Rand Paul Quotes

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

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

The Constitution limits the role of government. The Constitution enumerates the freedoms of the people and enforces those freedoms against government, making sure government cannot encroach.

In all questions between a government and an individual the presumption in every Englishman's mind is that the government is in the wrong.

Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.

What are we going to do if citizens are disarmed, and the government doesn't obey its own laws?

Almost all the worlds' constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which We the People tell the government what it is allowed to do. We the People are free.

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

Contrary to popular opinion, the Constitution was not - and is not - a grant of rights to the citizenry. Instead, the Constitution is a "barbed-wire entanglement" designed to interfere with, restrict, and impede government officials in the exercise of political power.

The constitution is an instrument, above all, for LIMITING the functions of government.

Make sure the government treats others the same as you would want the government to treat you. ...Once you consent to the government ignoring the Constitution, you deny yourself the protection of the Constitution.

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.

If government can give you rights, government can take them away from you.

Liberal Democrats in government will not follow the last Labour government by sounding the retreat on the protection of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. It continues to be essential that our civil liberties are safeguarded, and that the state is not given the powers to snoop on its citizens at will.

We need to make clear the federal government does not have authority to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without due process or, for that matter, to use lethal force on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil if they don't pose imminent threats.

All of us should have free choice when it comes to patriotic displays... a government wisely acting within its bounds will earn loyalty and respect from its citizens. A government dare not demand the same.

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

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

No law can give power to private persons; every law transfers power from private persons to government.

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.

People have rights and government must be kept from trampling on them.

It must never be forgotten ... that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power.

The legislative and judicial powers are completely subordinated to the executive; the division of powers, the sovereignty of the States, the liberty of the common councils, and the rights of the citizens exist only in writing in our great charter; but, as a fact, it may almost be said that martial law constantly exists in Mexico

… nearly universal is a never-ending effort to balance the rights of individuals with the needs that, in the modern world, it seems only government can meet.