“Liberty” is the state of being free from external, often oppressive, restrictions, restraints, and/or constraints imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behaviors, or political views, so long as one’s way of life, behaviors, or political views do not interfere with the rights or properties of other members of the society within which one lives. Liberty refers to an individual’s freedom of choice and property rights. Now, let’s consider the words of history’s great thinkers on the topic of liberty!

1. Sun Tzu – born 6th century BCE

“Move only if there is a real advantage to be gained.”
“We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country… We shall be unable to turn natural advantage to account unless we make use of local guides.”
“Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest. In raiding and plundering be like fire, in immovability like a mountain. Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

2. Plato – born 428 BCE

“… for the unjust is lord over the truly simple and just: he is stronger, and his subjects do what is for his interest, and minister to his happiness, which is very far from being their own.”
“I will show that all men who practise justice do so against their will, of necessity, but not as a good.”
“… he knows that men are not just of their own free will; unless, peradventure, there be someone whom the divinity within him may have inspired with a hatred of injustice, or who has attained knowledge of the truth – but no other man.”

3. Aristotle – born 384 BCE

“… the man is free… who exists for himself and not for another…”
“… the basis of a democratic state is liberty… a man should live as he likes.”

4. Cicero – born 106 BCE

“… beware of ambition for glory; for it robs us of liberty, and in defence of liberty a high-souled man should stake everything.”
“Yet when the stress of circumstances demands it, we must gird on the sword and prefer death to slavery and disgrace.”
“Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.”

5. Thomas Hobbes – born 1588

“By LIBERTY, is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external impediments…”
“In democracy, LIBERTY is to be supposed… no man is FREE in any other government.”
“But the right of nature, that is, the natural liberty of man, may by the civil law be abridged, and restrained; nay, the end of making laws, is no other, but such restraint; without the which there cannot possibly be any peace. And law was brought into the world for nothing else, but to limit the natural liberty of particular men, in such manner, as they might not hurt, but assist one another, and join together against a common enemy.”

6. John Locke – born 1632

“In the races of mankind and families in the world, there remains not to one above another…”
“… no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into a state of war with me.”
“… freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together…”

7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – born 1712

“… citizens only allow themselves to be oppressed to the degree that they are carried away by blind ambition, and since they pay more attention to what is below them than to what is above, domination becomes dearer to them than independence, and they consent to wear chains so that they many in turn give them to others… inequality spreads without difficulty among cowardly and ambitious souls…”
“The homeland cannot subsist without liberty, nor liberty without virtue, nor virtue without citizens. You will have everything, if you train citizens; without that, you will only have malicious slaves, beginning with the leaders of the state.”
“Since no individual has natural authority over his fellow man, and since force creates no rights, agreements remain the basis of all legitimate authority among men.”
“To renounce one’s liberty is to renounce one’s humanity, the rights of humanity and even its duties… Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature, and to strip him of all freedom of will is to strip his actions of all morality.”
“… we must carefully distinguish between natural liberty, which is limited only by the strength of the individual, and civil liberty, which is limited by the general will, and between possession, which is only the result of force or the right of the first occupant, and ownership, which can be based only on a real title. Besides the preceding, another benefit which can be counted among the attainments of the civil state is moral liberty, which alone makes man truly his own master, for impulsion by appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to the law that one has prescribed for oneself is liberty.”

8. Adam Smith – born 1723

“Advantages and disadvantages tend to equality where there is perfect liberty.”
“But no positive law can oblige a person who sells goods, and who is at liberty to sell or not to sell, as he pleases, to accept of a shilling as equivalent to a guinea in the price of them.”
“… every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it… he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
“To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.”
“The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and of perfect equality, is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest degree of prosperity to all.”

9. Alexis de Tocqueville – born 1805

“…today you often meet men naturally noble and proud whose opinions are in direct opposition to their tastes, and who speak in praise of the servility and baseness that they have never known for themselves. There are others, in contrast, who speak of liberty as if they could feel what is holy and great in it and who loudly claim on behalf of humanity rights that they have always disregarded.”
“Liberty sees in religion the companion of its strengths and triumphs, the cradle of its early years, the divine source of its rights. Liberty considers religion as the safeguard of mores, mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its own duration.”
“There is nothing more fruitful in wonders than the art of being free; but there is nothing harder than apprenticeship in liberty… born amid storms; it is established painfully in the midst of civil discord, and only when it is already old can its benefits be known.”
“For me, when I feel the hand of power pressing on my head, knowing who is oppressing me matters little to me, and I am no more inclined to put my head in the yoke, because a million arms present it to me.”
“So although men cannot become absolutely equal without being entirely free, and consequently equality at its most extreme level merges with liberty, you are justified in distinguishing the one from the other. The taste that men have for liberty and the one that they feel for equality are, in fact, two distinct things, and I am not afraid to add that, among democratic peoples, they are two unequal things.”
“The good things that liberty brings show themselves only over time, and it is always easy to fail to recognize the cause that gives them birth.”
“Men cannot enjoy political liberty without purchasing it at the cost of some sacrifices, and they never secure it except by a great deal of effort.”
“So political liberty, which is useful when conditions are unequal, becomes necessary in proportion as they become equal.”
“If men learn in obedience only the art of obeying and not that of being free, I do not know what privileges they will have over the animals except that the shepherd would be taken from among them.”
“A nation that asks of its government only the maintenance of order is already a slave at the bottom of its heart. The nation is a slave of its well-being, and the man who is to put it in chains can appear…”

10. John Stuart Mill – born 1806

“The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar…” – Chapter 1 – Introductory
“The majority have not yet learnt to feel the power of the government their power, or its opinions their opinions. When they do so, individual liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from the government, as it already is from public opinion.” – Chapter 1 – Introductory
“…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” – Chapter 1 – Introductory
“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” – Chapter 1 – Introductory
“… there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the power of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation: and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrat, to grow more and more formidable.” – Chapter 1 – Introductory
“… both the cheapness and the good quality of commodities are most effectually provided for by leaving the producers and sellers perfectly free, under the sole check of equal freedom…” – Chapter 5 – Applications
“… liberty consists in doing what one desires…” – Chapter 5 – Applications
“… the liberty of the individual, in things wherein the individual is alone concerned, implies a corresponding liberty in any number of individuals to regulate by mutual agreement such things as regard them jointly, and regard no persons but themselves.” – Chapter 5 – Applications
“… liberty is often granted where it should be withheld, as well as withheld where it should be granted…” – Chapter 5 – Applications
“… ideas of liberty… bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of the individual…”

11. Friedrich A. Hayek – born 1899

“… liberty is not merely one particular value… it is the source and condition of most moral values. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.”
“Liberty in practice depends on very prosaic matters, and those anxious to preserve it must prove their devotion by their attention to the mundane concerns of public life and by the efforts they are prepared to give to the understanding of issues that the idealist is often inclined to treat as common, if not sordid.”
“Freedom thus presupposes that the individual has some assured private sphere, that there is some set of circumstances in his environment with which others cannot interfere.”
“Above all, however, we must recognize that we may be free and yet miserable. Liberty does not mean all good things or the absence of all evils.”
“But while the uses of liberty are many, liberty is one. Liberties appear only when liberty is lacking…”
“Liberty is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable…”
“It has become a common practice to disparage freedom of action by calling it “economic liberty”. But the concept of freedom of action is much wider than that of economic liberty…”
“… the importance of freedom to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the number of people who want to do it: it might almost be in inverse proportion. One consequence of this is that a society may be hamstrung by controls, although the great majority may not be aware that their freedom has been significantly curtailed.”
“… moral rules for collective action are developed only with difficulty and very slowly. But this should be taken as an indication of their preciousness. The most important among the few principles of this kind that we have developed is individual freedom…”
“… freedom is almost certain to be destroyed by piecemeal encroachments.”
“Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”
“It is doubtless because the opportunity to build one’s own life also means an unceasing task… that many people are afraid of liberty.”
“… believing in freedom means that we do not regard ourselves as the ultimate judges of another person’s values, that we do not feel entitled to prevent him from pursuing ends which we disapprove so long as he does not infringe the equally protected sphere of others.“
“Freedom does not mean that we can have everything as we want it. In choosing a course of life we always must choose between complexes of advantages and disadvantages, and, once our choice is made, we must be prepared to accept certain disadvantages for the sake of the net benefit.”
“Under a reign of freedom the free sphere of the individual includes all action not explicitly restricted by a general law.”
“It is wherever man reaches beyond his present self, where the new emerges and assessment lies in the futures, that liberty ultimately shows its value.”

12. Bertrand de Jouvenel – born 1903

“…what a mistake it is to oppose authority to liberty. Authority is the faculty of inducing assent. To follow an authority is a voluntary act. Authority ends where voluntary assent ends.”
“The distinguishing feature of man is the diversity of the plans which he is capable of evolving, the freedom to choose his ends; it is also the liberty of choice or indifference possessed by others as regards the ends set before them.”

Final Thoughts

What emerges most powerfully from these quotes is the tension between individual freedom and collective life. Rousseau captures this paradox perfectly: we must sometimes limit our natural liberty to gain civil liberty, yet in doing so, we risk creating the very chains we sought to escape. Mill warns us that the tyranny of the majority can be just as oppressive as that of a single despot, while Tocqueville observes that people often claim to love liberty while secretly preferring the comfort of servitude.

Perhaps most relevant to our modern age is Hayek’s warning about freedom being “destroyed by piecemeal encroachments.” In an era of increasing complexity, where regulations multiply and digital surveillance expands, his observation that society can be “hamstrung by controls” even when most people don’t realize their freedom has been curtailed feels particularly prescient.

The collected wisdom also highlights an uncomfortable truth: liberty requires constant vigilance, sacrifice, and responsibility. As Jouvenel notes, true authority requires voluntary assent—the moment it becomes coercion, it ceases to be legitimate. This places the burden squarely on each generation to actively choose freedom over the seductive ease of letting others make decisions for us.

The price of liberty, these thinkers tell us, is eternal vigilance—not just against external threats, but against our own willingness to trade freedom for comfort, responsibility for security, and the difficult work of self-governance for the false ease of submission.

Thanks for reading!