Liberty
Liberty is the ability of individuals to have agency (control over their own actions). Different conceptions of liberty articulate the relationship of individuals to society in different ways—including some that relate to life under a social contract or to existence in a state of nature, and some that see the active exercise of freedom and rights as essential to liberty. Understanding liberty involves how we imagine the individual's roles and responsibilities in society in relation to concepts of free will and determinism, which involves the larger domain of metaphysics.
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Famous quotes containing the word liberty:
“Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water until he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“The internal effects of a mutable policy ... poisons the blessings of liberty itself.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The English, besides being “good haters,” are dogged and downright, and have no salvos for their self-love. Their vanity does not heal the wounds made in their pride. The French, on the contrary, are soon reconciled to fate, and so enamoured of their own idea, that nothing can put them out of conceit with it. Whatever their attachment to their country, to liberty or glory, they are not so affected by the loss of these as to make any desperate effort or sacrifice to recover them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)