"Allow the people to think they govern and they will be governed."
- William Penn
* * *
"Fear is the foundation of most governments."
- John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776
* * *
"Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end."
- Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877
* * *
"Increase of freedom in the State may sometimes promote mediocrity, and give vitality to prejudice; it may even retard
useful legislation, diminish the capacity for war, and restrict the boundaries of Empire.... A generous spirit prefers
that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved."
- Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877
* * *
"Liberty alone demands for its realization the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which
benifits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition."
- Lord Acton, The Home and Foreign Review, 1862
* * *
"The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the
state. They both deny that right is superior to authority."
- Lord Acton, The Home and Foreign Review, 1862
* * *
"Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety or the
power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State
becomes for the time inevitably absolute."
- Lord Acton, The Home and Foreign Review, 1862
* * *
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."
- Lord Acton, Letter to Mary Gladstone, April 24, 1881
* * *
"Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government."
- Aristotle, Politics
* * *
"...in the government sector failures are not punished, they are rewarded. If a government agency is set up to deal with a
problem and the problem gets worse, the agency is rewarded with more money and more staff - because, after all, its task is
now bigger. An agency that fails year after year, that does not simply fail to solve the problem but actually makes it
worse, will be rewarded with an a ever-increasing budget."
- David Boaz, Liberating Schools, 1991
* * *
"A government that is anxious to give alms to as many people as possible is even more anxious to commandeer their earnings."
- James Bovard, Lost Rights, 1994
* * *
"The financing of current government spending by debt is equivalent to an 'eating up' of our national capital value.... By
financing current public outlay by debt, we are, in effect, chopping up the apple trees for firewood, thereby reducing
the yeild of the orchard forever."
- James Buchanan, Essays on the Political Economy, 1989
* * *
"The federal government has embarked on a debt-financed spending spree that cannot be permanently sustained. The fact that
the government cannot go bankrupt in any sense analogous to a person or business firm does nothing to modify the central
proposition. Government's ultimate taxing and money-creation powers can, of course, guarantee that all nominally valued
debt claims will be honored, but neither an ever-increasing interest share of tax revenues nor an inflationary monetization
of nominal debt claims offers a viable option for permanent reform."
- James Buchanan, Essays on the Political Economy, 1989
* * *
"In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.... Those who
are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered
by a conspiracy of their whole species."
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
* * *
"Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided
for by this wisdom."
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
* * *
"All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, every prudent act, is founded on compromise and
barter."
- Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America, March 22, 1775
* * *
"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you if he
sacrifices it to your opinion."
- Edmund Burke, Speech to the Electors of Bristol, November 3, 1774
* * *
"The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the
country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party."
- John C. Calhoun, Speech, February 17, 1835
* * *
"Let us consider, my Lords, that arbitrary Power has seldom or never been introduced into any Country at once. It must be
introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step, lest the people should perceive its approach."
- Lord Chesterfield, Speech written for delivery to the House of Lords, 1737
* * *
"The sin and sorrow of despotism is not that it does not love men, but that it loves them too much and trusts them too little."
- G.K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown, 1914
* * *
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential cause of Rome's
decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes,
her consuming wars."
- William & Ariel Durant, Caesar and Christ, 1944
* * *
"The difference between being an elder statesman
And posing successfully as an elder statesman
Is practically negligible."
- T.S. Eliot, The Elder Statesman, 1958
* * *
"In Rivers and bad Governments, the lightest Things swim at top."
- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1754
* * *
"What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves."
- Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe
* * *
"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not
undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to
inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose,
or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legistation is 'needed'
before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting
my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am
doing the very best I can."
- Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, 1964
* * *
"If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a
state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"It has been observed that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has
proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never
possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
- Alexander Hamilton, Speech urging ratification of the Constitution in New York, June 21, 1788
* * *
"The politicians don't want just your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are
dependent and helpless. When you subsidixe poverty and failure, you get more of both."
- James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
* * *
"All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second."
- Jim Fiebig
* * *
"I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep
it going."
- George Bernard Shaw
* * *
"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced."
- Frank Zappa
* * *
"If you think yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master.
The wise despot therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
- Fank Herbert
* * *
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government,
I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787
* * *
"The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."
- Milton Friedman
* * *
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never
for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
- George Washington
* * *
"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, and intolerable one."
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
* * *
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves
against tyranny in government."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. The
greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by me of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
- Louis D. Brandeis
* * *
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing
government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln
* * *
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"Ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the rights of man are the only causes of public misfortunes and or the corruption of governments."
- French National Assembly, Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed August 1789, published September 1791)
* * *
"The cost to the good people for their indifference to their public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
- Plato
* * *
"The government of the absolute majority instead of the government of the people is but the government of the strongest interests; and when not
efficently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised."
- John C. Calhoun
* * *
"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond it's limits is in deciding to protect us
from ourselves."
- Ronald Reagan
* * *
When they call roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer "present" or "not guilty."
- Teddy Roosevelt
* * *
"But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the
people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to
the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and then denounce the
peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
- Herman Goering
* * *
"Overgrown military establishments are, under any form of government, inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as
particularly hostile to republican liberty."
- George Washington
* * *
"In the councils of government we must guard against the aquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing
for granted."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell address January 17, 1961
* * *
"A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful
interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks."
- John Caldwell Calhoun, 1836
* * *
"Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the
Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our
government and political system another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite."
- Senator William Jenner, 1954
* * *
"The government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when
those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power... Groups and individuals
have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles."
- The Church Committee Report, 1975
* * *
"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."
- Milton Friedman
* * *
"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually,
a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on earth."
- Ronald Reagan, 1964
* * *
"I believe there is something out there watching over us. Unfortunately it's the government."
- Woody Allen
* * *
"Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair."
- George Burns
* * *
"It is not enough that the forms of government should have the passive or "implied" consent of the governed, but that
the Society will be in health only if it is in the full sense democratic and self-governing, which implies not only
that all the citizen should have a `right' to influence its policy if they so desire, but that the greatest possible
opportunity should be afforded for every citizen actually to exercise this right."
- G.D.H. Cole
* * *
"...But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart.
Lust of conquest had long ago done its work;
trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home;
multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people's liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own
persons.
The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on;
the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose.
There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket."
- Mark Twain
* * *
"A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it,
is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both."
- James Madison
* * *
"The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatsoever."
- Adam Smith, from The Wealth of Nations
* * *
"Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government,
writers are routinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies."
- E.L. Doctorow
* * *
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive."
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787
* * *
"The more the state 'plans' the more difficult planning becomes for the individual."
- Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944
* * *
"The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government,
namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good."
- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 1960
* * *
"No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds
ill will and suspicion - it is an evil government."
- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1955
* * *
"Logically inconsistent as they seem to philosophers,...all the varying elements in the American Creed unite in imposing
limits on power and on the institutions of government. The essence of constitutionalism is the restraint of governmental
power through fundamental law. The essence of liberalism is freedom from governmental control - the vindication of liberty
against power.... The essence of individualism is the right of each person to act in accordance with his own destiny free
of external restraint, except insofar as such restraint is necessary to ensure comparable rights to others. The essence of
egalitarianism is rejection of the idea that one person has the right to exercise power over another. The essence of
democracy is popular control over government directly or through representatives, and the responsiveness of government
officials to public opinion. In sum, the distinctive aspect of the American Creed is it's anti-government character.
Oppostion to power, and suspicion of government as the most dangerous embodiment of power, are the central themes of
American political thought."
- Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics, 1981
* * *
"The political climate of the late 1970s was distinguished by the increasing ascendancy of conservative, anti-government
attitudes among the public at large and of conservative, anti-government ideas among the intellectual elite. This shift to
the right was first marked in the 1976 election results, as Carter defeated his liberal opponents for the Democratic
nomination and Ronald Reagan almost unseated an incumbent Republican President. It was marked again in 1978 by the defeat
of liberal candidates for state and local office and the victory of conservative, anti-taxation referenda in several
states. It continued in 1980 with the primary victories of Carter and Reagan, the defeat of Carter in the November election,
and the unseating of a number of liberal Democratic senators. Americans were not only distrustful of governmental
authority, they were also hostile to governmental activity."
- Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics, 1981
* * *
"In 1959,... when asked to identify which was 'the biggest threat to the country in the future,' only 14 percent of the
public picked 'big government,' compared to 41 percent who picked 'big labor' and 15 percent who chose 'big business.' In
1978, in contrast, 47 percent of the public picked big government for this honor, compared to 19 percent each for big
business and big labor. Similarly, in 1964 only 43 percent of the American public thought the government in Washington
was 'too big'; by 1976 over 58 percent believed this, and in both 1972 and 1976, 50 percent or more of those identifying
themselves as liberals, moderates, and conservatives held this view."
- Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics, 1981
* * *
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the
government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him?"
-Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
* * *
"Still one thing more, fellow citizens - 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, and this is necessary to close the
circle of our felicities."
-Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
* * *
"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Hunter, March 11, 1790
* * *
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-1785
* * *
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe
depositories."
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-1785
* * *
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild and government gain ground."
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to E. Carrington, May 27, 1788
* * *
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821
* * *
"A government is not legitimate merely because it exists."
- Jeane Kirkpatrick, Time, June 17, 1985
* * *
"The fact is that government cannot produce equality, and any serious effort to do so can destroy liberty and other
social goods."
- Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards, 1982
* * *
"[B]ecause regulation uses the coercive power of government to alter outcomes, it diminishes individual liberty: people
are persuaded by the threat of sanctions to act differently than they would otherwise prefer."
- Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards, 1982
* * *
"What is going on is a systematic effort to create an international society in which government is the one and only legitimate
institution. The old dream of an international economic order in which one single nation dominated is being replaced by a
not different vision of the domination of a single idea, the idea of an all-encompassing state, a state which has no
provision for the liberties of individuals, much less for the liberties of collections of individuals, such as trade unions."
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, 1978
* * *
"State power, considered in the abstract, need not restrict freedom: but absolute state power always does. The legitimate
functions of government are actually conducive to freedom. Maintaining internal order, keeping foreign foes at bay, administering
justice, removing obstacles to the free interchange of goods - the exercise of these powers makes it possible for men to
follow their chosen pursuits with maximum freedom. But note that the very instrument by which these desirable ends are
achieved can be the instrument for achieving undesirable ends - that government can, instead of extending freedom,
restrict freedom. And note, secondly, that the 'can' quickly becomes 'will' the moment the holders of government power are
left to their own devices. This is because of the corrupting influence of power, the natural tendency of men who possess
some power to take unto themselves more power. The tendency leads eventually to the aquisition of all
power - whether in the hands of one or many makes little difference to the freedom of those left on the outside."
- Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, 1964
* * *
"The Tenth Amendment is not 'a general assumption,' but a prohibitory rule of law. The Tenth Amendment recognizes the
States' jurisdiction in certain areas. States' Rights means that the States have a right to act or not to act,
as they see fit, in areas reserved to them. The States may have duties corresponding to these rights, but the duties are owed
to the people of the States, not to the federal government. Therefore, the recourse lies not with the federal government, which
is not sovereign, but with the people who are, and who have full power to take disciplinary action. If the people are unhappy with
say, their State's disability insurance program, they can bring pressure to bear on their state officials and, if that fails,
they can elect a new set of officials. And if, in the unhappy event they should wish to divest themselves of this responsibility,
they can amend the Constitution. The Constitution, I repeat, draws a sharp and clear line between federal jurisdiction and
state jurisdiction. The federal government's failure to recognize that line has been a crushing blow to the principle of
limited government."
- Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, 1964
* * *
"Since its very outset, it has been found necessary to conduct our Government by means of political parties. That system
would not have survived from generation to generation if it had not been fundamentally sound and provided the best
instrumentalities for the most complete expression of the popular will. It is not necessary to claim that it has always
worked perfectly. It is enough to know that nothing better has been devised. No one would deny that there should be full
and free expression and an opportunity for independence of action within the party. There is no salvation in a narrow and
bigoted partisanship. But if there is to be responsible party government, the party label must be something more than a
mere device for securing office. Unless those who are elected under the same party desigantion are willing to assume
sufficient responsibility and exhibit sufficient loyalty and coherence, so that they can cooperate with each other in the
support of the broad general principles, of the party platform, the election is merely a mockery, no decision is made at
the polls, and there is no representation of the popular will. Common honesty and good faith with the people who support
a party at the polls require that party when it enters office, to assume the control of that portion of the Government to
which it has been elected. Any other course is bad faith and a violation of the party pledges. When the country has
bestowed its confidence upon a party by making it a majority in the Congress, it has a right to expect such unity of
action as will make the party majority an effective instrument of government."
- Calvin Coolidge, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925
* * *
"Pehaps nothing as massive, distant and faceless as the federal government can ever be loved. But when that
government functioned in the realm of the relevant, it earned the respect of the people. When that
government was lawful and clean, it was neither loathed nor feared."
- Senator Frank Church, speech October 20, 1975
* * *
"Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of
conduct that are commands to the citizens. In a government of laws, existence of the government shall be
imperiled, if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent
teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example."
- Justice Louis Brandeis
* * *
"You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard.
Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have. Government
contains impure ingredients - as anybody who's looked at Congress can tell you. On the basis of Bill
Clinton's 1992 campaign promises, I think we can say government practices deceptive advertising. And
the merest glance at the federal budgets enough to convict the government of perjury, extortion, and
fraud."
- P.J. O'Rourke, The Liberty Manifesto, 1993
* * *
"There are four kinds of law in America: (1) The Federal Constitution. (2) Federal Statutes.
(3) State Constitutions. (4) State Statutes. The Federal Constitution is the "supreme law,"
and all other forms of law must be in harmony therewith. If two laws conflict,
not the later but the higher prevails; the lower authority must give way. the Court in interpreting
the law merely states what the higher law requires and shows wherein the lower law is inconsistent
with this. The judges must regulate their decisions by the fundemental laws rather than by those that
are not fundemental. It is the law, not the will of the judges, that prevails. The will, or opinion,
of the judge should have nothing to do with the case. He may think one law is good and another bad:
as a judge he is bound to allow only that one to stand which is in harmony with the Constitution. If
he be guided, not by the law but by his personal interests or his political views, he is unfit for
his place, and a decision inspired by such motives will arouse popular displeasure and distrust. If
the case were flagrant and odious it might provoke resistance and cause the Court to become the object
of public and political attack.
"The Court has generally sought to avoid politics, and it has been strong just in proportion as it has
succeeded. Yet it has not always been able to keep itself above political discussion and free from
party strife and conflict. Jay's decision in the famous case of Chisholm vs. Georgia aroused the
adherents of State's rights and they demanded the Eleventh Amendment. The Federalists on the eve of
their retirement in 1800 sought to enlarge the scope of the Judiciary and to provide some Federalist
appointments and John Adams' "midnight judges" aroused party criticism and opposition. The Jeffersonian
Republicans, when they came into power, not being able to remove the Federalist judges from office
nor reduce their compenstation, abolished the courts by repealing the law that created them. It being
unconstitutional to remove the judge from the office, they removed the office from the judge. Marshall's
nationalizing decisions aroused the opposition of the States' Rights school, and the bank decisions
of the Court aroused local political opposition in some of the States. In 1857. the most serious
introduction of the Court into the areana of politics occured by the Dred Scott decision. The chief
political issue between parties at that time was as to whether or not Congress should prohibit slavery
in the Territories. The Republican party had come into being primarily upon the demand that slavery
should be prevented by national power from entering the Territories. In deciding the Dred Scott case
and remanding Dred to slavery, which the Court might have done merely by the application of Missouri
law, the Court went aside to give it's opinions upon the controverted political questions of the day.
If the opinion of the Court were to be taken as a guide in the politics of the country, the Republican
party had no longer any reason for existence. The Republican leaders, Sumner, Stevens, Lincoln, and
others, denounced the decision as partisan, Lincoln and Seward going so far as to accuse the venerable
Chief Justice and President Buchanan of collusion in the preparation of the decision. The Republican
party still pursued the political course that had been condemned by the Court, and the only injury was
to the Court itself. The Republican party, as a party, denounced the decision as "a dangerous political
heresy, revolutionary in it's tendency and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country." The
Republicans came into power denouncing the Supreme Court and repudiating it's decision.
"The "greenback" decisions of the Court have also aroused political opposition. Whether Congress should
issue legal-tender notes to be used as money, as bank-notes are, is a public financial question to be
determined by the polical department of the Government. Politically the country is greatly divided upon
this question. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the constitutional power of Congress to do this.
The Court first decided (1870) that this power did not rest with Congress. But th Court was soon changed
in it's personel by the creation of a new justiceship and by the filling of a vacancy, and a new case
was gotten up. The opinion of the two new judges was already known from their having passed similar
cases in the lower courts, and when the new decision came the majority of the judges held that Congress,
in the exercise of war power, might issue legal-tender notes. Later, in 1884, in still another case,
the Court held, with only one dissenting voice, that this power rests with Congress in time of peace
as well as in time of war. This decision is thought to be dangerous by some whose political and
financial opinions were offended by it.
"Previous to the campaign of 1896, the Populist party and many Democratic convetions in the States
demanded a national Income Tax, and, in 1894, a Democratic Congress passed such a tax. The Supreme
Court, by a vote of five to four, one judge having changed his mind, declared it unconstitutional and
set it aside, thus reversing previous decisions on the subject. This offended the Democrats, and in
1896 the Democratic Convention, like the Republicans in 1860. denounced the decision, saying that it
was contrary to "the uniform decisions of that Court for nearly one hundred years," the Court having
sustained objections to the law "which had been previously overruled by the ablest judges who have
ever sat on that bench." The Democrats also denounced "government by injunction as a new and highly
dangerous form of oppression by which Federal judges, in contempt of the law of the States and rights
of citizens, become at once legislators, judges, and executioners."
"The reversal of the Supreme Court's decision in the legal-tender cases revealed the weak point in it's
organization. It is within the power of Congress and the President to "pack" the Court, if they have a
mind to do so. The number of Court can be increased from nine to fifteen, or to any other convenient
number. If Congress and the President are determined to do what the Court asserts to be unconstitutional
they have only to reorganize the Court by increasing the membership and by filling up the court with
judges who will give the desired opinion. If the opinions of the President's new appointees to the
Court can be known in advance, almast any case that it is desired to have reversed could be reversed
in this way. This would of course impair the usefulness of the Court, and while this manner of controlling
it by political legislation is possible it is hardly probable. The respect of the Americans for law and
for this their highest legal tribunal may be depended upon to restrain action in this direction. There
should be some way by which the sovereign will of the people can work out it's purposes, even against
the obstacles of court decisions. The Court must be, in the last resort, amenable to the will of the
people.
"As national judges may declare a State law unconstitutional, so may a State judge declare a national
law unconstitutional. He may be overruled in this decision by a national court on appeal, but if a
State ciruit judge, or even a justice of the peace, finds a national law in his way in the trial of a
case and if, in his judgement, the law is unconstitutional, it is his right, or rather his duty, to
say so. If he does not judge aright there is a chance for a higher court to say so.
- James Albert Woodburn, The American Republic and Its Government, 1903
* * *
"Citizenship should be placed above everything else, even learning. Is there any college of the land, a chair of
citizenship, where good citizenship and all that it implies is taught? There is not one - that is, not one where sane
citizenship is taught. There are some which teach insane citzenship, bastard citizenship, but that is all.
Patriotism! Yes; but patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest. ...
Good citizenship would teach accuracy of thinking and accuracy of statement."
- Mark Twain, Speech, May 14, 1908
* * *
"... the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace
and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor."
- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
* * *
"The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might
have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two."
- Mark Twain, Roughing It
* * *
"That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do."
- Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
* * *
"... no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they
are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more."
- Mark Twain, The Gilded Age
* * *
"The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause
endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is
great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our
greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when
hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate
every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise."
- Mark Twain, Official Physic
* * *
"There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come to seem to have a sense and meaning
- the sense and meaning implied when it is used: that is the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as
possibly being 'capable of self-government;' and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, some
time or other, which wasn't capable of it - wasn't as able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would
be to govern it. The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung, in affluent multitude, from the mass of the nation,
and from the mass of the nation only - not from its privileged classes; ans so, no matter what the nation's intellectual
grade was, whether high or low, the bulk of its ablility was in the long ranks of its namelss and its poor, and so it never
saw the day that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself. Which is to assert an always self-proven fact:
that even the best governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still behind the best condition attainable by its
people; and that the same is true of kindred governments of lower grades all the way down to the lowest."
- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
* * *
"I don't make jokes - I just watch the government and report the facts."
- Will Rogers
* * *
"A wise and frugal Government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to
regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement."
- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801
* * *
"In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first
enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
- James Madison
* * *
"The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people."
- Justice William O. Douglas
* * *
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
- George Washington, Treaty of Tripoli, 1796
* * *
"In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated, as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable."
- Walter Lippmann
* * *
"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular and what no
just government should refuse to rest on inference."
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787
* * *
"[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but its also
designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government."
- Judge Lawrence Tribe
* * *
"The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man
to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion."
- Justice Potter Stewart
* * *
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my
neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions,
their doctrines, discipline, or exercises . . . civil powers alone have been given to the President of the U.S. and no
authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"Government is like fire. If it is kept within bounds and under control of the people, it contributes to the welfare of all.
But if it gets out of place, if it gets too big and out of control, it destroys the happiness and even the lives of the people."
- Harold E. Stassen
* * *
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. . . the only house in a
slave State in which a free man can abide with honor."
- Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
* * *
"George Bush has increased our prison capacity by 118 percent in three years. The Department of Justice's budget has gone
up 70 percent in three years. It's one of the fastest growing agencies in government."
- Attorney General Barr, February 24, 1992
* * *
"Whenever people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."
- Woodrow Wilson
* * *
"A government that is large enough to supply everything you need is large enough to take everything you have."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
- Ronald Reagan
* * *
"If you don't teach people freedom and limited government, you've lost your country and what people came here for."
- Rosemarie Avila, 1995
* * *
"IBM considers itself an extension of the U.S. government - and it is."
- Tom Mechling, former executive assistant to the CEO of IBM
* * *
"There is only one thing better than good government, and that is government in which all the people have a part."
- Walter H. Page, Life and Letters, Vol. III, 1922-25
* * *
"It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination."
- Abraham Lincoln, inaugural address, March 4, 1861
* * *
"The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country."
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 1776-83
* * *
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses."
- Andrew Jackson, veto of the Bank Bill, July 10, 1832
* * *
"Governments arise either out of the people or over the people."
- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791
* * *
"You have the God-given right to kick the government around. Don't hesistate to do so."
- Edmund S. Muskie, speech, September 11, 1968
* * *
"Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity."
- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791
* * *
"A decent and manly examination of the acts of government should be not only tolerated, but encouraged."
- William Henry Harrison, inaugural address, March 4, 1841
* * *
"The less government we have the better - the fewer laws, and the less confided power."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essay: Second Series, "Politics," 1844
* * *
"Every time the government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled
them ourselves."
- Benjamin Constant, Cours de politique constitutionelle, 1818-20
* * *
"Government has a tendency to push itself into all sorts of realms where it worsens situations instead of improving them."
- William Bulger, in Wall Street Journal, July 12, 1989
* * *
"Anything that the private sector can do, the government can do it worse."
- Dixy Lee Ray, in Mother Jones, May, 1977
* * *
"The government's like a mule, it's slow and sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it."
- Ellen Glasgow, The Voice of the People, 1900
* * *
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm here from the government and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan, statement, August 12, 1986
* * *
"Everybody in government is like a bunch of ants on a log floating down a river. Each thinks that he is guiding the log,
but it's really just going with the flow."
- Robert S. Straus, in Washington Post, June 9, 1978
* * *
"The worst thing in the world, next to anarchy, is government."
- Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887
* * *
"The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,333 words in the Declaration of
Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words."
- David McIntosh
* * *
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to
restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."
- Patrick Henry
* * *
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen
to keep the Government from falling into error."
- Robert H. Jackson, American Communications Association v. Douds, 1950
* * *
"The single most exciting thing you encounter in govenment is competence, because it's so rare."
- Daniel P. Moynihan, in New York Times, March 2, 1976
* * *
"Truth is the glue that holds governments together. Compromise is the oil that makes governments go."
- Gerald R. Ford, statement, November 15, 1973
* * *
"All government - indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - is founded on compromise
and barter."
- Edmund Burke, speech, March 22, 1775
* * *
"When the Government of the day and the Opposition of the day take the same side, one can be almost sure that some great
wrong is at hand."
- George William Erskine Bell, One Look Back, 1912
* * *
"Every central government worships conformity; uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details, which
must be attended to if rules have to be adapted to different men, instead of indiscriminately subjecting all men to the
same rule."
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835
* * *
"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix."
- Harry S. Truman, in Mark Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, 1974
* * *
"Whenever you have an efficient govenment you have a dictatorship."
- Harry S. Truman, speech, April 28, 1959
* * *
"A state too extensive of itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is
transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism."
- Simon Bolivar, letter, 1815
* * *
"No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill
will and suspicion - it is an evil government."
- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954
* * *
"There are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible.
"The first is the government that citizens read about in their newspapers and children study about in their civics books.
The second is the interlocking, hidden machinery that carries out the policies of the United States in the Cold War.
"This second, invisible government gathers intelligence, conducts espionage, and plans and executes secret operations all
over the globe.
"The Invisible Government is not a formal body. It is a loose, amorphous grouping of individuals and agencies drawn from
many parts of the visible government. It is not limited to the Central Intelligence Agency, although the CIA is at its
heart. Nor is it confined to the nine other agencies which comprise what is known as the intelligence community: the
National Security Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Army Intelligence, Navy
Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Atomic Energy
Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"The Invisible Government includes, also, many other units and agencies, as well as individuals, that appear outwardly to
be a normal part of the conventional government. It even encompasses business firms and institutions that are seemingly
private."
- David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government, 1964
* * *
"The National Security Act of 1947 ... has given Intelligence a more influential position in our government than Intelligence
enjoys in any other government of the world."
- Allen W. Dulles
* * *
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
– Plato
* * *
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are
beneficial … the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without
understanding."
– Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928
* * *
"Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people
en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion
of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning
people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence."
– Robert Anton Wilson
* * *
" The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the
prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is
dishonest, insane, and intolerable …"
– H. L. Mencken
* * *
"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
– Adolf Hitler
* * *
" The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the
more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of
governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide."
– R. J. Rummel, Death by Government
* * *
"The pattern is as old as human life. The new rulers use more and more force, more police, more soldiers, trying to enforce
more efficient control, trying to make the planned economy work by piling regulations on regulations, decree on decree. The
people are hungry and hungrier. And how does a man on this earth get butter? Doesn't the government give butter? But
government does not produce food from the earth; Government is guns. It is one common distinction of all civilized peoples,
that they give their guns to the Government. Men in Government monopolize the necessary use of force; they are not using
their energies productively; they are not milking cows. To get butter, they must use guns; they have nothing else to use."
– Rose Wilder Lane
* * *
"The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it."
– William Greider, One World Ready or Not
* * *
"Pugsley's First Law of Government: All government programs accomplish the opposite of what they are designed to achieve."
– John Pugsley
* * *
"Everything government touches turns to crap."
– Ringo Starr
* * *
"One of the things the government can't do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and
the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt."
– Lee Iacocca
* * *
"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much
else."
– Tom Clancy, on Kudlow and Cramer 9/2/03
* * *
"If the Tenth Amendment were still taken seriously, most of the federal government's present activities would not exist.
That's why no one in Washington ever mentions it."
– Thomas E. Woods, Jr. in The Policitally Incorrect Guide to American History
* * *
