Charles D. Cook Quotes

While Democrats fussed with the details of health care reforms, conservatives spent months telling the nation that the real issue is freedom, that what's on the line is American liberty itself.

If conservatives really believed in individual liberty, as they endlessly claim — and if they used both halves of their brains — then they'd be libertarians. Instead, they sabotage themselves, and their cause, by constantly generating one spurious reason after another to deprive other people of their freedom.

The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories—with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe—but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.

I object to Parliament trying to regulate private morality in matters which only affects the person who commits the offence.

Fox News Latino will show people how opportunities exist, that whenever we are overregulated, or there is too much government, we lose freedom. We lose power. That is, historically, one hundred percent true.

Let's get the government stay out of our private lives, once and for all, and stop arresting smokers. Let's take a stand for personal freedom.

Someday I hope Americans will not believe that anyone had to spend his or her days fighting for limited government because everyone they know wants maximum freedom and minimum statism.

I also believe that government has no business telling us how we should live our lives. I think our lifestyle choices should be left up to us. What we do in our private lives is none of the government's business. That position rules out the Republican Party for me.

We don't want a busybody government - a boss - that butts into our lives every chance it gets to tell us how to work, how to play, where to live and on and on.

No American conservative has ever argued that the government should never be involved in peoples' lives. That is anarchy, and we don't argue for that.

Government is the enemy of conservatism and freedom.

Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty.

My thing is personal freedoms: freedoms for the individual to love whom they want, do with what they want. In fact, I want the government out of almost everything.

These things I believe: that government should butt out.

The government has no business telling an individual what kind of light bulb to buy.

If you want the government off your back, get your hands out of its pockets.

I don't think I should tell you what to do, nor should the government. As long as you enjoy your own personal liberties and don't infringe on the liberties of others, I don't care.

Liberals are very much afraid of conservative women, and here's the reason why - more people agree with us. They want the government to have less control over their lives.

My instincts are conservative, but my inclinations are also libertarian.

We recommend a planned public relations and publicity campaign to position the Republican party as the defender of individual liberties against the encroachment of socialism, paternalism, and government control.

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?

Prohibition is a deathblow to the liberty of the individual …

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence; Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans ...