Neil Gorsuch Quotes

[There is no] right of Congress ... to force a good thing upon a people who are unwilling to receive it. The great principle is the right of every community to judge and decide for itself whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it would be good or evil to adopt it.... Whenever you put a limitation upon the right of any people to decide what laws they want, you have destroyed the fundamental principle of self-government.

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

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

Americans' liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state and local government's are confiscating citizens' property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before.... American liberty can still be rescued from the encroachments of government. The first step to saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose unless fundamental political changes occur.

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

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

Regulation has crept up on us steadily…. The most alarming feature of this concentration of power in the Federal government is the creation of omnipotent commissions to exercise it. The new fields of Federal control are administered by small Boards or executive commissions, usually appointed by the President and responsible to no one but the President. They are part of the Executive Department. But their function is not executive only. They have two additional functions: one is legislative, the other is judicial. These commissions write the rules which make the laws effective. Then they administer the rules; and when the rules are violated, they it in judgment on the violations.

The American people believe that we ought to control our government. On the other hand, we've seen government more and more controlling us

Is there anything in the existing condition that makes the duty of Congress to put the liberty of all the people of the United States in jeopardy?... Are we going to take up the question of what a man shall eat and what a man shall drink, and put him under severe penalties if he is eating or drinking something different from what the chemists of the Agricultural Department think desirable?

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

In undertaking the regulation of inter-State commerce, Congress is entering upon a new and untried field.

The legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law; but the maker of the law may commit something to the discretion of the other departments, and the precise boundary of this power is a subject of delicate and difficult inquiry.

[Legislators] can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in the hands of others.

The great danger to our institutions does not appear to me to be in a usurpation by the Government of power not granted by the people, but by the accumulation in one of the departments of that which was assigned to others. Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in one of the departments.

From time to time we must remind ourselves that the President has a role in the legislative process.

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.

The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.

The (Supreme Court) ruling that anyone who's arrested -- even accidentally -- can be strip-searched was decided five to four, with the votes for the searches coming from the Court's five conservatives. You know -- the 'defending personal liberty' guys. Which is weird because I'm not a constitutional scholar, but I'm willing to bet Big Government feels it's biggest when it's inside your anus.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution.

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.

Gun control means control. It means control for the government and the government starts controlling the people.

If Obamacare is allowed to stand - and Congress is allowed to make the purchase of government-endorsed health insurance compulsory - there will be no meaningful limit on Washington's reach into the lives of the American people. That is certainly not what the Founders intended.

The Supreme Court and courts in general have been usurping the role of the legislative branch of government.