Lysander Spooner Quotes

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government.

Every amendment which I am convinced will have the tendency to lesson the danger of civil liberty by the central government will receive my sincere approbation.

We can’t trust government to limit its powers to the Constitution.

I start with a concern about the growth of federal government. I start with a perspective concerned about the growth of that power, and containing it within the bounds of the Constitution.

We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

They need to review this secret world. We have an incredibly powerful government that gets on automatic pilot.

In America we believe there ought to be limits on government.

I don’t want to eliminate government. I just want to shrink it down to the size that you can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the tub.

Be most on guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

There exists in modem America the necessity for protecting all of us from arbitrary action by governments more powerful and more pervasive than any in our ancestors’ time.

The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse

Blind submission to the Administration of the government is not devotion to the country or the Constitution. The administration is not the government.

It is a pretty bold stand for this people to take, to say that they will not be controlled by the corrupt administrators of our General Government. We will be controlled by them, if they will be controlled by the Constitution and laws; but they will not. Many of them do not care any more about the constitution and the laws that they make than they do about the laws of another nation.

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly and wickedness of the government may engage itself? …. A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

I don’t want to kill the government. I just want to shrink it down to a small enough size that I can flush it down the toilet.

Can government really be active and, at the same time, limited? History suggests otherwise.

At present the direction of our affairs, foreign and domestic, has again come to be almost wholly in the hands of the Senate, because there are in the Senate a few courageous men who have dared to take control from the Executive.

It is not the function of our 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 mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

These are issues we've been grappling with since the Constitution was written: how you hold your government to account for its words and deeds. It's all about power and the abuse of power.

Government commissions are where accountability goes to die.

I would prefer the [USA] government to be the policeman and not the businessman.

No government has ever been beneficent when the attitude of government was that it was taking care of the people. The only freedom consists in the people taking care of the government.

Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.