Famous Quotes
“Government is Slavery.”
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” — Thomas Jefferson
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Thomas Jefferson
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” — President Gerald R. Ford
“If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” — Brandeis
“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” — Napoleon
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.” — Thomas Paine
“This country belongs to the people and whenever they shall grow weary of their government, they can exercise their constitutional right to amend it, or revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.” — Abraham Lincoln
“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” — Voltaire
“That’s the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don’t care, individuals do.” — Mark Twain
“but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights …” — Alexander Hamilton
“Why are the people rebellious? Because the rulers interfere too much. Therefore, they are rebellious.” — Lao Tsu
“The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. ” — Adolf Hitler
“How fortunate for governments that men do not think.” — Adolf Hitler
“I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.” –Patrick Henry
“What a man thinks is no concern of the government.” –Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
“Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.” — Woodrow Wilson
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.” — Thomas Jefferson
“The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they’re letting the worst patients run the place.” — Robert Welch
“The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.” — Voltaire
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” — Thomas Sowell
“A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” — Thomas Jefferson
“The right to be left alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.” — Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
“When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.” — Thomas Jefferson
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” — Plato
More Famous Quotes
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be… if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.” — Thomas Jefferson
“It was against a background poignant with memories of evil procedures that our Constitution was drawn” –Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
“The general (federal) government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cures.” — Thomas Jefferson
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men”. — Abraham Lincoln
“No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.” — Charles Caleb Colton
“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.” — Thomas Paine
“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there’s a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” — Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.” — Abraham Lincoln
“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.” — President Bush, March 13, 2002
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.” — President Theodore Roosevelt, 1908
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” — Adolf Hitler
“Thus, inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the ‘remaking’ of the Reich as they call it.” — Adolf Hitler
“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have …. The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” — Thomas Jefferson
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” –Benjamin Franklin
“There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.” — Henry David Thoreau
“When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.” — Harry Truman
“The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals… It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.” — Albert Gallatin
“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.” –P.J. O’Rourke
“I am for the First Amendment from the first word to the last. I believe it means what it says.” –U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” –John Milton
“The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” — P.J. O’Rourke
“No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” — Mark Twain
“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.” –Edmund Burke
Jury Duty Quotes
“The new Constitution has secured these [individual rights] in the Executive and Legislative departments: but not in the Judiciary. It should have established trials by the people themselves, that is to say, by jury.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
“It is not only [the juror’s] right, but his duty…to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.” — John Adams, 1771
” Jurors should acquit, even against the judge’s instruction…if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong.” — Alexander Hamilton, 1804
“Another apprehension [about the French Revolution] is, that a majority cannot be induced to adopt the trial by jury; and I consider that as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Tom Paine, 1789
“In any nation in which people’s rights have been subordinated to the rights of the few, in any totalitarian nation, the first institution to be dismantled is the jury. I was, I am, afraid.” –Gerry Spence
“We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.” — Mark Twain
“A jury is the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human wisdom could contrive.” – Mark Twain