Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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

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

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Before my tenure, people didn't seem to think that citizens had a right to limit the size of their government.

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

Our devotion to individual freedom limits our readiness to give central government the power to override our traditional power structure.

The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.

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.

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

The government is a tyrant living by theft, and therefore has no business to engage in any business.

The biggest challenge is always the governments - they try to stop all good things. I try to stay away from them as much as I can, as I know if someone can destroy something good, it's the government.

Government is, by its very nature, a destroyer of liberties; the Obama administration, specifically, is promising to interfere with the economy and the health care system so profoundly that Washington will soon have us all in chains.

America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.

We don't want a busybody government - a boss - that butts into our lives every chance it gets to tell us how to work, how to play, where to live and on and on.

People in Eastern Washington should be confident in knowing that the government will not come and seize their property or farm land. Legislation is needed to correct this decision and restore the principle of having limited government involvement.

When bureaucrats talk about increasing our 'access' to x, y or z, what they're really talking about is increasing exponentially their control over our lives. As it is with the government health care takeover, so it is with the newly approved government plan to 'increase' Internet 'access.'

I'm not against the government. I'm against this ever-expanding government that doesn't know its limits. And that's how I see the role of the attorney general, as someone in an office that can protect you and defend the Constitution and defend state sovereignty and our individual liberty.

I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P. J. O'Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

The greatest threat to our freedom is an all powerful federal government.

What could be tolerated when government was small cannot be endured when government is big.

What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government shall do everything and the idea that government shall do nothing.

It must never be forgotten ... that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power.

We can restore liberty by taking government out of our bedrooms, our bloodstreams, our bladders, our brains, our businesses and our back-pockets.

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