Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

The more laws that governments pass, the less individual freedom there is. Any student of history will tell you that. Totalitarian countries ban pretty much everything.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

We cannot have a society in which some dictator somewhere can impose censorship here in the United States.

The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government.

William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir." Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.

The master who fears the choices his people will make enough to take those choices away isn't worth serving.

I'm a complete libertarian. I think it's very, very dangerous. I really mean that. I think the smoking ban is a tip of an iceberg of society - the leaders of society telling us how to be. I think it's not their business. It's an attitude where the governors think, 'We know what's best for people, and they're so stupid that they would only not do it if we ban it.'

Simply because the nanny-state wants to hug you doesn't mean it's not tyrannical if you don't want to be hugged.

Churchill knew instinctively what was wrong with communism - that it repressed liberty; that it replaced individual discretion with state control; that it entailed the curtailment of democracy, and therefore that it was tyrannous.

I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

A free society is regarded as one that does not engage, on principle, in attempting to control what people find meaningful, and a totalitarian society is regarded as one that does, on principle, attempt such control.

I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.

Government is waging war against the people.

I should like to be remembered as the man who raised a voice against... placing limitations on the freedom of the individual.

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

Since no one but you can know what's best for you, government control can't make your life better.