Government Restrictions Quotes

On the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.

Laws and regulations are supposed to restrict the kind of surveillance governments do. In fact, the U.S. government is quite restricted in what kind of surveillance they can do on U.S. citizens. The problem is that 96 percent of the planet is not U.S. citizens.

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify suppression of free speech and assembly.

The rules that bind governments are much looser during wartime than in times of peace.

It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.

When wage controls and other legal restrictions on Canadian workers of the government's only answer to that country's deepening economic problems, the labor movement's response has to be fundamentally political.

I have tried every Method I Could think of to procure Arms for our Men, they really are not to be had in these Governments.

Our government shouldn't tell us where to travel and where not to travel.

The government of Israel doesn't like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

Revealingly, the central function of the Constitution as law--the supreme law--was to impose limitations not on the behavior of ordinary citizens but on the federal government. The government, and those who ran it, were not placed outside the law, but expressly targeted by it. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is little more than a description of the lines that the most powerful political officials are barred from crossing, even if they have the power to do so and even when the majority of citizens might wish them to do so.

When I began we did not really have a lot of First Amendment law. It is really surprising to think of it this way, but a lot of the law - most of the law that relates to the First Amendment freedom of the press in America - is really within living memory.

The Bill of Rights isn't about us, it's about them . It isn't a list of things we're permitted to do, it's a list of things they aren't allowed even to consider.

This is in part because of the government's criminal negligence; has it not permitted them [Christian Copts] to build new churches, though there are more than enough of them in a country where over ninety percent of the inhabitants are Muslims; has the regime not let them parade their religious affiliation in public (for example, crosses on car stickers and dresses), which is a sheer provocation to Muslims?

The Constitution does not allow the unnecessary trammeling of free expression, even for the noblest of purposes.

The history of liberty is the history of limitations on the power of government, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the processes of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties.

The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up.

In America we believe there ought to be limits on government.

...[T]he Constitution conferred only a few specific powers on the federal government, all others being denied to it (as the Tenth Amendment would make plain). Unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population today - subtle logicians like you - can grasp such nuances. Too bad. The Constitution wasn't meant to be a brain-twister.

[On the 1st Amendment:] For us, this is a great beneficial provision which I would not want to see disturbed; otherwise great harm would come to our Holy Religion.

As a car lover, I ask myself, 'What am I going to be buying in the future? Will it be a boring, underpowered, dorky car because the government tells me I shouldn't pollute? Or do I come up with a cool-looking, sexy dream car that is also part of the future?'

I was sitting alone in a grim mood - furious that the press attacked Senator Edwards on the price of a haircut. But it inspired me - from now on, all haircuts, etc., that are necessary and important for his campaign - please send the bills to me... It is a way to help our friend without government restrictions.

I don't have a philosophical objection, necessarily, to a travel ban if that is the thing that is going to keep the American people safe.

Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country.

Statistics on religious affiliation are notoriously slippery: the government isn't allowed to gather such data, and the membership claims of religious organizations aren't entirely reliable.

Every amendment which I am convinced will have the tendency to lesson the danger of civil liberty by the central government will receive my sincere approbation.