Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Watch out for the fellow
who talks about putting things in order!
Putting things in order always means
getting other people under your control."

~ Denis Diderot  

"The man who craves disciples and wants followers
is always more or less of a charlatan.
The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself;
and he wants others to be themselves, also."

~ Elbert Hubbard  

"Absolute power turns its possessors
not into a God but an anti-God.
For God turned clay into men,
while the absolute despot turns men into clay."

~ Eric Hoffer  

"Governments do not govern,
but merely control the machinery of government,
being themselves controlled by the hidden hand."

~ Benjamin Disraeli  

"It's never more important to move slowly and carefully before granting the state new powers than in the wake of tragedies."

~ Brian Doherty  

"Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes,
vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful
because of their ability to remain invisible while operating
behind the national scenery."

~ Buckminster Fuller  

"An honest man can feel no pleasure
in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"The love of liberty is the love of others;
the love of power is the love of ourselves."

~ William Hazlitt  

"True liberty cannot exist apart from the full rights of property,
for property is the only crystallized form of free faculties...
The whole meaning of socialism is a systematic glorification of force...
No literary phrases about social organisms are potent enough to evaporate
the individual, who is the prime, indispensable, irreducible element."

~ Auberon Herbert  

"Do not expect justice where might is right."

~ Plato  

"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any
other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.
Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it
with their lives and freedoms."

~ Robert A. Heinlein  

"Freedom... refer[s] to a social relationship among people -- namely,
the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making.
Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force,
whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect."

~ Thomas Sowell  

"The growth of federal power and programs over this century -- involving the regulation of business, the expansion of "civil rights," the production of environmental goods, and much else -- has taken place in large measure through the power of Congress to regulate "commerce among the states." That power has been read so broadly by the modern Court that Congress today can regulate anything that even "affects" commerce, which in principle is everything. As a result, save for the restraints imposed by the Bill of Rights, the commerce power is now essentially plenary, which is hardly what the Framers intended when they enumerated Congress’s powers. Indeed, if they had meant for Congress to be able to do anything it wanted under the commerce power, the enumeration of Congress’s other powers -- to say nothing of the defense of the doctrine of enumerated powers throughout the Federalist Papers -- would have been pointless. The purpose of the commerce clause quite simply, was to enable Congress to ensure the free flow of commerce among the states. Under the Articles of Confederation, state legislatures had enacted tariffs and other protectionist measures that impeded interstate commerce. To break the logjam, Congress was empowered to make commerce among the states "regular." In fact, the need to do so was one of the principal reasons behind the call for a new constitution."

~ Roger Pilon