Government Power Quotes

The supreme majesty of the law and the power of this republican Government was illustrated anew to-day by the fresh scenes and proceedings in the great trial of impeachment. The business-like, almost matter-of-fact manner in which the Congress of the United States proceeds with this grave work is the most striking illustration of the innate love and reverence for law and order that characterize the American people.

Liberals love to say things like, "We're just asking everyone to pay their fair share." But government is not about asking. It is about telling. The difference is fundamental. It is the difference between making love and being raped, between working for a living and being a slave. The Internal Revenue service is not asking anybody to do anything. It confiscates your assets and puts you behind bars if you don't pay.

John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.

No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.

When it is established that government by right can take wealth from some and give it to others. When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men will use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they have passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.

The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution.

There is nothing government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.

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.

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.

The greatest threat to our freedom is an all powerful federal government.

When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master.

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

That is one of the characteristics of fascism, the idea that the state can provide all of the answers for everyone.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground.

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production.

Government central planning means over-riding other people's plans.

The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental rights of private property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.

Everywhere we look we see the encroaching shadow of the police state.

Since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office promising to scale back the federal government, Republican leaders have promised to cut regulation and taxes, and to return power to individuals to arrange their lives as they see fit. But they have never entirely managed to eradicate the New Deal government.

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