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Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
John F. Kennedy (35 th President, 1961-1963) held a dinner in the White House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time.þHe made this statement: “This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
The most important reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, if necessary, at last resort to protect themselves from tyranny in government.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both.
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.
What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Letter to Col. Williams S. Smith, November 13, 1787
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as þEurope þ.
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property — until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.
Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.
I consider Trial by Jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.
As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
National Gazette, March 29, 1792
The more laws, the less justice.
Roman Lawyer, Writer, Scholar, Orator, and Statesman
Good people don't need laws to tell them to act responsibly and bad people will find a way around the laws.
A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
If you have 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for law.
The law in the hands of the unskilled and the unknowing is a terrifying thing.
John Ramsey commenting on the police investigation of the murder of his daughter, Jon Benet
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
There is no cruder tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
The number of problems that can be solved by passing a new law is virtually zero.
The number of problems caused by existing laws is virtually infinite.
The solution to most of our current problems is obvious.
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
There is no country with a military so powerful, an economy so strong, and a culture so great that its politicians cannot pull it down.
No man who depends on the caprice of the ignorant rabble can be accounted great.
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword, the other is by debt.þ
The Founders were not democrats and socialists...but conservatives who had a healthy distrust of political passions and who devised a complex system designed to frustrate the schemes of social redeemers and others convinced of their own invincible virtue.
Your politicians are only as good as their advisors.
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority is wrong.
To lend someone a hand when they've fallen and really can't get up, or move without assistance, is one thing. To have them demand a piggyback ride from you when they are perfectly capable of getting up and walking on their own, is quite another.
In the long-run, every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom.
When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
A tyrant...is always stirring up some war or other, in order that people may require a leader.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
writing in Caesar and Christ
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Policies are judged by their consequences, but crusades are judged by how good they make the crusaders feel.
Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.
But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet, notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
American journalist, 1880-1956
People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
Affirmative action — the proposition that jobs should be given to people who can't do them.
Bilingualism — the belief that countries work best when people can't talk to each other.
Multiculturalism — the view that societal comity is best achieved by dividing the country into groups that hate each other.
Welfare — the idea that money should be given to those who haven't earned it.
No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.
Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.
It is not often that a dominant class legislates its own downfall with quite as much thoroughness as the parliaments of the western world, filled as they are with men passing equal opportunities legislation in favour of women, have done.
David Thomas, “Not Guilty- In defence of the Modern Man”, page 63.
In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.
Never in the history of the world has there been a situation so bad that the government can't make it worse.
A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own.
When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.
James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.
Only with a government service would you increase prices and decrease customer service in the face of declining demand for your service.
Tad DeHaven, Cato Institute, 2010
Commenting on U.S. Postal Service's fifth price increase in five years
You give a good leader very little and he will succeed, you give a mediocrity a great deal and he will fail.
Testifying before the Truman Committee, April 15, 1941
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.
Author of The Road To Serfdom
Republican businessmen all too frequently make poor public administrators. Too often they cannot make the transition between people working for them and the fact they are now working for the citizens. Also, their business planning often morphs into disastrous collectivist “planning.”
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
One man can tell the truth convincingly, but it takes the entire apparatus of the state to peddle a lie, and propagate that lie to new generations.
There is no such thing as a “liberal democrat.” A democracy — literally, a government by the people — cannot exist in an environment wherein some of the people are compelled to support their fellow citizens. Equal representation by one's government cannot occur in a climate of unequal responsibility to pay for it.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
A socialist is someone who has read Lenin and Marx. An anti-socialist is someone who understands Lenin and Marx.
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
Fascism is the system of government that cartelizes the private sector, centrally plans the economy to subsidize producers, exalts the police State as the source of order, denies fundamental rights and liberties to individuals, and makes the executive State the unlimited master of society.
Against The State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto
1. Cows — Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a single cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.
2. The Constitution — They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.
3. The Ten Commandments — The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this: You cannot post “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,” andþ “Thou Shall Not Lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment
• Do it with OPM — Other people's money.
• Ignore the law of unintended consequences.
• Promise that your voter's tax money is being used for investments, not spending; if no results spend more.
• State that only governments can solve problems (whether these problems are real or imaginary).
• Give full support to government agencies' mode of operation” Work expands to fill the time available.
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