Sam Ervin Quotes

The liberal, emphasizing the civil and property rights of the individual, insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make the state his servant.

My thing is personal freedoms: freedoms for the individual to love whom they want, do with what they want. In fact, I want the government out of almost everything.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

Someday I hope Americans will not believe that anyone had to spend his or her days fighting for limited government because everyone they know wants maximum freedom and minimum statism.

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

Here, also, has been evolved the form of government consistent with the largest possible civil liberty.

Our founders insisted that protecting the states' power to govern themselves was vital to limit the power of Washington and preserve freedom.

All I'm for is the liberty of the individual.

Prohibition is a deathblow to the liberty of the individual …

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is of right, absolute.

In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.

Who are a free people? Not those over whom government is exercised, but those who live under a government so constitutionally checked and controlled that proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised

The Constitution reminds us that the government that produces free people is one of divided power.

Freedom Party International believes that the purpose of government is to protect every individual's fundamental freedoms, not to restrict them.

The individual is greater than the state.

Individual liberty depends on decentralized government

our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas.

If there is one belief that unifies most Alaskans - our true north - it is less government and more freedom. We don't want the government in our pockets or our bedrooms; we certainly don't need it in our families.

Government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people; it wasn't intended to be all things to all people.

Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

Much to Mr. Obama's chagrin, ours is not a government run by fiat. The American people have shown quite clearly that they will not simply roll over while this administration seeks to undercut our founding principles in pursuit of its preferred European model of government.

The early American knew that freedom was nothing more than the absence of external restraint on behavior; the government could not give you freedom, it could only take it away.

America is more than just a place...it's an idea. It's the only country founded on an idea. Our rights come from nature and God, not government. We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example . . . of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness.

I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws but to repeal them.