Robert D. Kaplan Quotes

We believe in the individual. Government protects our rights as individuals and our rights as property owners. We come together as a community to ensure our protections and to ensure our individuals' security. That's where government comes in and why we pay taxes.

You see, what makes us different than the rest of the world fundamentally is our American respect and legal appreciation of individual rights and individual property. And, I emphasize - individual.

The job of the government isn't to go around and try and make people sacrifice, it's to try and make people free. The reason why we have a national defense is to protect our freedoms.

Communities don't have rights. Only individuals in the community have rights.

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.

Someone who is a good person should have no fear of the government whatsoever.

Throughout America's young history there has been a necessary tension between the individual and the group.

Join America taught English, an understanding of the U.S. Constitution, that the Bill of Rights is the ultimate insurance policy for a citizen, and that being a citizen is not an entitlement. And we also taught a bit of capitalism.

The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire.

The only dependable foundation of personal liberty is the personal economic security of private property.

One of the problems of living in a free country is that you have free access to everything.

Some countries elevate and value community. Some serve the state to the detriment of individual people, and some, like the United States, celebrate individuality to a fault.

Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives

Man does not have an inalienable right to personal or reproductive freedom, if such freedom is a menace to society.

I'm not for laws. We need a minimum of laws.

The right to carry a gun has nothing to do with the rights of other people.

We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property.

I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I'm a great believer that you can't have too conservative a President nor too liberal a Supreme Court. So I'm a walking contradiction. I believe that you should try to really protect people's rights in every way, and also, people should be allowed to do what they do.

What people do in their private lives, these are not big issues that our country's dealing with.

I am a Democrat. But first and foremost, I am a Coloradan and an American who wants government to function and solve the challenges we face as a country, then make way for people to pursue their dreams without interference.

Government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people; it wasn't intended to be all things to all people.

The state has a duty to protect all its citizens.

Citizens do not just make up and preserve a Republic; they are its ultimate stakeholders and in fact pillars.

All our elected representatives - and our government - have a responsibility to keep their people safe and well.

Every night at dinner, my father would say something about the greatness of the United States - and tell us to make sure the government is there for the next people who come along and need it.