I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University. -- William F. Buckley         "The America Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." -- Alexis de Tocqueville         Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have. -- Barry Goldwater         I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. -- Thomas Jefferson         That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves. -- Thomas Jefferson         Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. -- Tom Paine         The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. -- Ronald Reagan         I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts. -- Ronald Reagan         Yet the basic fact remains: every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost. That is why, like marriage (in the Prayer Book's words), regulation should not 'be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly' -- Margaret Thatcher         "How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." - Ronald Reagan         "They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men." - John Adams         The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits. -- Thomas Jefferson         I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. -- Thomas Jefferson         I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. -- Thomas Jefferson         Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread. -- Thomas Jefferson         I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. -- Thomas Jefferson         The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first. -- Thomas Jefferson         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 and bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. -- Thomas Jefferson         Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? -- Thomas Jefferson         The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. -- Benjamin Franklin         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. -- Alexander Hamilton         The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. -- James Madison         The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived. -- James Madison         Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide. -- John Adams         Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production. - Ayn Rand         Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederique Bastiat         .... man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. -- Ronald Reagan         Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. ...government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. -- Ronald Reagan         It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge         The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. -- Tacitus         One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato         Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. -- Groucho Marx         "It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." -- Ronald Reagan         We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. -- Thomas Jefferson         All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke         I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. -- Martin Luther King         If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. -- Tom Paine         "Nothing...is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." -- Thomas Jefferson         "Over himself, over his own mind and body, the individual is sovereign." -- John Stuart Mill         Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. -- Thomas Jefferson         No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. -- Thomas Jefferson         To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association - the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. -- Thomas Jefferson         It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.-- Thomas Jefferson         To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. -- Thomas Jefferson         "Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected." --George Washington         "Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong." -- Calvin Coolidge         "It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains." -- Patrick Henry         "I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." -- Booker T. Washington         "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." -- Margaret Thatcher         Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow. -- Benjamin Franklin         The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. -- James Madison         Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. -- George Washington         Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. -- John Adams         Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases. -- John Adams         "Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive." -- Ayn Rand         Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -- Lord Acton         The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. -- Lord Acton         The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder. -- Frederique Bastiat         Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. -- Ayn Rand         Everyone thinks about changing the world, but no one thinks about changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy         "Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company." -- George Washington         "As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live." -- Pope John Paul II         "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." -- Ronald Reagan         I 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 Goldwater         Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! -- Patrick Henry         I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. -- James Madison         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. -- Somerset Maugham         One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle. -- James Otis         ...Conservatives have excellent credentials to speak about human rights. By our efforts, and with precious little help from self-styled liberals, we were largely responsible for securing liberty for a substantial share of the world's population and defending it for most of the rest. -- Margaret Thatcher         To be free is better than to be unfree - always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect. -- Margaret Thatcher         Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Benjamin Franklin         "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." -- Thomas Jefferson         "Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom." -- John F. Kennedy         I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -- Thomas Jefferson         When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. -- Thomas Jefferson         What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? -- Thomas Jefferson         Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free. -- Thomas Jefferson         The smallest minority on earth is the individual.         Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. -- Ayn Rand         Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. -- Lord Acton         The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. - Ayn Rand         Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. - Albert Einstein         Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. -- Barry Goldwater         "I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other." -- Harriet Tubman         "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." -- Ronald Reagan         The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. -- Winston Churchill         Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process. -- Ronald Reagan         "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. -- Adam Smith         The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. - John Stuart Mill         A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. -- Friedrich August von Hayek         Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order. -- Friedrich August von Hayek         We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice. -- Friedrich August von Hayek         There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism -- by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide. -- Ayn Rand         A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence. -- Ayn Rand         America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes." -- Ayn Rand         The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave. -- Ayn Rand         If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand -- Milton Friedman         Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. -- Milton Friedman         Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property. -- Milton Friedman         The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline. -- Milton Friedman         Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions.         One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace. -- Milton Friedman         Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive. -- Milton Friedman         "Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon." -- Winston Churchill         The man who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at forty he has no head" -- Winston Churchill         It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses. -- Winston Churchill         I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. -- Ben Franklin         The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations. - Adam Smith         I think the best possible social program is a job. -- Ronald Reagan         "The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight." -- Theodore Roosevelt         "No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong." -- Walter Williams         "If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking ... is freedom." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower         "Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong." -- Calvin Coolidge         "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." -- John F. Kennedy         The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. -- Thomas Jefferson         Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer -- Ludwig von Mises         "Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence." -- Ronald Reagan         "Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders." -- Ronald Reagan         "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." -- -Benjamin Franklin         War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill         People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. -- George Orwell         History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. -- Ronald Reagan         "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." -- George Washington         "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation." -- George Washington         "To insist on strength is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering." - Barry Goldwater         "Goddam it, you'll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me" -- Henry P. Crowe         "Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!" -- Admiral David Glasgow Farragut         A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill         We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. -- Ronald Reagan         Never spend your money before you have earned it. -- Thomas Jefferson         "Good Conservatives always pay their bills. And on time. Not like the Socialists who run up other people's bills." -- Margaret Thatcher         "Republicans believe every day is 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15." -- Ronald Reagan         Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets. - ronald Reagan         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         If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. -- H.L. Mencken         A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw         "The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much." -- Ronald Reagan         "The taxpayer " that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination." -- Ronald Reagan         Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. -- George Washington         A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer's hands. -- Lucius Seneca         Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. -- Benjamin Franklin         "To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them..." -- George Mason         "You won't get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens. There's only one way to get real gun control: Disarm the thugs and the criminals, lock them up and if you don't actually throw away the key, at least lose it for a long time... -- Ronald Reagan         "Our nation was built and civilized by men and women who used guns in self-defense and in pursuit of peace. One wonders indeed, if the rising crime rate, isn't due as much as anything to the criminal's instinctive knowledge that the average victim no longer has means of self-protection." -- Ronald Reagan         "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. 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         "One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them." -- Thomas Jefferson         Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who kept their swords -Benjamin Franklin         "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         "Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and the keystone under independence." -- George Washington         Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace. -- James Madison         "A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression." -- James Madison         "Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation." -- James Madison         The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it. -- 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         A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country. -- James Madison         I Have Not Yet Begun To Fight -- Captain John Paul Jones         Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others. -- Winston Churchill         You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. -- Winston Churchill         "Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid." -- Ronald Reagan         Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. -- Ronald Reagan         Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. -- Thomas Jefferson         "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." -- Winston Churchill         "The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave." -- Ronald Reagan         "Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others." -- Winston Churchill         Fear is the foundation of most governments. -- John Adams         I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. -- John Adams         Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. -- Winston Churchill         In matters of style, swim with the current; In matters of principle, stand like a rock. -- Thomas Jefferson         I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. -- Thomas Jefferson         "Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." -- Winston Churchill         "You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." -- Margaret Thatcher         "We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once." -- Calvin Coolidge         "Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did." -- Newt Gingrich         "I don't care who you are, I care who you want to be." -- Newt Gingrich         It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause. -- H.L. Mencken         "Winners never quit and quitters never win." -- Vince Lombardi         "You might not be able to outthink, outmarket or outspend your competition, but you can outwork them" -- Lou Holtz         "It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste." -- Henry Ford         "The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just." -- Abraham Lincoln         "If you are going through hell, keep going." -- Winston Churchill         "It isn't that Liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan         "Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face" -- Thomas Sowell         "The fundamental premise of liberalism is the moral incapacity of the American people." -- Alan Keyes         "Liberals are more upset when a tree is chopped down than when a child is aborted." -- Ann Coulter         "What's the difference between a liberal and a conservative? A liberal will interpret the constitution, a conservative will quote it!" -- Rush Limbaugh         If God had been a Liberal there wouldn't have been Ten Commandments, there would have been Ten Suggestions. -- Malcolm Bradbury         "Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side" - Thomas Sowell         "If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested" - Thomas Wolfe         Liberalism is a scourge. It destroys the human spirit. It destroys prosperity. It assigns sameness to everybody. And wherever I find it, I oppose it. - Rush Limbaugh         Conservatives want to make the poor rich, while liberals want to make the rich poor. -- Mark W Smith