‘Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first then you are a parasite; is the second then you are an oasis in a desert.’
‘A star for every State and a State for every star.’
‘Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it…. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power not the increase of it.’
‘I go to the chair of government with feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.’
‘When reading a speech Learn to read slow: all other graces Will follow in their proper places.’
‘In general the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.’
‘Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front….The power of the Federal Government would [...]
‘Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.’
‘There is a kind of dictatorship that can come about through a creeping paralysis of thought readiness to accept paternalistic measures by government and along with those measures comes a surrender of our own responsibilities and therefore a surrender of our own thought over our own lives and our own right to exercise the vote. [...]
‘How many of us are waiting for the opportunity to do some great thing for the betterment of our community forgetting that the solution of the problem requires only the active intelligent fulfillment of individual civic duty. The only things which are wrong about our Government are the things which are wrong with you and [...]