If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

It’s a rather rude gesture, but at least it’s clear what you mean.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

There are a lot of self-imposed restrictions by people who somehow believe they have to fall in with a certain military cant. There was always a sense that we had to put things into words that would touch our troops‘ hearts, not just their heads.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

There are really two core principles at play here. There’s giving people a voice so that people can express their opinions. Then, there’s keeping the community safe, which I think is really important. We’re not gonna let people plan violence or attack each other or do bad things.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

I have the space and liberty to create.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

What we will do is we’ll say, ‚Okay, you have your page, and if you’re not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.‘ But that doesn’t mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed.

Where liberty is, there is my country.

In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

I don’t ever want to come out with something safe and get away with, ‚It sounds good!‘ It’s got to be more than sounding good. The music I like are events.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

America is a Nation with a mission – and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace – a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me – we’re a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we’re all created equal.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

A yawn is a silent shout.

China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

There is a group of people that I think in good faith honestly believe that further curtailing our Second Amendment rights will enhance public safety. But there’s another group that just hates the Second Amendment.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

I believe in the transformational power of liberty. I believe that the free Iraq is in this nation’s interests. I believe a free Afghanistan is in this nation’s interest.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.