Category Archives: Quotations Freedom

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service …

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we’re always ‘against,’ never ‘for’ anything. Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964

… [G]overnment has a great deal of anarchy, more trouble with anarchy in its own ranks than with anarchy outside it. … Government anarchy has been, continues to be, and forebodes to be a worse subversion and perversion of much of our established legal order than any other anarchies, fancied or practiced. We don’t need to destroy our system. We need to resurrect and salvage it, yes, even ‘liberate’ it, from our own government officials. … [G]overnment has become one of the most dangerous single factions in our society. Many high and low officials are drunk with delusions of superiority to us in the rank-and-file citizenry. … [B]eing a government official gives a sense of being above the law and a sense of being more important as a person, a sense that rarely exists among those out of government. Theodore Becker
Professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, 1972, called Government Anarchy and the POGONOGO Alternative.

Patrick Henry in Richmond: [taking the demeanor of a chained slave

Patrick Henry in Richmond:[taking the demeanor of a chained slave] ‘Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it almighty God!’ (standing up and throwing his arms out, the freed slave) ‘I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!’ The audience was stunned in silence for minutes; then, a soldier, who was outside and had listened from behind a window, sighed and broke the silence: ‘Oh, may I be buried here!’ Patrick Henry
[That speech finally convinced the Americans to openly and on *principle* fight the Tyranny of Britain. Of course, the soldier was later buried there.]

‘Is … ]

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important …

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States. James Madison
Federalist Papers #45