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Quote#Freedom

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty…

Quote byLouis Brandeis · 1856–1941

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Judicial opinions, Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1928). The last sentence is one of many quotations inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol..

English (original)

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

— Louis Brandeis

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