George Washington
"Liberty lies in the hearts and minds of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no law, no court can save it."
Judge Learned Hand
"They that can give up an essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores
"Prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
Albert Einstein, My First Impression of the USA
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded"
Abraham Lincoln
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
Thomas Jefferson
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783
There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.
James Madison
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
Barry Goldwater
Myself, I think the problem with government is that it's every bit as efficient, kind, gentle, and well-run as your typical big business.
Randolph Fritz (randolph@ebay.sun.com)
"Sharing is to taxation as sex is to rape."
Jan Wasilewski
Relying on government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
John Barlow, co-founder of EFF, in CACM, June 1992
I prefer a small government which may permit some evil to a large government which promotes evil at my expense.
Michael Lee (mlee@esd.dl.nec.com)
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
P. J. O'Rourke
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
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, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.
Thomas Jefferson, 1801
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship."
from "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic", by Alexander Fraser Tyler
"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free"
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
"Democracy, n.: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy."
U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932), since withdrawn.
"The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else. The State can return no more to the people than it has taken from them. It is utterly impossible for it to confer a specific benefit upon some of the individuals who make up the community without inflicting a greater injury upon the community as a whole."
Frederic Bastiat, 1801 - 1850