Donald Coffin's Henry George quotations are good, but I would 
substitute for them all the following paean to Liberty in the 
concluding chapter of _Progress and Poverty_ (which has things to 
teach us for the current recession/depression, mainly how to confront 
speculative land bubbles -- for it is land values that rise and fall 
in the business cycle, not the price of bricks and mortar -- so that 
"true liberty means equal liberty; tax land values", as his slogan goes):

    "We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, 
knowledge, invention, national strength and national independence as 
other things. But, of all these, Liberty is the source, the mother, 
the necessary condition. She is to virtue what light is to color; to 
wealth what sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to 
sight. She is the genius of invention, the brawn of national 
strength, the spirit of national independence. Where Liberty rises, 
there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, invention 
multiplies human powers, and in strength and spirit the freer nation 
rises among her neighbors as Saul amid his brethren -- taller and fairer."

Roger Sandilands