Quotes about Government

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

The government is best which governs least.

A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

That government is best which governs least.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.