"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." - President Harry Truman

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master." - President George Washington

"All power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." - Lord Acton

"Comrade, if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." - Lavrenti Beria, chief of the NKVD under Stalin

"If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed" - President George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796

"The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong. The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority." - Alexis DeToqueville

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." - Thomas Paine

"The utterly insufferable arrogance of power, and the need for it, is an absolute fact of the human condition. -- Nothing can be done about it. - Just as the poor shall always be with us, so shall we have these infinitely shrewd imbeciles who live to lay down their version of 'the law' to others." -unknown-

I had already seen something of Liberalism in America as a kind of glorified mugwumpery.” – Albert Jay Nock

But I was chiefly interested in the basic theory of Liberalism.This seemed to be that the State is no worse than a degenerate or perverted institution, beneficent in its original intention, and susceptible of restoration by the simple exdient of ‘putting good men in office.’– Albert Jay Nock

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." - Daniel Webster

"There's no limit to how high a man can go as long as he doesn't care who gets the credit." – Ronal Reagan

"There are some ideas so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them." – George Orwell

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill

We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.- Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 1989.

If you love wealth more than liberty, and if you prefer the tranquility of servitude rather than the animated contest of freedom, then go home in peace. We seek neither your counsel nor your arms. But bend down and lick the hands that feed you; and may your chains rest lightly upon you. And may posterity forget that you were our countryman. - Samuel Adams

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." - Barry Goldwater, "The Conscience of a Conservative"

“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.” ― Robert A. Heinlein