Quotes

Definition of Liberty: (1) Security for minorities; (2) Reason reigning over reason, not will over will; (3) Duty to God unhindered by man; (4) Reason before will; (5) Right above might."

"Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will."

                                            Lord Acton

The Complete Perversion of the Law

But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions.
And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in
some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than
this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been
used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the
justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights
which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective
force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit
the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a
right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into
a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.

How has this perversion of the law been accomplished? And what have been the
results? The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely
different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.

        --Frederic Bastiat, 1850

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
-- Thomas Jefferson (1791)

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw (1944)

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)

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.
-- Sidney Hook

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.
-- James Bovard

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
-- Albert Einstein (1950)

War is just one more big government program.
-- Joseph Sobran

War is the health of the State.
-- Randolph Bourne (1917)

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)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-- Douglas Casey (1992)

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
-- Thomas Jefferson (1801)

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
-- The Bible, II Corinthians 3:17.

If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.
-- Joseph Sobran (1995)

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)

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire (1764)

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin (1755)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
-- William Pitt (1783)

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.
-- Jacob Hornberger (1995)

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least."
-- Henry David Thoreau

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
-- Attributed to George Washington

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-- P.J. O'Rourke

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
-- P.J. O'Rourke

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
-- Barry Goldwater (1964)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-- Will Rogers

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
-- Milton Friedman

Politicians are the same all over: they promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev (1960)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H.L. Mencken

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
-- John Bradshaw

There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.
-- P.J. O'Rourke (1993)

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
-- Robert A. Heinlein

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
-- Pericles (430 BC)

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.
-- Tacitus

There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head.
-- P.J. O'Rourke

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer (1891)

More laws, less justice.
-- Marcus Tullius Ciceroca (42 BC)

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
-- Mark Twain (1866)

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
-- Thomas Jefferson

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

Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
-- William Allen White

The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients.
-- Edmund Burke (1899)

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.
-- Thomas Jefferson (1823)

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.
-- John Quincy Adams (1821)

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.
-- Thomas Paine (1795)

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Frederic Bastiat

Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your government is doing to you.
-- Joseph Sobran (1990)

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
-- Daniel Webster (1834)

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
-- Justice Louis Brandeis (1928)

The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time.
-- Justice George Sutherland (1938)

The era of resisting big government is never over.
-- Paul Gigot (1998)

Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.
-- Thomas Paine (1776)

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
-- Honore de Balzac

Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production.
-- Ludwig von Mises (1920)

The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society.
-- Mark Skousen

Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
-- Daniel Webster

If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government that is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
-- James Madison

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
-- William Penn (1693)

In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: Littering, noise, and chewing gum. Teachers last year were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: Rape, assault, and suicide.
-- William Bennett (1993)

The threat posed by humans to the natural environment is nothing compared to the threat to humans posed by global environmental policy.
-- Fred L. Smith (1992)

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 spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom -- they are the pillars of society.
-- Henrik Ibsen (1877)

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.
-- H. L. Mencken

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.
-- Ludwig von Mises

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
-- Thomas Jefferson (1801)

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)

This country is a one-party country. Half of it is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn't make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians.
-- Hugh Downs (1997)

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- Lord Acton (1887)

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
-- Mao Zedong (1938)

The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community.
-- David D. Boaz (1997)

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-- Winston Churchill (1903)

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.
-- Thomas Sowell (1992)

War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.
-- Joseph Sobran (1991)

There never was a good war or a bad peace.
-- Benjamin Franklin (1773)

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.

-- John Hay (1872) (Submitted by William Hickman)

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

-- James Bovard (1994) (Submitted by Jerry Rivard)

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

-- Edmund Burke (Submitted by Dick Fuerle)

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

-- Thomas Jefferson (Submitted by Dick Fuerle)

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson (Submitted by David Schaffner)

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

-- Goethe (Submitted by David Schaffner)

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 (Submitted by Dick Fuerle)

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

-- H.L. Mencken (Submitted by Dick Fuerle)

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

-- H.L. Mencken (Submitted by Dick Fuerle)

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 (Submitted by Todd Altman)

Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable.

-- Anonymous (Submitted by April J. Bishop)

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

-- Barry Goldwater (1964) (Submitted by Matt Akers)

Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end.

-- Lord Acton (Submitted anonymously)

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

-- John Marshall (Submitted by Christopher McDonald)

[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 (Submitted by Michael Conroy)

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 (Submitted by Grant Kuhns)

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 (Submitted by Jean Carbonneau)

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 (Submitted by Tony Pivetta)

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 (Submitted by David Schaffner)

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 (Submitted by David Schaffner)

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 (Submitted by David Schaffner)

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 (Submitted by John T. Wenders)

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 (Submitted by John T. Wenders)

The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.

-- Frank Zappa (Submitted by Ray Ellis)

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 (Submitted by Ray Ellis)

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 (Submitted by Ray Ellis)

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

-- Edward R. Murrow (Submitted by Ray Ellis)

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) (Submitted by Jerry Rivard)

The desire to rule is the mother of heresies.

-- St. John Chrysostom (Submitted anonymously)

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it?

-- Harlon Carter (Submitted by John Berkley)

It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself.

-- Justice Casey Percell (Submitted by John Berkley)

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 (Submitted by John Berkley)

The government was set to protect man from criminals -- and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but against the government -- as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

-- Ayn Rand (Submitted by John Berkley)

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

-- Mark Twain (Submitted by John Fitzpatrick)

The budget should be balanced, the treasury refilled, public debt reduced, the arrogance of officialdom tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.

-- Cicero (Submitted by Mark Condon)

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.

-- Edward Langley (Submitted by Mark Condon)

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 (Submitted by Thomas Gillooly)

Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

-- Thomas Paine (Submitted by John Brown)

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.

-- Harry Emerson Fosdick (Submitted by John Brown)

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 (Submitted by Yale Woodford)

It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

-- Calvin Coolidge (Submitted by Yale Woodford)

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 (Submitted by Sandra Armstrong)

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

-- Voltaire (Submitted by Scott Frost)

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 (Submitted by George Amberg)

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.

-- Herbert Hoover (Submitted by George Amberg)

Give me liberty or give me death!

-- Patrick Henry (Submitted by Mary Mack)

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) (Submitted by Dick Fuerle)

Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one.

-- Thomas Paine (Submitted by Dick Fuerle)

There's never been a good government.

-- Emma Goldman (Submitted by Doreen Adams)

We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk.

-- Millicent Fenwick (1983) (Submitted by Doreen Adams)

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

-- Montesquieu (Submitted by Dr. Richard E. Pearl, Sr.)

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

-- P. J. O'Rourke (Submitted by Dr. Richard E. Pearl, Sr.)

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.

-- Henry David Thoreau (Submitted by Dr. Richard E. Pearl, Sr.)

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

-- Mark Twain (Submitted by Forrest W. Mardis)

There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.

-- Mark Twain (Submitted by Mark Condon)

Talk is cheap -- except when Congress does it.

-- Cullen Hightower (Submitted by Dr. Richard E. Pearl, Sr.)

You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.

-- Ambrose Gwinett Bierce (Sent in by Forrest W. Mardis)

[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) (Sent in by Forrest W. Mardis)

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.

-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1976) (Sent in by Harry Browne)

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

-- Joseph Sobran (1995) (Sent in by Harry Browne)

Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more.

-- Allan H. Meltzer (1993) (Sent in anonymously)

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) (Sent in by Harry Browne)

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) (Sent in by George Getz)

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) (Sent in by Harry Browne)

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 (Sent in by Harry Browne)

The best government is the one that charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone.

-- Thomas Rudmose-Brown (1996) (Sent in by Harry Browne)

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

-- P.J. O'Rourke (1993) (Sent in by George Getz)

The Government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

-- Ronald Reagan (Sent in by Forrest W. Mardis)

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 (Sent in by John E. Morgan)

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) (Sent in by John E. Morgan)

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 (Sent in by John E. Morgan)

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 (Sent in Mary Mack)

I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

-- Thomas Jefferson (1800) (Sent in anonymously)

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto. -- Thomas Jefferson (1799) (Sent in anonymously)

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change.

-- Al Gore (Sent in by Larry Hoffman)

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.

-- Winston Churchill (Sent in anonymously)

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

-- Charles Peguy (Sent in anonymously)

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.