America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville

Liberty and justice for all. It’s an American ideal. Let’s remember it. Let’s meditate on it, ponder it, breathe it in and out. Liberty. Justice. For All. Here’s what I think of – what comes to your mind?!

Liberty
Liberty is the freedom to pursue happiness without interference so long as you respect the human rights of others. Unfettered, not enslaved, not imprisoned, not a subject of rulers or the rich, not a slave to any other or to any entity. Not a hostage. Not a prisoner. A government by and for the people – non-autoritarinan, non-fascistic, non-dominating. Creates and sustains self-governing, sovereign agents of politically free lands. Freedom of assembly, the press, speech etc. Evokes the statue of liberty and its history and ideals.

And
Inclusive conjunction, not only one or the other, but both liberty and justice.

Justice – Doing what is fair and right in every case after careful consideration of all points of view and hearing representative voices. Accountability, fairness. Preventing human rights abuses. Ensuring adherence to local, atate, national, and international law. Applying principles of moral rectitide equitable and equally. Render to each what is due. Punishment that fits the crime. Reparative justice for wrongdoing. Careful consideration of all points of view, equal representation. Fair treatment. Obviously, no hate-mongering, no adverse or preferential discrimination unless on the basis of merit. No one is above or below the law – all treated equally.

For
Done to benefit somebody, or done on somebody’s behalf. Intended to be received or used by, to benefit somebody. In the service of. The reason why something is done. Indicating the purpose.

All
Mega-rich, Upper-class, middle-class, blue-collar, pink-collar, white-collar, no collar, no hope for a collar, no desire for a collar. Citizens, non-citizens, visitors, business contacts. All races and ethnicities and backgrounds and regions. All points of every spectrum – all ideologies, all rationalities, all beliefs, all positions. From the hyper to the slothful, from sea to shining sea, in bogs, on plateaus, in concrete jungle, behind glass or security devices. For everyone – you and me, whether we’re OK or not, every single person!!!!!

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
-Thomas Jefferson

Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right of religious freedom.
– John Quincy Adams

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end.
– Lord Acton

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.
– Mortimer Adler

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities….
– Lord Acton

For somehow this is tyranny’s disease, to trust no friends.
– Aeschylus

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes is his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
– Lord Acton

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
– Samuel Adams

And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.
– Samuel Adams

Believe in no other God than the one who insists on justice and equality among men.
– George Sand

Justice has no independent existence; it results from mutual contracts, and establishes itself wherever there is a mutual engagement to guard against doing or sustaining mutual injury.
– Epicurus

Justice without force is powerless force without justice is tyrannical.
– Blaise Pascal

Justice is truth in action.
– Joseph Joubert

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

There is a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust.
– Sophocles

Revenge feels right only to those directly involved. Justice feels right even to outsiders.
– Marilyn Vos Savant

Those who try to stifle the vibrancy of our democracy and shield policies from scrutiny behind a false cloak of patriotism miss the real value of what our troops defend and how we best defend our troops. We will ask questions and we will defend our democracy.
– US Senator John F. Kerry

Restriction on free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
– Thurgood Marshall, former Supreme Court Justice

I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.
– Albert Einstein

[Constitutional guarantees in the 4th amendment] apply to all invasions on the part of government and its employees of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging in his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property.
– Justice Joseph Bradley

The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.
– U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.
– John F. Kennedy

“I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free.”
-Nikos Kazantzakis