“A government of laws and not of men.”
“America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.”
“The judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that.”
“A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.”
“It might be more worthwhile if we stopped wringing our hands and started ringing our congressmen.”
“Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.”
“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.”
“Law is order, and good law is good order.”
“The best government is that which governs least.”
“They should rule who are able to rule best.”
“At no time, at no place, in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it, except possibly the mention of ‘We, the people,’ in the preamble… When the Constitution was framed no respectable person called himself or herself a democrat.”
“Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”
“There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people.”
“The presidency is more than an honor, it is more than an office, it is a charge to keep and I will give it my all.”
“…the toughest job for a president is to unite the country, to achieve objectives, and I believe the president must set big objectives.”
“The nearest approach to immortality on earth is a government bureau.”
“The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.”
“Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.”
“The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity—unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.”
“And still the question, ‘What shall be done with our ex-Presidents?’ is not laid at rest; and I sometimes think Watterson’s solution of it, ‘Take them out and shoot them,’ is worthy of attention.”
“Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.”
“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.”
“The government is not self-existent. It is maintained by the effort of those who believe in it. The people of America believe in American institutions, the American form of government and the American method of transacting business.”
“Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
“The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.”
“The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.”
“Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.”
“Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”
“We, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.”
“The less government we have, the better—the few laws, and the less confided power.”
“The American wage earner and the American housewife are a lot better economists than most economists care to admit. They know that a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything you have.”
“You don’t need a lot of bureaucrats looking over your shoulder and telling you how to run your life or how to run your business. We are a people who declared our independence 200 years ago, and we are not about to lose it now to paper shufflers and computers.”
“Law never does anything constructive. We have had enough of legislators promising to do that which laws can not do.”
“…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”
“You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.”
“I have always regarded that Constitution as the most remarkable work known to me in modern times to have been produced by the human intellect, at a single stroke (so to speak), in its application to political affairs.”
“The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”
“People come to Washington believing it's the center of power. I know I did. It was only much later that I learned that Washington is a steering wheel that's not connected to the engine.”
“Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.”
“We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.”
“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.”
“We admit of no government by divine right… the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.”
“If the Constitution is to be construed to mean what the majority at any given period in history wish the Constitution to mean, why a written Constitution?”
“A monarchy requires a virtuous king; a democracy requires a virtuous people.”
“As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.”
“There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.”
“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
“But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world’s best hope, may be possibility want energy to preserve itself?”
“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of it’s being a public blessing.”
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.”
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.”
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
“Still one thing more, fellow citizens—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.”
“The republican form of government is the only form of government which is not eternal at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
“The Congress doesn’t run—it waltzes.”
“Big government is cancerous. Like a cancer, it hurts the body and tends to spread, doing more and more harm as it grows. It is time for some radical surgery.”
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.”
“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”
“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”
“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
“In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.”
“Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.”
“To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.”
“When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.”
“Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”
“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”
“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is [its] inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.”
“In the Presidency it is character that counts above all.”
“Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.”
“If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to—and you will—leave, and be something else.”
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
“Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.”
“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
“You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.”
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in…”
“A democracy—that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness’ sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.”
“When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.”
“Any government is free to the people under it where the laws rule and the people are a party to the laws.”
“I invoke the genius of the Constitution.”
“Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”
“Government is like a big baby—an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
“Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.”
“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.”
“In this [economic] crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”
“No government ever voluntary reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”
“The 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.”
“Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.”
“Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.”
“I don’t make jokes—I just watch the government and report the facts.”
“The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.”
“A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.”
“The White House is a bully pulpit!”
“The government is us; we are the government, you and I.”
“New Deal: The wedding of good intentions to bad economics.”
“The major problem facing bureaucracy is not the struggle for power but the evasion of responsibility; bureaucrats are very reluctant to take action.”
“The less government, the more freedom.”
“If you stop supporting that crowd, it will support itself.”
“The true art of government consists in not governing too much.”
“The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.”
“The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.”
“When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It's for the Presidency.”
“I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.”
“In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other.”
“To rule is easy; to govern, difficult.”
“However the Court may interpret the provisions of the Constitution, it is still the Constitution which is the law and not the decision of the Court.”
“Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
“The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.”
“The people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.”