“Politicians are like diapers, they should be changed often and for the same reasons!”
Mark Twain
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
Thomas Paine
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
Thomas Paine
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
John Adams
“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.”
Abraham Lincoln
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
Patrick Henry
“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.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”
Benjamin Franklin
“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
James Madison
“How is the legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime…” (THE LAW, p. 21, 26; P.P.N.S., p. 377)
Bastiat
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
Benjamin Franklin
“When you get into politics, you find that all your worst nightmares about it turn out to be true, and the people who are attracted to large concentrations of power are precisely the ones who should be kept as far away from it as possible.”
Ken Livingstone, Member of Parliament
“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency … Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”
General Douglas MacArthur
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
Sir Alexander Fraser Tyler “Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic”
“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…. If the next centennial does not find us a great nation … it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”
James Garfield, the twentieth president of the United States
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (P.P.N. S., p.519)
Thomas Jefferson, as found in the Declaration of Independence
“If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
Samuel Adams
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”
John Adams
“Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
Abraham Lincoln
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.”
President James Madison
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
Thomas Paine
“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”
Thomas Jefferson
“The main difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats would take us over the cliff at 80 miles an hour; the Republicans would stay within the speed limit — but we’re still heading over the cliff.”
Howard Phillips
There is a constituency in the Congress that sees the tax code as a way to do favors for people which is a way to get elected that’s not as obvious as actually writing them a check from the American people.”
Paul O’Neill
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”
Barry Goldwater
“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.”
H.L. Mencken