Barry Goldwater Quotes

We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.

The Constitution was not written to restrain the citizen's behavior, it was writtne to restrain the government's behavior.

A constitution should be framed so as not to impede the action of government, nor force the government to its violation.

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

The Framers (of the Constitution) were not concerned primarily with favoring one type of government over another, but with limiting the power of government, regardless of its source.

The Constitution is not about restricting the people; it is about restricting the government.

The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power.

Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.

The Founders never intended for Americans to trust their government. Our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil, to be restrained and minimized as much as possible.

Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty. We're working on a third generation which has little in the way of education about what our Constitution means and why it was written. Thus, we've fallen easy prey to charlatens, quacks, and hustlers.

I consider it…as subverting the fundamental and characteristic principle of the Government…and as bidding defiance to the sense in which the Constitution is known to have been proposed, advocated, and adopted. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one.

I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution.

The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.

The object of a Constitution is to restrain the Government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals.

We can’t trust government to limit its powers to the Constitution.

Can government really be active and, at the same time, limited? History suggests otherwise.

It may be truly said of every government, as well as of that of the United States, that it has only a right to pass such laws as are necessary and proper to accomplish the objects entrusted to it. For no government has a right to do merely what it pleases

Those who seek always to limit the power of government are of good heart and conscience. Those who seek to expand the power of government are base tyrants.

Government of limited power need not be anemic government.

A constitution is made of a spirit, institutions, and a practice.

Democracy, in any rational form, also imposes conditions on majority rule. That's what the Bill of Rights is about, for example.

The powers of the federal government ... result from the compact to which the states are parties, [and are] limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact.

There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.

I, sir, have always conceived - I believe those who proposed the constitution conceived,and it is still more fully known, and more material to observe, those who ratified the constitution conceived, that this is not an indefinite government deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers - but, a limited government tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms.

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.