THE REMNANT TRUST
timeline of individual liberty & human dignity
Explore the timeline, which has been divided into three ages, to understand the people and ideas that have shaped our Western understanding of human liberty and dignity.
All the authors on the timeline have works in the Remnant Trust Collection. Use the time and topic filters to browse to a specific area of interest.
2500 BCE - 1215 CE
Age I
Cuneiform to the Magna Carta
Plato
"Mankind must have laws, and conform to them, or their life would be as bad as that of the most savage beast. And the reason for this is that no man’s nature is able to know what is best for human society; or knowing, always able and willing to do what is best."
- Plato
Aristotle
"Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal."
- Aristotle
Cicero
"A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation…Freedom is a possession of inestimable value."
- Cicero
Marcus Aurelius Anotninus
"Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish…Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also…Begin – to begin is half the work, left half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished…The Universe is governed by reason, which is God."
- Anotninus
King John, Jr.
"No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed or prosecute against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land." - William D‘Aubigny, Huntingfeld, King John, Delacis, Marshall, Jr.
Saint Augustine
"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page . . . Understand that you may believe; believe that you may understand."
- Augustine
1216 CE - 1776 CE
Age II
Henry II to the American Revolution
Thomas Aquinas
"We can’t have full knowledge all at once. We must start by believing; then afterwards we may be led on to master the evidence for ourselves."
- Aquinas
Marsilius of Padua
"I say further that it is by the same authority that laws and anything else instituted by election must receive any addition or subtraction or even total overhaul, any interpretation and any suspension: depending on the demands of time and place and other circumstances that might make one of these measures opportune for the sake of the common advantage in such matters."
-Padua
Desiderius Erasmus
"Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed."
-Erasmus
Niccolo Machiavelli
"It is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain."
- Machiavelli
Martin Luther
"A Christian is free and independent in every respect, a bond servant to none. A Christian is a dutiful servant in every respect, owing a duty to everyone."
- Luther
William Tyndale
"The morality of clean blood ought to be one of the first lessons taught us by our pastors and teachers. – The physical is the substratum of the spiritual; and this fact ought to give to the food we eat, and the air we breathe, a transcendent significance."
- Tyndale
John Calvin
“Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.”
- Calvin
Richard Hooker
“He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall never want attentive and favorable hearers.”
- Hooker
Thomas Hobbes
“By liberty is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external impediments; which impediments may oft take away part of a man’s power to do what he would, but cannot hinder him from using the power left him according as his judgement and reason shall dictate to him.”
- Hobbes
John Milton
"Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.”
- Milton
Algernon Sidney
"Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.”
- Sidney
John Locke
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”
- Locke
Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu
"Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.”
- Montesquieu
Benjamin Franklin
“Let not princes disdain to admit into their councils those who are most capable of giving them good advice… It is by this means only that we are likely to see what virtue, science and authority can do, when animated by the noblest emulation, and working unanimously for the happiness of mankind. But so long as power is on one side, and knowledge and understanding alone on the other, the learned will seldom make great objects their study, princes will still more rarely do great actions, and the peoples will continue to be, as they are, mean, corrupt and miserable.”
– Franklin
David Hume
"Every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches.”
- Hume
Jean Jacques Rousseau
"Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”
- Rousseau
Adam Smith
"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”
- Smith
Sir William Blackstone
"The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.”
- Blackstone
Edmund Burke
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”
- Burke
John Adams
"The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people’s hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.”
- Adams
Thomas Paine
"These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
- Paine
Thomas Jefferson
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
- Jefferson
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.”
- Goethe
James Madison
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
- Madison
Alexander Hamilton
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself”
- Hamilton
Mary Wollstonecraft
"It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”
- Wollstonecraft
American Founding
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
- Jefferson
1777 CE - 2023 CE
Age III
Modern Democracy to Industrialization
Mary W Shelley
"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."
- Shelley
Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear."
- Macaulay
Frederic Bastiat
"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone"
- Bastiat
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
- Emerson
Alexis Henri Charles Maurice Clerel de Tocqueville
"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
- de Tocqueville
John Stuart Mill
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury."
- Stuart Mill
Abraham Lincoln
"Our reliance is the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors."
- Lincoln
Frederick Douglass
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
- Douglass
Henry David Thoreau
"This American government – what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?"
- Thoreau
Herbert Spencer
"No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy. Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society."
- Spencer
John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
- Acton