Encroachment Quotes - Page 3

• In a government framed for durable liberty, not less regard must be paid to giving the magistrate a proper degree of authority, to make and execute the laws with rigour, than to guarding against encroachments upon the rights of the community. As too much power leads to despotism, too little leads to anarchy, and both eventually to the ruin of the people.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Law, Rights, Government

  Alexander Hamilton (1961). “1779-1781”

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• Americans' liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state and local government's are confiscating citizens' property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before.... American liberty can still be rescued from the encroachments of government. The first step to saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose unless fundamental political changes occur.

  James Bovard

  Opportunity, Rights, Government

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• If anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day's sake - if anyone set up its observance on a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it, to do anything that shall remove this encroachment on Christian liberty.

  Martin Luther

  Christian, Order, Liberty

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• Those who would give us a "living" Constitution are actually giving us a dead one, since such a thing is completely unable to protect us against the encroachments of government power.

  Kevin Gutzman

  Government, Giving, Constitution

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• I have a duty to protect the Executive Branch from legislative encroachment.

  George W. Bush

  Branches, Executive Branch, Duty

  President Bush's Press Conference at the James S. Brady Briefing Room, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. March 13, 2002.

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• To watch the progress of such endeavors is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against encroachments of power. This then is a right of utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Blood, Office, Giving

  Alexander Hamilton, Julius Goebel, Joseph Henry Smith (1969). “The Law Practice of Alexander Hamilton: Documents and Commentary”, p.831, Columbia University Press

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• And may I not be allowed to ... read in the character of the American people, in their devotion to true liberty and to the Constitution which is its palladium [protection], ... a Government which watches over ... the equal interdict [prohibition] against encroachments and compacts between religion and the state.

  James Madison

  Character, Government, People

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• At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty, those who cherish freedom are likely to expend their energies in opposition. In this they find themselves much of the time on the same side as those who habitually resist change.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Liberty, Sides, Energy

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative, 1960.

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• The liberal appropriations made by the legislature of Kentucky for a general system of education cannot be too much applauded . . . . Learned institutions ought to be the favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty . . . . What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable than that of liberty and learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

  James Madison

  Education, Light, Kentucky

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• ...[I]f we care about our remaining liberties we must at some point draw a line in the sand and let politicians and bureaucrats know we will not tolerate further encroachment on our God-given rights to liberty.

  Walter E. Williams

  Rights, Liberty, Care

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• If the people lose control of the arteries of trade and the natural sources of mechanical power, the nationalization of all industry should soon be expected. Our forefathers were alert to resist all encroachments upon their rights. If we wish to maintain our rights, we can do no less.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Rights, People, Wish

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• Libertarians are learning to their sorrow that big businessmen cannot necessarily be relied upon to be their allies in the battle against extension of governmental encroachments.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Sorrow, Battle, Allies

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.207, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• If they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights.

  James Madison

  Independent, Rights, Justice

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• These are no ordinary claims; and it seems hardly possible for a rational being to regard them with even a subdued interest; much less to treat them with mere indifference and contempt. If not true they are little else than the pretensions of a bold imposture, which not satisfied with having already enslaved millions of the human race, seeks to continue its encroachments upon human liberty, until all nations be subjected under its iron rule.

  Simon Greenleaf

  Iron, Race, Liberty

  Simon Greenleaf (1995). “The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence”, p.10, Kregel Publications

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• As 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, it seems strictly consonant to the republican theory, to recur to the same original authority, not only whenever it may be necessary to enlarge, diminish, or new-model the powers of the government, but also whenever any one of the departments may commit encroachments on the chartered authorities of the others.

  James Madison

  Government, People, Branches

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1852). “The Federalist, on the new constitution, written in 1788, with an appendix, containing the letters of Pacificus and Helvidius on the proclamation of neutrality of 1793, also the original articles of confederation and the constitution of the United States”, p.233

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• The concept of military necessity is seductively broad, and has a dangerous plasticity. Because they invariably have the visage of overriding importance, there is always a temptation to invoke security "necessities" to justify an encroachment upon civil liberties. For that reason, the military-security argument must be approached with a healthy skepticism.

  William J. Brennan

  Military, Temptation, Healthy

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• When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte diedbut no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalised persons who resent encroachments on their property.

  John Galsworthy

  Principles, Married, Precaution

  1906 The Man of Property, pt.1, ch.1.

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• The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past.

  Walker Percy

  Time, Lying, Past

  Walker Percy (2011). “Lancelot”, p.46, Open Road Media

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• I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Government, Punishment

  Letter to James Madison, 30 Jan. 1787

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• Nature soothes us. Nature heals us, and something more, the woods are a place of power. Any woods that are still surviving on this planet, those are powerful areas to have kept themselves free from the encroachment of the industrial societies of our earth.

  Frederick Lenz

  Powerful, Buddhism, Humanity

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• The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

  Henry Clay

  Country, Art, Hatred

  Speech in the Senate, 14 March 1834

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• Being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don’t have to be foreign countries.

  Edward Snowden

  Country, Mean, Government

  "Edward Snowden's interview: 10 things we learned" by Catherine E. Shoichet, www.cnn.com. May 29, 2014.

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• What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes...

  Joy Williams

  Dark, People, Ordinary

  "Joy Williams, The Art of Fiction No. 223". Interview with Paul Winner, www.theparisreview.org. 2014.

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• The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Art, Future, Use

  Wassily Kandinsky (2015). “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, p.37, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the teaching of evolution or other scientific theories -- a feeble echo of medieval church tyranny and hostility to learning, but an echo nonetheless are serious threats to freedom of inquiry and should be vigorously combated.

  S. T. Joshi

  Religious, Atheist, Teaching

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