An unnamed assistant clerk of the Fourth District Court in Provo, 12/22/03
Ben Franklin (1755)
Those who would give up some of their liberty in order to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I don't do that voting stuff. It's too technical.
Elizabeth Taylor
The problem with people who have no vices is that they're pretty sure to have some annoying virtues.
Thomas Jefferson (1791)
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
James Bovard
America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.
Albert Einstein (1950)
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
The Bible, II Corinthians 3:17
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
Thomas B. Reed (1886)
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
Jacob Hornberger (1995)
If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.
Henry David Thoreau
I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least."
Barry Goldwater (1964)
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.
William Allen White
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
Thomas Paine (1795)
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.
Daniel Webster (1834)
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
Daniel Webster
Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
Lord Acton (1887)
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Goeth
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Somerset Maugham
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.
Charles A. Beard
It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
Harlon Carter
Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it?
Edmund A. Opitz
No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.
Ayn Rand
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 against private citizens, but against the government -- as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
Abraham Lincoln
I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.
Thomas Paine
Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Jefferson
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.
Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Patrick Henry
Give me liberty or give me death!
Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)
First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I'm not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I'm not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I'm not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me.
Millicent Fenwick (1983)
We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk.
Montesquieu
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
Alexis De Toqueville
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
Winston Churchill
If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
Catholic Church College of Propaganda
(circa 1600)
Freedom of belief is pernicious; it is nothing but the freedom to be wrong.
