xxNext1-done Quote - Liberty Quotes Blog

Crane, Edward H.//Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, of course, lays out the delegated, enumerated, and therefore limited powers of Congress. Only through a deliberate misreading of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution has the federal government been allowed to overreach its authority and extend its tendrils into every corner of civil society.//$$source$$A Constitution of liberty, CATO INSTITUTE 1995 ANNUAL REPORT.// Crockett, Davy //We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not attempt to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.//$$source$$1827, spoken on the floor of Congress concerning a proposed relief bill for the widow of a naval officer.//$$who$$(1786-1836, frontiersman, folk hero, elected to Congress 1827)// Alighieri, Dante //Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips, but few in their mind.//$$who$$(1265-1321, Italian writer and poet)// Detches, Patrick//In 1983 $21 billion was spent in agricultural subsidies—almost equal to the net income of all American farmers.//$$source$$letter to THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, April 17, 1984.// DiLorenzo, Thomas//It is no coincidence that some of America’s most lethargic industries—steel, footwear, rubber, textiles—are also among the most heavily protected.//$$source$$WHY FREE TRADE WORKS.// Doherty, Brian//[M]onopoly profits exist over the long run only when the government guarantees them, as in utilities and cable. And for concentration of market power, no robber baron can hold a candle to the U.S. government.... The hugest concentration of market power in this country does not lie with the likes of Rupert Murdoch or Bill Gates, but with government itself.... No private company, no matter how huge or wealthy, could possibly have as much widespread power over the function of American markets as government does. And this power is exercised with essential unseriousness.... And unlike business attempts to make money, which necessarily involve selling something to a willing consumer, government’s market manipulations require forcing people into situations—whether paying for cars or food, paying for R&D or new technologies, or selling off a part of their company—that they would not have wanted to be in but for the government’s ham-handed threat of force.... Nothing could serve the workings of the marketplace better than [government] leaving it.//$$source$$Monopoly Games, REASON, p 7, Aug./Sept. 1995.// Douglass, Frederick //Do nothing with them; mind your business and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. ... [The black man] is everywhere treated as an exception to all the general rules which should operate in the relations of other men.//$$source$$responding to whites who asked him what they should do to help blacks.// Drayton, William //If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?//$$source$$1828.//$$who$$(Senator – S.C.)// Eberling, Richard M.//Who is the fascist? Individualism and the political philosophy of limited government is not only inconsistent with but is the exact opposite of fascism and Nazism. Under fascism and Nazism, the state reigns supreme with absolute power over everyone and all forms of property. It can well be asked: who is the fascist, when the president of the United States and many Democrats and Republicans in congress call for expanded authority for the FBI and other federal security agencies to intrude into the lives of the American citizenry? Who is the fascist, when the call is made for increased power for the FBI to undertake “roving wiretapping” or have easier access to the telephone and credit-card records of the general population? Who is the fascist, when the proposal is made to make it easier for the FBI to investigate and infiltrate any political organization or association because the government views it as a potential terrorist danger?//$$source$$The Oklahoma Tragedy and the Mass Media, THE TYRANNY OF GUN CONTROL, 83 (Future of Freedom Foundation 1997).// Einstein, Albert//Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.// Franklin, Benjamin//... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ...//$$source$$before the Constitutional Convention, June 2, 1787.// Hamilton, Alexander//The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the land and naval forces, as first general and admiral ... while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies—all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.//$$source$$THE FEDERALIST #69.// Hazlitt, Henry//The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.// Herron, George//No man has ever ruled other men for their own good.// Higgs, Robert//But politicians who talk about failed policies are just blowing smoke. Government policies succeed in doing exactly what they are supposed to do: channeling resources bilked from the general public to politically organized and influential interests groups.//$$source$$The Myth of “Failed” Policies, THE FREE MARKET, June 1995.// Hill, Senator Benjamin H.//I have said I do not dread industrial corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them; but there is a corporation we may all dread. That corporation is the federal government. From the aggressions of this corporation, there can be no safety, if it is allowed to go beyond the well defined limits of it’s powers. I dread nothing so much as the exercise of ungranted and doubtful powers by the government. It is, in my opinion, the danger of dangers to the future of this country. Let us be sure to keep it always within it’s limits. If this great, ambitious, ever growing corporation becomes oppressive, who shall check it? If it becomes too wayward who shall control it? If it becomes unjust, who shall trust it? As sentinels of the country’s watchtower, Senators, I beseech you to watch and guard with sleepless dread, that corporation which can make all property and rights, all states and people, all liberty and hope it’s plaything in an hour, and it’s victims forever.//before the U.S. Senate, March 27, 1878.// Lee, Richard Henry//[If Parliament] may take from me one shilling in the pound, what security have I for the other nineteen?// Locke, John//[W[henever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty.// Madison, James//The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of government most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.//$$source$$in an April 2, 1798 letter to Thomas Jefferson.// Montesquieu, Baron de//There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.// Palmer, Tom G.//If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?//$$source$$Myths of Individualism, Volume XVIII Number 5 CATO Policy Report p. 12 (September/October 1996).// Smith, L. Neil//Politicians need human misery. ... Government’s a disease masquerading as its own cure.//$$source$$THE PROBABILITY BROACH, 129 (Tor 1980).// Thomas, Justice Clarence//I believe that there is a moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality.... In my mind, government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice.//$$source$$Adarand v. Federico Pena// Alford, J. Tucker//It is precisely this clinging to victimhood as a means of demonstrating one’s virtue and advancing one’s well-being that has led us into a society in which welfare and quotas are “civil rights,” government handouts are “entitlements,” and payment to girls having babies out of wedlock are “compassionate,” while hard-working, ambitious people are “greedy,” punishment of crime is “oppression,” and an independent thinker who stands for courage and self-reliance is dismissed as an “Uncle Tom.”//$$source$$Heroics, letter to THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, p. 72, February, 1996.// Aristotle//What is common to many is least taken care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than what they possess in common with others.// Bandow, Doug//Being paid by the government to shelve books in a library, whether as an employee or as an Americorps member, is no more laudable or valuable than being paid by Crown Books to stock bookshelves in a bookstore. A host of private-sector jobs provide enormous public benefits—consider health care professionals, medical and scientific researchers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and artists. Many of these people earn less than they could in alternative work; they have chosen to serve in their own way. Yet government programs that equate public employment with service to society effectively denigrate service through private employment.//$$source$$National Service—or Government Service?, POLICY REVIEW, p. 34, September-October, 1996.// Barry, Dave//The best way to understand this whole issue is to look at what the government does: it takes money from some people, keeps a bunch of it, and gives the rest to other people.// Beveridge, Senator Albert J.//Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.// Brandeis, Justice Louis//[The founding fathers] conferred, as against the Government, the right to be left alone—the right most valued by civilized men.//$$source$$1928.// Browne, Harry //Government is a parasite—a cancer that by nature tries to spread deeper into society. Those who want to run others’ lives won’t give up and start minding their own business.//$$source$$Pamphlet: Harry Browne, Why I’m Running for President. 1995.//$$who$$(author, 1996 Libertarian Presidential candidate)// Burke, Edmund//Power gradually extirpates for the mind every humane and gentle virtue.// Coffey, Circuit Judge//It has been said that the greatest threat to our liberty is from well-meaning, and almost imperceptible encroachments upon our personal freedom.//$$source$$Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 695 F.2d 261, 272 (1982) (dissent) cert. denied 464 U.S. 863 (1983).// Coffey, Circuit Judge//The right to privacy is one of the most cherished rights an American citizen has; the right to privacy sets America apart from totalitarian states in which the interests of the state prevail over individual rights. A fundamental part of our concept of ordered liberty is the right to protect one’s home and family against dangerous intrusions subject to the criminal law.//$$source$$Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 695 F.2d 261, 272, 278 (1982) (dissent) cert. denied 464 U.S. 863 (1983).// Coolidge, Pres. Calvin//Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.// Confucius//The superior man understands what is right. The inferior man understands what is popular.// Eisenhower, Dwight D.//Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.// Tocqueville, Alexis De//If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.// Tocqueville, Alexis De//It [government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.// U.S. CONSTITUTION//The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.//$$source$$Fourth Amendment.// U.S. Supreme Court//In this country sovereignty resides in the people, and Congress can exercise no power which they have not, by their Constitution, entrusted to it: All else is withheld.//$$source$$Juilliard v. Greenman, 110 U.S. 421 (1884).// Wilson, Pres. Woodrow//Government, in its last analysis, is organized force.// Wilson, Pres. Woodrow//The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government power, not the increase of it.// Wollstein, Jarret//In Washington, D.C. it costs $7,000 in city fees to open a pushcart. In California, up to eighty federal and state licenses are required to open a small business. In New York, a medallion to operate a taxicab costs $150,000. More than 700 occupations in the United States require a government license. Throughout the country, church soup kitchens for the homeless are being closed by departments of health. No wonder so many people turn to crime and violence to survive.//$$source$$THE TYRANNY OF GUN CONTROL, 10 (Future of Freedom foundation 1997).//

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