I was just thinking about President Lincoln as his birthday is fast approaching and he is one of my favorite people. So I thought I would share a part of a speech given by President Lincoln in 1864. This is a speech that allows Lincoln to share his thoughts on Liberty by using a parable. I think it is quite profound and relevant in today’s world of fighting for and touting for personal “Freedoms” and Liberties.

LECTURE ON LIBERTY
ADDRESS GIVEN AT THE SANITARY FAIR IN BALTIMORE,
APRIL 18, 1864.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and
the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all
declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean
the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to
do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while
with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please
with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two,
not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name,
liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the
respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names--
liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the
sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces
him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the
sheep was a black one. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not
agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same
difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the
North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold
the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke
of bondage hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by
others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the
people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty, and
thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary
has been repudiated.

Abraham Lincoln