William F. Buckley Jr. Quotes

The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.

We should know at least the broad strokes of the powers that the government's claiming in our name, and using allegedly, on our behalf. And also against us as well.

Big government makes small citizens.

Anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing.

Freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away. Individual freedom demands individual responsibility.

The American people believe that we ought to control our government. On the other hand, we've seen government more and more controlling us

A government role in our society should be inherently suspect …. There is something inherently coercive in the nature of government.

There is in government a living impulse to extend itself indefinitely; and there is in freedom a necessity to resist that impulse.

Government should not tell you what to do unless there's a compelling public purpose.

Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.

Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

[D]ecade after decade, through taxes and regulations, governments at all levels took ever-increasing control over people's lives, wealth, and property. The control grew exponentially, decade after decade. The rationale was that the control was necessary -- for society, for the poor, for the nation, even for freedom itself. Americans continued living their life of the lie: they continued believing that the more control government exercised over their lives and property, the freer they became.

[People] don't like the government telling them what to do or telling them how to live their lives.

My quarrel is not with the legitimate role of government but with the unlimited role of government.

Rand Paul and Chris Christie both said vaccinations should be a choice, not a government mandate. Because when have Republicans ever told people what they could do with their own bodies?

Government money only pays for the "liberties" the government thinks you should have, and therefore it can determine how you exercise them. That turns liberties into privileges dispensed at the whim of the state.

I believe that people have a right to decide their own destinies; people own themselves. I also believe that, in a democracy, government exists because (and only so long as) individual citizens give it a temporary license to exist, in exchange for a promise that it will behave itself. In a democracy, you own the government. It doesn't own you.

As government grows, freedom recedes.

As the old saying goes, 'money is power' and the more money the government takes, the more power it has over individuals.

The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.

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.

Individual freedom and drug laws contradict each other. In a genuinely free society, people are free to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful or destructive. What people ingest is none of the government's business. If drug users or drug addicts wish to get help, a free society provides the means to do so.

It isn't possible to give government just a little control over the economy and our lives. Once we cede that power to government, it uses the power to take more from us. That's why every year the government controls more of our lives.

Perhaps it is time to be more careful what we ask government to do, and where we allow it to become part of our lives.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.