Free society

The term free society is used frequently by Liberals and libertarian theorists to denote a society in which their ideal political, legal, and economic aims are in effect. In a theoretical free society, all individuals act voluntarily, having the freedom to obtain the power and resources to fulfill their own potential.

CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. - Milton Friedman

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

• My own conviction is that philosophical education is required, moral education is required, psychological education is required, and that no free society can last without an appropriate philosophy and supporting culture. A free society requires and entails a whole set of values, a whole way of looking at people—at human relationships, at the relationship of the individual to the state—about which there has to be some decent level of consensus.
  • Nathaniel Branden, “The Foundations of a Free Society” edition of Cato Policy Report (January/February 1996)

• The freedom to have a private conversation – free from the worry that a hostile government, a rogue government agent or a competitor or a criminal are listening – is central to a free society.
  • Cindy Cohn, as quoted in “With the latest WikiLeaks revelations about the CIA – is privacy really dead?”, Olivia Solon, The Guardian, March 9, 2017

• A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. Free society must fertilize the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow.
  • Henry Steele Commager, Freedom, Loyalty and Dissent, Oxford University Press (1954)

• In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.
  • Barney Frank, commenting on legislation to remove federal criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use, CNN Newsroom: Rep. Barney Frank's Marijuana Bill (30 July 2008)

• The course of decision in this Court has thus far jealously enforced the principle of a free society secured by the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Its safeguards are not to be worn away by a process of devitalizing interpretation.
  • Felix Frankfurter, Davis v. United States, 328 U.S. 582, 597 (1946).

• Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, ‘freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society’. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.
  • Felix Frankfurter, New York Times (November 28, 1954)

• I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tentacles and get bad results elsewhere.
  • Milton Friedman, interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)

• Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery.
  • Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 10

• The widespread use of the market reduces the strain on the social fabric by rendering conformity unnecessary with respect to any activities it encompasses. The wider the range of activities covered by the market, the fewer are the issues on which explicitly political decisions are required and hence on which it is necessary to achieve agreement. In turn, the fewer the issues on which agreement is necessary, the greater is the likelihood of getting agreement while maintaining a free society.
  • Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society

G - L

• A free society means toleration, which in turn comes from openness of mind. But freedom also presupposes conviction; a free choice—unless it be wholly arbitrary (and then it would not be free)—comes from belief and ultimately from principle. A free society, then, cherishes both toleration and conviction.
  • Harvard Committee, Report, General Education in a Free Society, Harvard University Press, 1950, p. 77

• If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
  • F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Chap. 6: “Equality, Value and Merit,” Routledge (1960) p. 77, first published 1960

• But it is also true that in a free society an individual will be esteemed according to the manner in which he uses his freedom.
  • F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Chap. 5: “Responsibility and Freedom,” Routledge (1960) p. 70, first published 1960

• There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, 'a new form of servitude.'
  • F.A. Hayek, "Individualism: True and False" essay (1945); later published in Individualism and Economic Order, University of Chicago Press (1948) p. 16

• In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be. We look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrong thought, and in following this pattern our conduct and our thinking become mechanical, our responses automatic. We can observe this very easily in ourselves.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known [1] (1975 edition)

• The principles of a free society describe not a hierarchy of superior and subordinate authorities but an archipelago of competing and overlapping jurisdictions. A free society is sustained to the extent that laws honour these principles and authorities operate within the laws.
  • Chandran Kukathas, The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 4

• A free society is an open society and, therefore the principles which describe its nature must be principles which admit the variability of human arrangements rather than fix or establish or uphold a determinate set of institutions within a closed order… the fundamental principle describing a free society is the principle of freedom of association. A first corollary of this is the principle of freedom of association. A second corollary is the principle of mutual toleration of associations.
  • Chandran Kukathas, The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 4

• If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
  • Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (6 January 1816) ME 14:384.

• In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
  • Walter Lippmann The Good Society, Transaction Publishers (2009) p. 267, first published 1937

M - R

• Regulating speech is a dangerous notion and, not compatible with the principles of a free society. The Founders recognized this, and thus explicitly prohibited Congress from making any laws that might abridge freedom of speech or of the press.
  • Ron Paul, “An Indecent Attack on the First Amendment,” before the US House of Representatives, (March 10, 2004)

• The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. All initiation of force is a violation of someone else’s rights, whether initiated by and individual or the state,…
  • Ron Paul, Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution After 200 Years, Ludwig von Mises Institute, (2007) p. 38

• The danger to a free society is not the guns owned by the citizens but an unconstrained government, especially one that is better armed than the public. An armed society is a self-governing society, just as a disarmed people are vulnerable to arbitrary power of every kind.
  • Lew Rockwell, “Guns and Liberty”, Mises Daily, (June 3, 1999)

• Electoral politics has never succeeded in achieving a free society.
  • John Pugsley, as quoted in I Must Speak Out: The Best of The Voluntaryist 1982-1999, Carl Watner, San Francisco: CA, Fox & Wilkes (1999) p. 118

• The American project of bringing a free society to Iraq could not possibly have worked. Why not? Because a free society requires a free market, and the American regime of conquest was founded on socialist planning by the state.
  • Lew Rockwell, Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto, Auburn: AL, Rockwell Communications LLC (2014) p. 38

S - Z

• My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
  • Adlai Stevenson, Speech in Detroit, Michigan (7 October 1952)

• The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
  • Adlai Stevenson, The New York Times (19 January 1962)

External links