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

It makes no difference whether government controls allegedly favor the interests of labor or business, of the poor or the rich, of a special class or a special race: the results are the same. The notion that a dictatorship can benefit any one social group at the expense of others is a worn remnant of the Marxist mythology of class warfare, refuted by half a century of factual evidence. All men are victims and losers under a dictatorship; nobody wins-except the ruling clique.

Source: Ayn Rand

Topics: Class Warfare; Government, Dictatorship

And let me say that all men who say that Congress has no power to restore and defend the rights of her citizens have not the love of the truth abiding in them. Congress has power to protect the nation against foreign invasion and internal broil; and whenever that body passes an act to maintain right with any power, or to restore right to any portion of her citizens, it is the supreme law of the land; and should a State refuse submission, that State is guilty of insurrection or rebellion, and the President has as much power to repel it as Washington had to march against the “whisky boys at Pittsburgh,” or General Jackson had to send an armed force to suppress the rebellion of South Carolina. To close, I would admonish you, before you let your “candor compel” you again to write upon a subject great as the salvation of man, consequential as the life of the Savior, broad as the principles of eternal truth, and valuable as the jewels of eternity, to read in the 8th section and 1st article of the Constitution of the United States, the first, fourteenth and seventeenth “specific” and not very “limited powers” of the Federal Government, what can be done to protect the lives, property and rights of a virtuous people, when the administrators of the law and law-makers are unbought by bribes, uncorrupted by patronage, untempted by gold, unawed by fear, and uncontaminated tangling alliances—even like Caesar’s wife, not only unspotted, but unsuspected: And God, who cooled the heat of a Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace or shut the mouths of lions for the honor of a Daniel, will raise your mind above the narrow notion that the General Government has no power, to the sublime idea that Congress, with the President as Executor, is as almighty in its sphere as Jehovah is in his. With great respect, I have the honor to be Your obedient servant, JOSEPH SMITH. HON. (“MR”) J. C. CALHOUN, Fort Hill, S. C.

Source: Joseph Smith
History of the Church, Volume 6, Chapter 7

Topics: Government, Power; Government, Vertical Separation

Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.

Source: Walter Lippmann

Topics: Rights

Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Government the real power lies in the majority of the community...

Source: James Madison

Topics: Government, Oppression

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