Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"It is not the function of the government
to keep the citizen from falling into error;
it is the function of the citizen to keep
the government from falling into error."

~ Justice Robert H. Jackson  

"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."

~ Milton Friedman  

"We must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people.  But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.  No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact."

~ Murray N. Rothbard  

"A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government."

~ Alexander Hamilton  

"The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. "

~ John Adams  

"All free constitutions are formed with two views --
to deter the governed from crime, and the governors from tyranny."

~ John Lansing, Jr.  

"No attempt or pretence, that was ever carried into practical operation amongst civilized men -- unless possibly the pretence of a “Divine Right,” on the part of some, to govern and enslave others -- embodied so much of shameless absurdity, falsehood, impudence, robbery, usurpation, tyranny, and villany of every kind, as the attempt or pretence of establishing a government by consent, and getting the actual consent of only so many as may be necessary to keep the rest in subjection by force. Such a government is a mere conspiracy of the strong against the weak. It no more rests on consent than does the worst government on earth."

~ Lysander Spooner  

"Responsibility, in order to be reasonable, must be limited to objects within the power of the responsible party, and in order to be effectual, must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents."

~ Alexander Hamilton  

"This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers."

~ Justice John Marshall  

"The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government."

~ Milton Friedman  

"The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept
by men and women who are strong and self-reliant,
and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind --
men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others --
men and women who are capable of disciplining themselves.
For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves."

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt  

"Liberty has never come from the government.
Liberty has always come from the subjects of government.
The history of liberty is the history of resistance.
The history of liberty is a history
of the limitation of governmental power,
not the increase of it."

~ Woodrow Wilson  

"Whenever government assumes to deliver us
from the trouble of thinking for ourselves,
the only consequences it produces are
those of torpor and imbecility."

~ William Godwin