Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"People constantly speak of 'the government'
doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it.
But the government is really nothing but a group of men,
and usually they are very inferior men."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"Discipline must come through liberty...
We do not consider an individual disciplined
when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute
and as immovable as a paralytic.
He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined."

~ Maria Montessori  

"Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else. "

~ P. J. O'Rourke  

"You don't have to scratch liberalism very deeply to find socialism underneath, nor socialism to find authoritarianism underneath."

~ Don Luskin  

"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  

"Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."

~ Michael Rivero  

"All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."

~ Karl Marx  

"[T]he State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation -- that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class -- that is, for a criminal purpose. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient."

~ Albert Jay Nock  

"The issues can be stated very briefly:
Who will be controlled?
Who will exercise control?
What type of control will be exercised?
Most important of all, toward what end or purpose,
or in the pursuit of what value, will control be exercised?"

~ Carl Rogers  

"Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love;
for a man may love his brother so much that
he feels himself thereby appointed his brother’s keeper."

~ Everett Dean Martin  

"History has taught us time and again that political power always raises its angry fist when timeless principles are lost. We know that without the scale of "self-evident truths" grounded in the "laws of nature and nature's God," every culture eventually finds itself subject to the rule of the gang or the tyranny of the individual. Recognizing this, scholars of all ages have confidently given their hearts and minds to the words, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." "

~ Everett Piper  

"Do not expect justice where might is right."

~ Plato  

"Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the people.' 'We the people' tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. 'We the people' are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the people' tell the government what it is allowed to do. 'We the people' are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I've tried to do these past eight years."

~ Ronald Reagan  

"We start with first principles. The Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers."

~ William H. Rehnquist