George Mason Quotes

Our government, taxes, and ideas of freedom are already duplicates of the Old World. Our politicians determine how we should live our lives - and our individual liberties are sacrificed for the benefit of the Fatherland.

I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.

To desire money is much nobler than to desire success. Desiring money may mean desiring to return to your country, or marry the woman you love, or ransom your father from brigands. But desiring success must mean that you take an abstract pleasure in the unbrotherly act of distancing and disgracing other men.

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

Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.

My mother worked in a cookie factory. My father worked in a factory. So anyone that dares begrudge what I have, just better get off their duff and do something about it to do something for themselves as well as their country. I feel that I have a perfect right to spend my money the way I damn please.

In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.

The founders of our nation feared paper currency because it gave government the means to steal from its citizens.

Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary.

I rank money higher than social life or meaning because once you have money, those other things are easier to get. For example, you won't have much of a social life if you can't afford to do anything. And you can't make money if your health is a mess.

My mother lives in Moscow, and I would like to visit her. Now she always has to travel to Finland or a Baltic country to meet me. But I have to expect that my papers would be confiscated in Moscow immediately, and that they would harass my family. I can still have more impact in the West with my books and lectures.

Revolutions are not exportable: revolutions are created by oppressive conditions which Latin American countries exercise against their peoples.

Financial freedom is freedom from fear.

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.

I do think if we take the power out of Washington and bring it back to the people, if we defend the Bill of Rights, free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, privacy, if we repeal Obamacare, abolish the IRS, if we get Washington out of the way of job creators, I think we can transform this country.

The lack of economic freedom could be a very major reason for loss of liberty, liberty of life.

A woman should never, never, never be financially dependent to anyone, especially a man, because the minute you were dependent, you could be abused.

Money is not an issue to me. My mother always tells me, money, it comes and it goes.

We may be proud that England is the ancient country of Parliaments. With scarcely any intervening period, Parliaments have met constantly for 600 years, and there was something of a Parliament before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments.

Ask the first man you meet what he means by defending freedom, and he'll tell you privately he means defending the standard of living.

I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.

You can always judge a man by what he eats, and therefore a country in which there is no free lunch is no longer a free country.

And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?

When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?

This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.