Ayn Rand Quotes

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.

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

We believe that government in Britain is there to protect people from terrorism and from the worst criminality, but never at the expense of our civil liberties and the basic tenets of our legal system.

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

Every amendment which I am convinced will have the tendency to lesson the danger of civil liberty by the central government will receive my sincere approbation.

It doesn’t keep us safe and it doesn’t keep us free if we give up our liberties to the government.

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

If people cannot limit government they will not for long be free.

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

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.

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.

Some members of Congress will claim that the federal government needs the power to monitor Americans in order to allow the government to operate more efficiently. I would remind my colleagues that, in a constitutional republic, the people are never asked to sacrifice their liberties to make the jobs of government officials easier.

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.

If God gives you rights, no man and no government can take them away from you.

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

The government continues to erode our freedom.

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

America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.

Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.

All, or nearly all, the advantage there is in fixing any constitutional limits to the power of a government, is simply to give notice to the government of the point at which it will meet with resistance.

The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.

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

Government, which does not and did not grant us our rights, must not now seek to deny them by using fear as its justification.