Nelson W. Aldrich Quotes

We encounter the dilemma of freedom versus authority in all sorts of places but probably nowhere more frequently than in the area of Big Brother's ongoing efforts to protect us from ourselves – efforts that many people view as an invasion of their privacy or as infringement upon their God-given right to be stupid (though they don't usually put it that way).

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Prohibition is a deathblow to the liberty of the individual …

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

What the Idaho Health Freedom Act says is that the citizens of our state won't be subject to another federal mandate or turn over another part of their life to government control.

I don't want to live in a nanny state where people are telling me where I can go and what I can do.

What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights.

It's no secret that the Democrats and liberal media would love to take away our guns and mandate every aspect of our lives, but I refuse to let them get away with that.

The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.

Government regulation is not a dangerous usurpation of your Constitutional rights. It's just a pain in the ass.

In matters relating to business, finance, industrial and labor conditions, health and the public welfare, great leeway is now granted the legislature, for there is no guarantee in the Constitution that the status quo will be preserved against regulation by government.

How far are we to go in pursuit of greater security at the cost of essential liberties?

We do not want to place more power in the hands of government to investigate and regulate the lives, the conduct and the freedom of America's workers.

Things in which the individual is the person directly interested, never go right but as they are left to his own discretion; and that any regulation of them by authority, except to protect the rights of others, is sure to be mischievous.

Western democracy included individual liberty, as well as equality. The frontiersman was impatient of restraints. He knew how to preserve order, even in the absence of legal authority…. the individual was not ready to submit to complex regulations. Population was sparse, there was no multitude of jostling interests, as in older settlements, demanding an elaborate system of personal restraints. Society became atomic. There was a reproduction of the primitive idea of the personality of the law, a crime was more an offense against the victim than a violation of the law of the land.

As our federal government has grown too large and too powerful, the real loss has been the freedom of people to govern their own lives and participate fully in the American dream

Why is freedom such a hard sell? That's the question. In this country, why has the idea of individual liberty and responsibility become such a hard sell? That's something I never thought would happen here.

I'm a big believer in freedom and people's rights to express themselves and not have government interfere in that type of thing.

It really is this: you are either for liberty, you're for freedom, and you're for living how you want to live without infringing and impugning on anyone else's rights, or you want the state to deal with everything.

When government gets between my lips and my stomach; I call that invasion of privacy!

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

Government prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals, as if he could do it better than themselves.

The lesson that Americans today have forgotten or never learned - the lesson which our ancestors tried so hard to teach - is that the greatest threat to our lives, liberty, property, and security is not some foreign government, as our rulers so often tell us. The greatest threat to our freedom and well-being lies with our own government!.

Individual liberty, the basic underpinning of American society, requires constant defense against the encroachment of the state.