“A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.”
— President Gerald Ford (1913-2006)
“Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life.”
— President Gerald Ford (1913-2006)
“Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.” (“Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.”)
— Tacitus (56-120 AD), Roman historian
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-1797), English philosopher
“He who introduces into public office the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”
— Ronald Reagan, then California governor (1911-2004)
“Our word ‘idiot’ comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.”
— Edith Hamilton (1867-1963), educator & scholar
“Once you abolish God, the government becomes the God.”
— G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer and Christian thinker
“I always try to remind people that the purpose of religious leaders is for our afterlife. The purpose of elected officials is for this life on Earth.”
— Bob Mulholland, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee (2004)
“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
— Lord Acton (1834-1902), British historian
“I do not want to end up with an American style of politics, with us going out there beating our chest about our faith. Politics and religion – it is not that they do not have a lot in common, but if [religion] ends up being used in the political process, I think that is a bit unhealthy.”
— Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, in 2005
“In a free society, the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.”
— Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), American journalist
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
— President George Washington (1732-1799)
“Those who think religion has nothing to do with politics understand neither religion or politics… The things that will destroy us are: politics without principles, pleasures without conscience, knowledge without character, business without morality.”
— Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948), Indian spiritual and national leader
“The soul of Germany, you can leave that to me.”
— Adolf Hitler (1899-1945) to pastor Martin Neimoller (1892-1984)
“Most of the work of government does not need to be done. And, if you can remember that, if we could all remember that, this country would be better off.”
— Lyn Nofziger (1924-2006), Reagan White House adviser
“The whole art of government consists in being honest.”
— President Thomas Jefferson, 1786
“Democracy is the outgrowth of the religious conviction of the sacredness of every human life. On the religious side, its highest embodiment is the Bible; on the political side, the Constitution.”
— President Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964
“Given the right policies, intellectual and economic productivity trumps biological reproductivity. ‘Between 1820 and 1992,’ Ronald Bailey writes in Earth Report 2000, ‘world population quintupled even as the world’s economies grew 40-fold.’ Productivity matters more than other statistical measures because it demonstrates we’re doing more with less. That’s why, for example, starvation is a political disaster, not a natural one. There’s literally too much food in the world.”
— Jonah Goldberg, “Worrywarts still don’t get it,” Sun-Sentinel 25A, 10/20/06
“I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”
— Patrick Henry (1736-1799), Founding Father and American patriot
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
— President John Adams (1797-1801)
“No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country.”
— Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 1824
“We don’t give federal grants to tobacco companies to teach students ‘low-risk’ forms of smoking on the grounds that ‘kids are going to smoke anyway.’ We shouldn’t be giving federal grants to groups that sell contraception, to teach kids to use contraception.”
— Jennifer Roback Morse, American author
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress … But then I repeat myself.
— Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer
“Contrary to the conventional wisdom and the predictions of computer models, the Earth’s climate has not warmed appreciably in the past two decades, and probably not since about 1940. The evidence is overwhelming: a) Satellite data show no appreciable warming of the global atmosphere since 1979. In fact, if one ignores the unusual El Nino year of 1998, one sees a cooling trend. b) Radiosonde data from balloons released regularly around the world confirm the satellite data in every respect. This fact has been confirmed in a recent report of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences. c) The well-controlled and reliable thermometer record of surface temperatures for the continental United States shows no appreciable warming since about 1940. The same is true for Western Europe. These results are in sharp contrast to the GLOBAL instrumental surface record, which shows substantial warming, mainly in NW Siberia and subpolar Alaska and Canada. d) But tree-ring records for Siberia and Alaska and published ice-core records that I have examined show NO warming since 1940. In fact, many show a cooling trend. Conclusion: The post-1980 global warming trend from surface thermometers is not credible. The absence of such warming would do away with the widely touted ‘hockey stick’ graph (with its ‘unusual’ temperature rise in the past 100 years)…”
— Dr. S. Fred Singer President, environmental physicist, founder of The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Climate Change, July 18, 2000
“We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.”
– President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if the faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.”
— President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
“Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions… are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.”
— Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), American writer, journalist and commentator
“When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘guilty’.”
— President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
“Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen.”
— Bob Edwards (b., 1947), Public Radio International personality
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.”
— Groucho Marx (1890-1977), comedian
“The only ground of hope for the continuance of our free institutions is in the proper moral and religious training of the children, that they may be prepared to discharge aright the duties of men and citizens.”
— President Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), on July 4, 1849
“Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.”
— Baron M. A. Rothschild (1744-1812), family founder of wealthy Jewish financiers
“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.”
— Samuel Adams (1722-1803), US Founding Father
“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), President and Founding Father
“English experience indicates that when two political parties agree about something, it is generally wrong.”
— G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British journalist, poet and philosopher
“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”
— Attributed to Gideon Tucker, New York state surrogate judge in a case in 1866
“Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.”
— Elias Boudinot, (1740-1821), American lawyer, statesman and co-founder of the American Bible Society
“[W]hen all government…in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided…”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
— “The 10 Cannots” by William J. H. Boetcker (1873–1962), German-born American religious leader and influential public speaker
“The government solution to any problem is usually at least as bad as the problem.”
— Milton Friedman (1912-2006), American Nobel Laureate economist
“Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first — the most basic — expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers of America saw it, and thus with God’s help, it will continue to be.”
— President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006), in 1974
“If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”
— H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and satirist
“Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.”
— Frank McKinney (“Kin”) Hubbard (1868-1930), American cartoonist, humorist and journalist
“Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it.”
— Cullen Hightower (b. 1923), American salesman and trainer
“Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what’s going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?”
— Will Rogers (1879-1935), American cowboy, actor and humorist
“The goal of the ‘liberals’ — as it emerges from the record of the past decades — was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot — by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli.”
— Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-born philosopher and novelist
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
— Plato (428/427-347 BC), classical Greek philosopher and writer
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
— G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer and Christian thinker
“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
— Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American socialist, pacifist and frequent presidential candidate
“We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate.”
— Frank McKinney (“Kin”) Hubbard (1868-1930), American cartoonist, humorist and journalist
“If American democracy is to remain the greatest hope of humanity, it must continue abundantly in the faith of the Bible.”
— President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), in 1925
“Common delusions notwithstanding, the United States, I submit, is not a democracy — by which is meant a system in which the will of the people prevails. Rather it is a curious mechanism artfully designed to circumvent the will of the people while appearing to be democratic. Several mechanisms accomplish this. First, we have two identical parties which, when elected, do very much the same things. Thus the election determines not policy but only the division of spoils. Nothing really changes… Second, the two parties determine on which questions we are allowed to vote. They simply refuse to engage the questions that matter most to many people. If you are against affirmative action, for whom do you vote? If you regard the schools as abominations… it is fraud. In a sense, the candidates do not even exist. A presidential candidate consists of two speechwriters, a makeup man, a gestures coach, ad agency, two pollsters and an interpreter of focus groups. Depending on his numbers, the handlers may suggest a more fixed stare to crank up his decisiveness quotient for male or Republican voters, or dial in a bit of compassion for a Democratic or female audience. The newspapers will report this calculated transformation. Yet it works. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time.”
— Fred Reed (b. 1945), independent columnist (Patriot Post, Vol 8, #12; 3/17/08)
“The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up.”
— Milton Friedman (1912-2006), American Nobel Laureate economist
“The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay… If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.”
— Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French classical liberal theorist, political economist, politician and author in “The Law”
“To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.”
— Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1880), British Prime Minister
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“Lord, the money we do spend on government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.”
— Will Rogers (1879-1935), American cowboy, actor and humorist
“A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny.”
— President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
“I’m proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.”
— Authur Godfrey (1903-1983), American radio and TV broadcaster/entertainer
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Irish writer, scholar and Christian apologist
“I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.”
— President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the [US] government.”
— President James Madison (1751-1836), “Father of the Constitution,” The Patriot Post (Vol. 8, #24, June 9, 2008)
“No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God.”
— William Blackstone (1723-1780), British jurist and professor
“Politics is the art of the possible.”
— Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), Prussian and German statesman
“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
— John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), Canadian-American liberal economist
“If you ever injected truth into politics you’d have no politics.”
— Will Rogers (1879-1935), American humorist, social commentator and actor
“The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose…. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.”
— President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.”
— George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and socialist
“…Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.”
— Thomas Sowell, political commentator
“To preserve [the] independence [of the people], we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), quoted in “Puff, the Magic Obama!” by Chuck Norris 09/03/2008 http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28364
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.”
— President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), The Patriot Post (Vol. 8, #38), 9/15/08
“When people abuse these freedoms to enrich themselves at the expense of others, then the public will demand the government to step in. That is how government grows, and how freedom is diminished…. When financial meltdowns occur, the public’s outrage drives government to take over part of the private sector. When the government does so, it replaces irresponsible executives with unaccountable bureaucrats. That takes us out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
— Ken Blackwell, The Patriot Post (Vol. 8, #39), 9/22/08
“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
— President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”
— Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-born philosopher and novelist
“The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else.”
— Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French classical liberal theorist, political economist, politician and author
“The [political] left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’ The [political] right subscribes to the American formula, ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions… The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality.”
— Dennis Prager, There are Two Irreconcilable America’s, http://patriotpost.us/opinion/entry.asp?entry_id=48960
“The power to determine the quantity of money… is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power.”
— Milton Friedman (1912-2006), American Nobel Laureate economist
“We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
— President James Madison (1751-1836), Founding Father and principle writer of the US Constitution
“There is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program.”
— President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“Bad government results from too much government.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
— Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965), American broadcast journalist
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we ever spent before and it does not work…We have never made good on our promises…I say after eight years of this [FDR’s] Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!”
— Henry Morgenthau (1891-1967), FDR’s faithful Treasury Secretary, comments made in May, 1939 of the failed New Deal programs
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.”
— President George Washington (1732-1799)
“[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”
— Patrick Henry (1736-1799), Founding Father
“We believe in a false savior, the idol of government.”
— Dr. Mark Hendrickson Grove City College economics professor, in “Obama pushes Keynesian policies while economy spirals”, Jim Brown – OneNewsNow – 3/17/2009 www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=453382
“[By] a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but confiscate arbitrarily: and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose.”
— John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British liberal economist, quoted in “How The Socialists Are Destroying America From Within”, by David A. Noebel www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4726/Brannon-Howse/David-Noebel
“The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.”
— Lord Salisbury (3rd Marquess of Salisbury, 1830-1903), three-time British Prime Minister
“Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our [American] freedoms were founded.… Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.” “A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity—as liberals do. A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal, and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population—as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation’s citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state—as liberals do.” “The roots of liberalism—and its associated madness—can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind. When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains, and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.”
— Dr. Lyle Rossiter, in “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness” (2009), quoted by John deVries in WorldNetDaily, 11/12/08
“Our Constitution represents the work of the finger of Almighty God.”
— President James Madison (1751-1836)
“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.”
— President James Garfield (1831-1881), on July 4, 1876
“To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom, and approximate the miseries of complete despotism. …Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican form of government, and all blessings which flow from them must fall with them.”
— Jedediah Morse (1761-1826), US clergyman and “Father of American geography” in 1799, in “Is Marriage a Religious or Civil Law Institution?” by Brannon Howse www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-5061/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse
“If the Church languishes, the State cannot be in health; and if the State rebels against its Lord and King, the Church cannot enjoy His favor. If the Holy Spirit is withdrawn from the Church, He is not present in the State; and if He, the only ‘Lord, the Giver of Life,’ be absent, that all order is impossible, and the elements of society lapse backward to primeval night and chaos … I charge you, citizens of the United States, afloat on your wide sea of politics, there is another King, one Jesus: the safety of the State can be secured only in the way of humble and whole-souled loyalty to His person and of obedience to His law.”
— A. A. Hodge (1823-1886), American theologian, Presbyterian pastor and missionary
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people…. First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives… Pride blind[s] the foolish. Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America. The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
— “American capitalism gone with a whimper”, by Stanislav Mishin, 27.04.2009, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Founding Father, in 1787
“Continual dependence upon welfare induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit…I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash, of market baskets…. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance, and courage and determination.”
— President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), in his 1935 State of the Union address
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that the democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.”
— Attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813), Scottish-born British lawyer and writer
“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.”
— President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
“Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Irish writer, scholar and Christian apologist
“Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government; it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.”
— George Will, American newspaper columnist
“No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanly directed in the first instance.”
— Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister, on June 4, 1945
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Founding Father
“A wise and frugal government which shall leave men 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.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“Practical politics consists of ignoring the truth.”
— Henry Adams (1850-1906), American farmer and politician
“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”
— Aristotle (384-322 BC), Greek philosopher
“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 (1902-1983), American author
“I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in his so-called “separation of church and state” letter to Samuel Miller in 1808
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
— President James Madison (1751-1836)
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French historian
“Under every stone lurks a politician.” –
– Aristophanes (~446-~386BC, ancient Greek comedic playwright
“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.”
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), American general
“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, first governor of Virginia
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.”
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
— Mark Twain (1835-1910), American author
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.”
— President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
“When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude. When there is no longer any principle of authority in religion any more than in politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence. Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? … I am inclined to believe that if faith be wanting in (a man) he must be subject; and if he believe, he must be free.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French politician and researcher in “Democracy in America”
“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” — President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
— President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)