Definition of "liberty"

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal"[sic]

1863 November 19, Abraham Lincoln, Dedicatory Remarks (Gettysburg Address)‎, near Soldiers' National Cemetery, Nicolay draft, page 1

But as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin sagely pointed out, liberty for wolves means death to lambs.

2010, Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, quoting Isaiah Berlin, chapter 5, in Merchants of Doubt

[Edmund] Burke continued to fight for liberty later on in life. He backed Americans in their campaign for freedom from British taxation. He supported Catholic freedoms and freer trade with Ireland, in spite of his constituents’ ire. He wanted more liberal laws on the punishment of debtors.

2014 July 5, “Freedom fighter”, in The Economist, volume 412, number 8894

I'd gie my ſhoon frae aff my feet, / To taſte ſic fruit, I ſwear, man. / Syne let us pray, auld England may / Sure plant this far-famed tree, man; / And blythe we'll ſing, and hail the day / That gave us liberty, man.

1869, Robert Burns, “The Tree of Liberty”, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, volume III (Posthumous Poems), Kilmarnock, Scotland: […] James M‘Kie, page 360

The threat of terrorism to the British lies in the overreaction to it of British governments. Each one in turn clicks up the ratchet of surveillance, intrusion and security. Each one diminishes liberty.

2012 December 14, Simon Jenkins, “We mustn't overreact to North Korea boys' toys”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 2, page 23