Quotes on Limited Government

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

These are the times that try men's souls.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.