We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
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.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
That government is best which governs least.
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
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.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
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.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force...Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
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.
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
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