As constitutional scholar Roger Pilon has documented, even expenditures for the most charitable of purposes were routinely spurned as illegitimate. In 1794, James Madison wrote disapprovingly of a $15,000 appropriation for French refugees: ‘I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.’ Stephen Moore
Between Power and Liberty, Director of Fiscal Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, March, 1997
Category Archives: Quotations Freedom
If he has abandoned the things he believes in so very easily, …
If he has abandoned the things he believes in so very easily, just imagine how easily he will abandon the things in which he doesn’t believe. Margaret Thatcher
On an opponent who had thrown socialism overboard and embraced a centrist agenda, as reported in National Review, September 30, 1996
If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me …
If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it — well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act. Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, 1905-1982
Whether or not they recognize it, virtually all decisions that investors make …
Whether or not they recognize it, virtually all decisions that investors make are exercises in probability. For them to succeed, it is critical that their probability statement combines the historical record with the most recent data available. Warren Buffett
The most powerful men are not public men: a public man is …
The most powerful men are not public men: a public man is responsible, and a responsible man is a slave. It is private life that governs the world. Benjamin Disraeli
British Prime Minister (1874-1880), author, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1804-1881
To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one’s …
To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one’s weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. Robyn Davidson
Tracks
To Ronald Wilson Reagan, Fortieth President of the United States: The Man …
To Ronald Wilson Reagan, Fortieth President of the United States: The Man Who Won the War Tom Clancy
dedication of ‘Executive Orders’, 1996
America itself — the whole country — is a ‘free speech zone’. That’s …
America itself — the whole country — is a ‘free speech zone’. That’s what the First Amendment means, or it means nothing. Michael Badnarik
August 27, 2004
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no …
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. George Bernard Shaw
Playwright, 1856-1950
There is a recognition of the equality of rights among citizens in …
There is a recognition of the equality of rights among citizens in the pursuit of the ordinary avocations of life, and a declaration that all grants of exclusive privileges, in contravention of this equality, are against common right, and void. Mr. Justice Stephen Field
Justice Stephen Field: Shaping Liberty from the Gold Rush to the Gilded Age, by Paul Kens. University Press of Kansas, 1997.