Quotes on Limited Government

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all . . . . It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

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

The State calls its own violence, law; but that of the individual, crime.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.