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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.

— John R. Commons

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More quotes by John R. Commons

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

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

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.

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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.