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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.
Sep 25, 2025
Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.
Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
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.
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
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.
When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.
The truth was that all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be tomorrow.
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.
When 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 of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
That government is best which governs least.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
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.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
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.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.
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.
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.
For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity...will respect the less important and arbitrary ones... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.