Skip to content

Legally, the term liberty means absence of duty, or rather the limit of duty.

— John R. Commons

Another quote →

Topics

Freedom

More quotes by John R. Commons

Liberty, as such, is only the negative of duty, the absence of restraint or compulsion.

The binding power of custom is its security of expectations. What has happened before may be expected to happen again, and he who arbitrarily disappoints expectations must be restrained or punished.

Other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized—the negro has only been domesticated.

Liberty is absence of restraint. Freedom is participation in government.

The concept of property itself had come up out of the common law and carried with it the idea of a natural, or common-law rights of liberty to acquire, use and dispose of physical things.

All John R. Commons quotes →

You may also like

You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.

Julian Assange

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

Abraham Lincoln

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John R. Commons (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.