Jeff Cooper Quotes

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Government is waging war against the people.

There exists in modem America the necessity for protecting all of us from arbitrary action by governments more powerful and more pervasive than any in our ancestors’ time.

In all questions between a government and an individual the presumption in every Englishman's mind is that the government is in the wrong.

The legislative and judicial powers are completely subordinated to the executive; the division of powers, the sovereignty of the States, the liberty of the common councils, and the rights of the citizens exist only in writing in our great charter; but, as a fact, it may almost be said that martial law constantly exists in Mexico

One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms.

Liberal Democrats in government will not follow the last Labour government by sounding the retreat on the protection of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. It continues to be essential that our civil liberties are safeguarded, and that the state is not given the powers to snoop on its citizens at will.

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.

Before my tenure, people didn't seem to think that citizens had a right to limit the size of their government.

Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be - protect themselves. That's why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.

A government that can take all and can seize all, a government that doesn't trust its citizens, a government that says it's their way or the highway... that's the scary part.

'Fair' is one of the most dangerous concepts in politics. Since no two people are likely to agree on what is 'fair,' this means that there must be some third party with power - the government - to impose its will. The road to despotism is paved with 'fairness'.

Every fascist state like Germany, France, or modern Poland takes away citizen's right to self-defense. Fascist Americans such as Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton want to take arms away from American society.

The Constitution was not written to restrain the citizen's behavior, it was writtne to restrain the government's behavior.

The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government.

If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied on society by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan State and . . . try freedom.

Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.

When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.

Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. By trying to seize far more power than is necessary over American citizens, the federal government is destroying its own legitimacy. We face a choice not of anarchy or authoritarianism, but a choice of limited government or unlimited government .

Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed - first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.

"All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

Government is the natural enemy of freedom.

When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state".

It is always unconscionable for the government to punish people for expressing an idea merely because government officials - or the majority of citizens - decide that those ideas are 'dangerous' or 'wrong.' That is a power nobody ought to possess.