Murray Rothbard Quotes

Our Supreme Court has been very clear that the government can't just simply say something and make it so.

The ruling authority is liable to raise a claim which could justify a deviation from the law by saying: The law is supposed to serve the country. The law is merely one consideration, there are additional considerations which are no less important; the good of the country is one such consideration and it could possibly override the law….this is a very dangerous claim. The saying that patriotism is the last refuge of the charlatan is well known. This argument, taken alone, is liable to topple the principle of the legality of government and the rule of law together with it.

If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.

The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.

The Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact.

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.

A Supreme Court decision does not establish a "supreme law of the land" that is binding on all persons and parts of government, henceforth and forevermore.

I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.

We need a Federal government that does what the government needs to do and stops doing what the government ought not to be doing.

I learned a couple things. The government can do to you whatever they want. They can break the laws, federal laws, as they see fit... You can't turn laws on and off as you deem fit.

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.

The government is already into our lives a whole lot more than they should be. If I were president, I'd roll everything back. Everything!

All, or nearly all, the advantage there is in fixing any constitutional limits to the power of a government, is simply to give notice to the government of the point at which it will meet with resistance.

My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state.

The Constitution is government's stop sign. It says, you - the three branches of government - can go so far and no farther.

There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained.

Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

The Constitution was framed fundamentally as a bulwark against governmental power.

The great questions that have troubled the country are about the authority of the magistrates and the liberty of the people.

Citizenship is no light trifle to be jeopardized at any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of its general or implied grants of power.

The contention that...the Constitution is to be disregarded if it stands in the way of that which is deemed of the public advantage...is destructive of the whole theory upon which our American Commonwealths have been founded.

Power intoxicates men …. The Supreme Court must be curbed.

Legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts.

We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adopted to the various crises of human affairs.

No branch of government should ever be able to combine the power of the sword with the power of the purse.