in the Penn. Assembly - Reply To Governor
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The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.
-Sigmund Freud
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
-Edward Gibbon
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Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
-Kahlil Gibran, "The Vision"
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I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
-Barry Goldwater
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Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
-Samuel Gompers
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It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.
-M. Grundler
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Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.
-Lord Quintin Hogg Hailsham
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Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.
-Alexander Hamilton, from No. 8, The Federalist
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-Judge Learned Hand
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The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
-William Hazlitt
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When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.
-G. W. F. Hegel
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It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?
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, March 23, 1775
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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
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Thus the scene of the tragedy of Liberty world over must be suffering and discontent among the people. The drama moves swiftly in a torrent of words in which real purposes are disguised in portrayals of Utopia; idealism without realism; slogans, phrases and statements destructive to confidence in existing institutions; demands for violent action against slowly curable ills; unfair representation that sporadic wickedness is the system itself; searing prejudice against the former order; dismay and panic in the economic organization which feeds on its own despair. Emotions rise above reason. The man on horseback, ascending triumphantly to office on the steps of constitutional process, demands and threatens the parliament into the delegation of its sacred power. Then follows consolidation of authority through powerful propaganda in the pay of the state to transform the mentality of the people. Resentment of criticism, denunciation of all opposition, moral terrorization, all follow in sequence. The last scene is the suppression of freedom. Liberty dies of the water from her own well- free speech- poisoned by untruth. In the Epilogue the dreams of those who saw Utopia are shattered and the people find they are marching backward toward the Middle Ages- as regimented men.
-Herbert Hoover, The Challenge to Liberty, (Charles Scribners' Sons, N.Y.) pg. 16-17, 1934
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It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
-David Hume
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The right to be heard does not autmatically include the right to be taken seriously.
-Hubert Humphrey
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The more liberty you give away the more you will have.
-Robert G. Ingersoll
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What light is to the eyes
-Robert G. Ingersoll
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I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
-Thomas Jefferson
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The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
-Thomas Jefferson
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Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-Thomas Jefferson
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The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
-Thomas Jefferson
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The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
-Thomas Jefferson
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It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
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The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.
-Otto Herman Kahn
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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, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders --now that we are become men like gods. It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair.
-Percy Wynham Lewis
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We are as great as our belief in human liberty -- no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves.
-Archibald MacLeish
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We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
-James Madison
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Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
-James Madison
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We recall the joy and excitement of a nation that had found itself, the collective relief that we had stepped out of our restrictive past, and the expectant air of walking into a brighter future.
(Recalling the atmosphere at what he called the ceremonial birth of South African democracy.)
-Nelson Mandela, National Geographic News, June 2, 2004
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Liberty is a harsh mistress. You cannot pick and choose what you like and dislike about her. Liberty will not change her principles for you, no matter how much you claim to love her. She will stand fast in her demands for total acceptance. If you can't receive her, she will recognize you as a false lover and leave you. And when you hear that door slam, it will take every tear in your eye, every ounce of blood in your veins, and all the nerve in your heart to win her back.
-Bill Masters
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Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.
-Mary McCarthy
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I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
-H. L. Mencken
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License they mean when they cry liberty.
-John Milton
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Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
-Charles Montesquieu
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Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
-Charles Montesquieu
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An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.
-Maria Montessori
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He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-Thomas Paine
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Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security! The solution for America's problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God.
-Norman Vincent Peale
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I would rather not be a king than to forfeit my liberty.
-Phaedrus
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A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.
-Francis Picabia
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Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.
-Will Rogers
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How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.
-John Ruskin
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What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity -- for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
-George Santayana
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It is not true that democracy will always safeguard freedom of conscience better than autocracy. Witness the most famous of all trials. Pilate was, from the standpoint of the Jews, certainly the representative of autocracy. Yet he tried to protect freedom. And he yielded to a democracy.
-Joseph Schumpeter
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A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
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The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
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Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.
-William Reece Smith, Jr.
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Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst of Evils.
General Stark sent this toast to be read at the reunion, he was too ill to attend; Live Free or Die became the New Hampshire State Motto in 1945
-General John Stark, a toast for the 32nd anniversary reunion of the 1777 Battle of Bennington in Vermont, July 31, 1809
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Old England liberty -- to be robbed by the Ministry, and insulted by the populace without redress.
-Captain J. G. Stedman
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I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
N. B.: This quote is commonly attributed to Voltaire, but it is not found in his writing.
-S. G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire
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Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
-Henry David Thoreau
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They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.
-John Tillotson
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What a pity we don't pursue the salvation of humans with the same verve we pursue the salvation of animals
-Source Unknown
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A sound like a sound of thunder rolled,
And the heart of a nation stirred
-William Ross Wallace, 1851
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It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of those liberties which make the defense of the nation worthwhile.
-Earl Warren
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Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world.
-Earl Warren
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Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
-George Washington
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Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
-Daniel Webster
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Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.
-Daniel Webster
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It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.
-Simone Weil
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Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
-William Allen White
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The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
-Walt Whitman
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When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.
-Oscar Wilde
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I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.
-Woodrow Wilson
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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, Speech in New York, September 9, 1912
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If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.
-Philip Wylie
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There can be no liberty that isn't earned.
-Robert R. Young
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No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
-John P. Zenger
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Books about Liberty
