liberty

Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.

We are American farmers. We are Americans. We are farmers. Our grandsires freed this virgin continent,plowed it from East to West, and gave it to us.This land is for us and for our children tomake richer and more fruitful. We grow foods, fibers - fifteen times asmuch as we use. We grow men and women -- farmers, Presidents, and Senators, generals of industry,captains of commerce, missionaries, builders. Communists would call us capitalists, because we own land and we own tools. Capitalists might choose to call us laborers,because we work with our hands. Others may call us managers, because wedirect men and manage materials. Our children call us "Dad." We are also deacons, stockholders, mechanics, veterinarians, electricians, schoolboard members, Rotarians, voters, scientists,neighbors, men of good will. Our rules are Nature's rules, the laws of God. We command the magic of the seasons andthe miracles of science, because we obey Nature's rules. Our raw materials are soil and seed, animals, the atmosphere and the rain, and the mighty sun. We work with brains. We toil with musclesof steel, fed by the fires of lightning and byoils from the inner earth. We are partners with the laboratory, withthe factory, and with all the people. We provide industry with ever-renewableraw materials from the inexhaustible world ofplants. We buy products from the labor ofevery fellow-citizen.Our efficiencies have raised great cities andhappy towns, and have given all the peoplemeat and bread. We believe in work and in honor We believe in freedom. We are grateful for the American freedomthat has let us earn so many blessings. We know that liberty is our most preciouspossession. At the ballot-boxes and on thebattlefield we shall defend it. We have proven a new pattern of abun-dance. We pray that we may also help tomake a pattern for peace.

Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

To suppress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress. Now more than ever we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

Our way of living together in America is a strong but delicate fabric. It is made up of many threads. It has been woven over many centuries by the patience and sacrifice of countless liberty-loving men and women. It serves as a cloak for the protection of poor and rich, of black and white, of Jew and Gentile, of foreign and native born. Let us not tear it asunder. For no man knows, once it is destroyed, where or when man will find its protective warmth again.

Without order or authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty, during which men . . . forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice. . . . They forgot that their rights were founded on their duties. . . . They thought it clever to be cynical, enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

The Virginia delegation's recommended bill of rights included the following: That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.