Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"The tendency of all strong governments
has always been to suppress liberty,
partly in order to ease the processes of rule,
partly from sheer disbelief in innovation."

~ John A. Hobson  

"Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men."

~ Mortimer Adler  

"Always remember the difference between economic power and political power: You can refuse to hire someone's services or buy his products in the private sector and go somewhere else instead. In the public sector, though, if you refuse to accept a politician's or bureaucrat's product or services you go to jail. Ultimately, after all, all regulations are observed and all taxes are paid at gunpoint. I believe those few who can't even see that have been short-sighted sheep, and I suggest they learn how to think conceptually, develop consistency and grasp principles soon."

~ Rick Gaber  

"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?"

~ William Drayton  

"The law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power;
laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power."

~ Thomas Cooper  

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures.... The separate existence of the federal states will not be done away.... The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such law is in itself a limited one."

~ Adolf Hitler  

"Under our Constitution, the federal government has delegated, enumerated and thus limited powers. Power is delegated by the founding generation or through subsequent amendment (that makes it legitimate); enumerated in the constitution (that makes it legal); and limited by that enumeration. As the 10th Amendment says, if a power hasn’t been delegated, the federal government doesn’t have it. For 150 years, that design held for the most part. When faced with a welfare bill in 1794, for example, James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, rose in the House to say that he could find no constitutional authority for the bill. A century later, when Congress passed a similar measure, President Cleveland vetoed it as beyond Congress’ authority. That all changed during the New Deal as both congress and the president sought to expand federal power. When the Supreme court objected, rather than amend the Constitution, Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court with six additional members. The scheme failed, but the threat worked. Thereafter, the court started reading the Constitution’s General Welfare and Commerce Clauses so broadly that the doctrine of enumerated powers was essentially destroyed -- and with it limited government."

~ Roger Pilon  

"Congress has not unlimited powers
to provide for the general welfare,
but only those specifically enumerated."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"The constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those … who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy. ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."

~ Franklin Pierce  

"The principle that the end justifies the means is
in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals.
In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule."

~ Friedrich August von Hayek  

"No man has ever ruled other men for their own good."

~ George D. Herron  

"Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position."

~ Mario Palmieri  

"....it is always easier to tell people what to do than to find out what is happening..."

~ Martin Pawley