Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2025-02-19 Feb 19, 2025There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system.~ Ayn RandConstitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. It is the duty of the courts to be watchful of constitutional rights against any stealthy encroachments thereon.~ Boyd v. U.S.Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.~ Eric Hoffer Feb 18, 2025Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.~ Ronald ReaganWhile the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.~ Vladimir Ilyich LeninThe history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government power, not the increase of it.~ Woodrow Wilson Feb 17, 2025... liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.~ Alexis de TocquevilleI would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.~ Barry GoldwaterWe do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.... If the foundation is firm, the superstructure will stand.~ Calvin Coolidge Feb 14, 2025No age is unique in producing privileged persons who can happily dichotomize condemnation of their society and enjoyment of its fruits. The eighteenth century had its landau liberals as the nineteenth would have its carriage Communists.~ Alf Mapp, Jr.One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.~ Plato... real anarchism, feasible and actual, as opposed to mere emotional statements, is simply the [classical] liberal economy, and everything that goes with it: political democracy, civil (and not only civic) liberty, free, unsubsidized, unplanned culture. It is only the liberal economy that can favor the "withering away of the state" and of politics – their withering away or at least their limitation; centralized socialism cannot achieve this.~ Raymond Ruye Feb 13, 2025Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding 'more' while never defining 'enough.' The predictable result is that they always get more, and it's never enough.~ Joseph SobranWe must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people. But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.~ Murray N. RothbardIf 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.~ W. Somerset Maugham Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print