The notion of a farseeing and despotic statesman, who can lay down plans for ages yet unborn, is a fancy generated by the pride of the human intellect to which facts give no support.

Source: Walter Bagehot

Topics: Dictatorships

America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to “the common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.

Source: Ayn Rand

Topics: America, Heritage; Capitalism; Progress; Prosperity

American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected.

Source: Thomas Sowell

Topics: America, Heritage; Capitalism; Progress; Prosperity

People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.

Source: Frederic Bastiat

Topics: Government, Spending; Taxes

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, showers its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.

Source: Andrew Jackson

Topics: Government, Limited

The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government.

Source: Rose Wilder Lane

Topics: Force; Government

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

Source: Ludwig von Mises

Topics: Government, Loss of Freedom; Government, Power

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Source: Ayn Rand

Topics: Government, Loss of Freedom; Government, Power; Government, Tyranny

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.

Source: Ayn Rand

Topics: Government; Power

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