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Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Sep 29, 2025
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.
Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
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.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.
We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
Time is the only thing you can't buy.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.
If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would 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 own conscience.
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.
That government is best which governs least.
Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
You can only be free if I am free.
Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.
It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.
In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease, the right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.