Public Necessity Quotes

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.

The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free.

The telegraph and telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people.

Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity.

It was with the deepest regret that the Executive found the duty of employing the war-power, in defense of the government, forced upon him …. These measures whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon, under what appeared to be a popular demand, and a public necessity; trusting, then, as now, that Congress would readily ratify them.

Private property ought to be subservient to public uses, when necessity requires it; nevertheless, whenever any particular man's property is taken for the use of the public, the owner ought to receive an equivalent in money

To attach full confidence to an institution of this nature, it appears to be an essential ingredient in its structure, that it shall be under private and not a public direction-under the guidance of individual interest, not of public policy; which, would be . . . liable to being too much influenced by public necessity.

Government should not tell you what to do unless there's a compelling public purpose.

Private property ... is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt.

For the protection of the community, of individual life and health, there are some necessities that should be provided for all at the expense of all, such as roads, pure water, and sanitary systems for concentrated population, and reasonably comprehensive mail service. The determination between services that should be operated by the government and those which should be left to private enterprise under proper control should be governed by the degree of necessity to the community as a whole.

We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer.

There was no measure that required greater caution or more severe scrutiny than one to impose taxes or raise a loan, be the form what it may. I hold that government has no right to do either, except when the public service makes it imperiously necessary, and then only to the extent that it requires.

There are certain emergencies of nations, in which expedients, that in the ordinary state of things ought to be forborne, become essential to the public weal.