Rand Paul Quotes

When was America emancipated? This kingdom has the sovereign, the supreme legislative power over America; this is granted; it cannot be denied: taxation is a part of that sovereign power, is one branch of the legislative; it is, and it has been, exercised over those who are not, and who never were represented: the Indian company; the merchants of London; the proprietors of stock, and men of great manufacturing towns; the palatinate of Chester; the bishopric of Durham, before they ever sent any representatives to parliament. Great Britain protects America; America is bound to yield obedience; if not, tell me when the Americans were emancipated The nation has run itself into an immense debt to give them protection; and now, when called upon to contribute to the public expense, an expense arising from themselves, they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and almost break out into open rebellion. The seditious spirit of the colonies owes its birth to the factions in this house. Gentlemen are careless of the consequences of what they say, provided it answers the purposes of opposition I have been abused as an enemy to the trade of America; I discouraged no trade but what was illicit, and what was prohibited by act of parliament.

The Senate trying to govern cyberspace is analogous to King George believing he could still govern the colonies even though he had never been there.

Your excellency is pleased to tell us, that declarations have been made and still subsist, that the act of parliament for granting the stamp-duties in the colonies, shall not be executed within the province. We know of no such declarations. If any individuals of the people have declared an unwillingness to subject themselves to the payment of the stamp-duties, and choose rather to lay aside all business, than to make use of the stamped papers, as we are not accountable for such declarations, so neither can we see any thing criminal in them: this house has no authority to control their choice in this matter: the act does not oblige them to make use of the papers; it only exacts the payment of certain duties for such papers as they may incline to use: such declarations may possibly have been made and may still subsist, very consistently with the utmost respect to the king and parliament.

It is an invariable maxim, that every acquisition of foreign territory is at the absolute disposal of the King. [And not to Parliament.]

If the tax was persisted in, the country would be forced into open rebellion.

Lord North, after the affair at Saratoga, from the beginning of the year 1778, made every effort to procure from the king permission to resign. These efforts were continually repeated for a long period, but in vain : the king could not give up the idea of coercing America, and therefore could not part with the only man who was, he thought, fit to manage the House of Commons.

The authority of Parliament is valid in all laws, except such as should lay internal taxes; it was never disputed in laying duties to regulate commerce; The Americans would never submit to the Stamp Act, or to any other tax on the same principle; North America would contribute to the support of Great Britain if engaged in a war in Europe

If the colonists hadn't rejected British militarism and the massive financial burden of maintaining the British military, America wouldn't exist.

Conservatives shouldn't count on the Supreme Court to do our work for us on Obamacare. The Court may rule as it should, and strike down the mandate. But it may not. And even if it does, the future of health care in America - and for that matter, the future of limited government - depends ultimately on the verdict of the American people.

It is not an overstatement to say that Obamacare was the single most important catalyst leading to the tea party movement.

For those of us who originally disagreed with ObamaCare and now disagree with the majority opinion of the SCOTUS, the challenge remains the same as it would have been had the Court ruled otherwise. We need to elect Mitt Romney and House and Senate majorities that will repeal ObamaCare and replace it with free-market, pro-liberty solutions.

Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country.

Show Republicans a shiny pro-life or pro-marriage issue and they'd much rather address that controversial topic than keep pressing on the tyranny that Obamacare represents.

Our founders did not oust George III in order for us to crown Richard I.

We would express to your Excellency the just Resentment which we feel at the Indignities offered to our worthy fellow Citizens in Boston and the frequent Violations of private property by the Soldiers under your Command. These Enormities committed by a Standing Army, in our opinion, unlawfully posted there in a time of Peace, are irritating in the greatest Degree, and if not remedied will endanger the involving all America in the Horrors of a civil War! Your Situation Sir is extremely critical. A rupture between the Inhabitants of the Province over which you preside and the Troops under your Command would produce Consequences of the most serious Nature: A Wound which would never be healed! It would probably establish Animosities between Great Britain & the Colonies which time would never eradicate!

The gentleman asks, when were the colonies emancipated? But I desire to know, when were they made slaves

Fellow Soldiers and Citizens, that I find solid Ground to rely upon the Clemency of our Sovereign, and abundant Conviction that it is the generous Intention of Great Britain, not only to have the Rights and privileges of the Colonies unimpaired, together with their perpetual exemption from taxation, but to superadd such further benefits as may consist with the Common prosperity of the Empire. In short, I fought for much less than the Parent Country is as willing to grant to her Colonies, as they can be to receive or enjoy. Some may think I continued in the struggle of those unhappy days too long, and others that I quitted it too soon.

If the colonies are independent states, separate and disunited, after this war, we may be sure of coming off by the worse. We are in no condition to contend with several of them. Our trade in general, and our trade with them, must be upon such terms as they shall be pleased to prescribe. What will be the consequence of this? Will they not be ready to prefer putting themselves under the protection of Great Britain, France, or Holland, rather than submit to the tyranny of their neighbors, who were lately their equals? Nor would it be at all impossible that they should enter into such rash engagements as would prove their own destruction from a mixture of apprehended necessity and real resentment.

… persons, whose design, from the beginning of their opposition to the Stamp Act, was to throw off all subordination and connection with Great Britain; who meant by every fiction, falsehood and fraud, to delude the people from their due allegiance, to throw the subsisting Governments into anarchy, to incite the ignorant and vulgar to arms, and with those arms to establish American Independence --- were Congregational and Presbyterian republicans, or men of bankrupt fortunes, overwhelmed in debt to the British merchants.

If you intend to set the colonies aflame, take care to run away by the light of it.

The American Revolution was a conservative revolution.

The quarrel between the colonies and the British government seems to become more serious every day ... It may prove the most fatal blow to the authority of the metropolis.

A right to impose an internal tax on the colonies, without their consent for the single purpose of revenue, is denied, a right to regulate their trade without their consent is, admitted.

There is not that intimate and inseparable relation between the electors of Great-Britain, and the inhabitants of the colonies, which must inevitably involve both in the same taxation; on the contrary, not a single actual elector in England might be immediately affected by a taxation in America, imposed by a statute which would have a general operation and effect, upon the properties of the inhabitants of the colonies. The latter might be oppressed in a thousand shapes, without any sympathy, or exciting any alarm in the former.

The main purpose of stationing a large body of troops in America will be to secure the dependence of the colonies on Great Britain