A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw
America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. – James Bovard
War is just one more big government program. – Joseph Sobran
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. – John Adams (1814)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)
If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. – P.J. O’Rourke
The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. – Mark Twain (1866)
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein
The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. – Edmund Burke (1899)
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. – Thomas Jefferson
The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. – Mark Skousen
A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)
The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. – John Hay (1872)
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. – James Bovard (1994)
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. – Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. – Thomas Jefferson
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Goethe
When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. – Gary Lloyd
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. – H.L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. – H.L. Mencken
It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. – Henry George
Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable. – Anonymous
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater (1964)
Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. – Lord Acton
The power to tax is the power to destroy. – John Marshall
[On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. – Lysander Spooner
In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. – Leo Tolstoy
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. – Samuel Adams
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. – Somerset Maugham
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. – Alexander Tytler
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy
The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. – Frank Zappa
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. – Justice Learned Hand
It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. – Charles A. Beard
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. – Edward R. Murrow
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. – Thomas Jefferson (1781)
The desire to rule is the mother of heresies. – St. John Chrysostom
Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter
It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. – Justice Casey Percell
No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. – Edmund A. Opitz
The government was set to protect man from criminals – and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. – Ayn Rand
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. – Mark Twain
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. – Edward Langley
I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights. – Abraham Lincoln
Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. – Thomas Paine
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. – Harry Emerson Fosdick
The state in which the rulers are the most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed; and the state in which they are the most eager, the worst. – Anonymous
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. – Calvin Coolidge
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. – Thomas Jefferson
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. – Voltaire
The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. – Herbert Hoover
Give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry
First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I’m not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I’m not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I’m not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me. – Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)
Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one. – Thomas Paine
There’s never been a good government. – Emma Goldman
We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk. – Millicent Fenwick (1983)
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. – Montesquieu
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. – P. J. O’Rourke
Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. – Henry David Thoreau
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. – Mark Twain
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress. – Mark Twain
Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it. – Cullen Hightower
You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest. – Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct. – Thomas Jefferson (1799)
The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1976)
The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire. – Joseph Sobran (1995)
Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. – Allan H. Meltzer (1993)
When important issues affecting the life of an individual are decided by somebody else, it makes no difference to the individual whether that somebody else is a king, a dictator, or society at large. – James Taggart (1992)
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power. – P. J. O’Rourke (1992)
Here’s your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute – often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is. – Charley Reese (1998)
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. – Milton Friedman
The best government is the one that charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone. – Thomas Rudmose-Brown (1996)
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free. – P.J. O’Rourke (1993)
The Government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. – Ronald Reagan
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. – James Madison
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals … It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of. – Albert Gallatin (1789)
The Constitution shall never be construed … to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. – Samuel Adams
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. – Alexis De Toqueville
I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. – Thomas Jefferson (1800)
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change. – Al Gore
If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. – Winston Churchill
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. – Charles Peguy
The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. – George Washington
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.
He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. – the Bible, Luke 22:36.
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest. – Mahatma Gandhi, in Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446
Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. – Benjamin Disraeli, 1874
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. – UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29(3).
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. – P.J. O’Rourke (1993)
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. – Ronald Reagan (1986)
America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. – James Bovard
War is just one more big government program. – Joseph Sobran
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. – John Adams (1814)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)
If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. – P.J. O’Rourke
The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. – Mark Twain (1866)
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein
The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. – Edmund Burke (1899)
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. – Thomas Jefferson
The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. – Mark Skousen
A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)
The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. – John Hay (1872)
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. – James Bovard (1994)
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. – Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. – Thomas Jefferson
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Goethe
When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. – Gary Lloyd
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. – H.L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. – H.L. Mencken
It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. – Henry George
Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable. – Anonymous
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater (1964)
Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. – Lord Acton
The power to tax is the power to destroy. – John Marshall
[On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. – Lysander Spooner
In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. – Leo Tolstoy
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. – Samuel Adams
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. – Somerset Maugham
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. – Alexander Tytler
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy
The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. – Frank Zappa
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. – Justice Learned Hand
It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. – Charles A. Beard
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. – Edward R. Murrow
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. – Thomas Jefferson (1781)
The desire to rule is the mother of heresies. – St. John Chrysostom
Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter
It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. – Justice Casey Percell
No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. – Edmund A. Opitz
The government was set to protect man from criminals – and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. – Ayn Rand
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. – Mark Twain
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. – Edward Langley
I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights. – Abraham Lincoln
Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. – Thomas Paine
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. – Harry Emerson Fosdick
The state in which the rulers are the most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed; and the state in which they are the most eager, the worst. – Anonymous
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. – Calvin Coolidge
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. – Thomas Jefferson
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. – Voltaire
The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. – Herbert Hoover
Give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry
First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I’m not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I’m not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I’m not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me. – Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)
Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one. – Thomas Paine
There’s never been a good government. – Emma Goldman
We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk. – Millicent Fenwick (1983)
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. – Montesquieu
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. – P. J. O’Rourke
Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. – Henry David Thoreau
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. – Mark Twain
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress. – Mark Twain
Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it. – Cullen Hightower
You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest. – Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct. – Thomas Jefferson (1799)
The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1976)
The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire. – Joseph Sobran (1995)
Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. – Allan H. Meltzer (1993)
When important issues affecting the life of an individual are decided by somebody else, it makes no difference to the individual whether that somebody else is a king, a dictator, or society at large. – James Taggart (1992)
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power. – P. J. O’Rourke (1992)
Here’s your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute – often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is. – Charley Reese (1998)
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. – Milton Friedman
The best government is the one that charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone. – Thomas Rudmose-Brown (1996)
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free. – P.J. O’Rourke (1993)
The Government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. – Ronald Reagan
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. – James Madison
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals … It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of. – Albert Gallatin (1789)
The Constitution shall never be construed … to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. – Samuel Adams
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. – Alexis De Toqueville
I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. – Thomas Jefferson (1800)
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change. – Al Gore
If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. – Winston Churchill
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. – Charles Peguy
The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. – George Washington
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.
He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. – the Bible, Luke 22:36.
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest. – Mahatma Gandhi, in Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446
Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. – Benjamin Disraeli, 1874
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. – UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29(3).
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. – P.J. O’Rourke (1993)
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. – Ronald Reagan (1986)
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