Selected Quotations

  • “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” –John Adams

[1] “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” -Samuel Adams

[2] “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” -Milton Friedman

[3] “It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.” -Thomas Paine

[4] “A claim for equality of material possession can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.” -F. A. Hayek

  • “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” –Thomas Jefferson
  • “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” –Alexis de Tocqueville
  • “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” –Thomas Jefferson
  • “Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have . . . The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” –Thomas Jefferson
  • “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” –Edmund Burke
  • “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” –Samuel Adams
  • “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” –Benjamin Franklin
  • “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” –James Madison
  • “It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.” –Thomas Paine
  • “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death! –Patrick Henry
  • “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government…” –Thomas Jefferson
  • “As long as property exists, it will accumulate in individuals and families. As long as marriage exists, knowledge, property and influence will accumulate in families.” –John Adams
  • “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” –Thomas Jefferson
  • “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” –Thomas Jefferson
  • “The more the state “plans” the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” –F. A. Hayek
  • “‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.” –F. A. Hayek
  • “There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.” –F. A. Hayek
  • “Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.” –Alexander Hamilton

*Many of the quotations cited from the founding fathers were provided by The Patriot Post (PatriotPost.US)