"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves."
-William Pitt in the House of Commons, November 18, 1783
','"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
-Thomas Sowell
','"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
-Teddy Roosevelt
','"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren\'t enough criminals, one declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
-Ayn Rand
','"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that 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."
-Daniel Webster
','"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."
-Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government
','"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
-George Bernard Shaw
','"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries."
-Douglas Casey (1992)
','"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
-P. J. O\'Rourke
','"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
-Frederic Bastiat
','"I don\'t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the acts."
-Will Rogers
','"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it\'s free."
-P. J. O\'Rourke
','"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn\'t mean politics won\'t take an interest in you."
-Pericles (430 B. C.)
','"No man\'s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."
-Mark Twain (1866)
','"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
-Mark Twain
','"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."
-Winston Churchill
','"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."
-Mark Twain
','"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
-Winston Churchill
','"What this country needs are more unemployed politicians."
-Edward Langley
','"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."
-G. Gordon Liddy
','"Government\'s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
-Ronald Reagan (1986)
','"Talk is cheap-except when Congress does it. The government is like a baby\'s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other."
-Ronald Reagan
','"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government."
-Thomas Paine
','"The elementary truth is that the Great Depression was produced by government mismanagement [of money]. It was not produced by the failure of private enterprise."
-Milton Friedman
','"Government meddling with money has not only brought untold tyranny into the world; it has also brought chaos and not order. It has fragmented the peaceful, productive world market and shattered it into a thousand pieces, with trade and investment hobbled and hampered by myriad restrictions, controls, artificial rates, currency breakdowns, etc. ... Coercion, in money as in other matters, brings, not order, but conflict and chaos."
-Murray N. Rothbard
','"The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief."
-Aristotle
','"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation."
-James Madison
','"We have allowed our constitutional republic to deteriorate into a virtually unchecked direct democracy. Today\'s political process is nothing more than a street fight between various groups seeking to vote themselves other people\'s money. Individual voters tend to support the candidate that promises them the most federal loot in whatever form, rather than the candidate who will uphold the rule of law."
-Rep. Ron Paul
','"I believe...that the worst curse on mankind is the ability to consider ideals as something quite abstract and detached from one\'s everyday life."
-Journals of Ayn Rand [JAR] 66
','"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
-George Mason
','"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
-Thomas Jefferson
','"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
-George Washington
','"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!"
-Adolph Hitler [1935] The Weapons Act of Nazi Germany
','"Both the oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms."
-Aristotle
','"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable."
-Laurence Peter
','"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
-Mark Twain
','"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
-Thomas Jefferson
','"I think it’s laudable and praiseworthy to reach into your own pocket to help your fellow man in need. I think it’s despicable and worthy of condemnation to reach into someone else’s pockets to help your fellow man in need."
-Walter Williams
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