Federal Liberty Quotes & Sayings

The new puritans have been highly successful. All of the preconditions for new prohibitions on alcohol and tobacco are in place ... Indeed, the future agenda of the federal government has already been established to outlaw alcohol and tobacco in the near future ... If current trends persist, America will be moving toward stricter prohibitions, greater restrictions, and more centralized control over consumption. This represents an erosion of liberty at its most fundamental level. — Mark Thornton

Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government? — Walter E. Williams

I am unable to conceive that the state legislatures which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituencies. — James Madison

It [the Constitution] didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, it says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted. — Barack Obama

The role of the federal government is to protect our liberties. That means they should protect our religious liberties to do what we want; our intellectual liberty, but it also should protect our right to do to our body what we want, you know, what we take into our bodies. — Ron Paul

To bring about government by oligarchy, masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our Federal government ... The individual sovereignty of our states must first be destroyed. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Can social progress be made without government?
It's like saying 'can happiness be achieved without the initiation of violence? Can romance be achieved without rape? Can profitability be achieved without theft? Can economic growth be achieved without the mass indebted enslavement and counterfeiting of the federal reserve?'. — Stefan Molyneux

I will not be in the position of having management dictated to by labor. — Charles M. Schwab

[M]y conception of liberty does not permit an individual citizen or a group of citizens to commit acts of depredation against nature in such a way as to harm their neighbors and especially to harm the future generations of Americans. If many years ago we had had the necessary knowledge, and especially the necessary willingness on the part of the Federal Government, we would have saved a sum, a sum of money which has cost the taxpayers of America two billion dollars. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Despite the enormous role that local government plays in our daily lives, the constitution makes not one mention of it. — Anthony Albanese

I don't see any justification for the federal government owning land, other than the Statue of Liberty and maybe a few parks, maybe a few refuges. But to just own land to do nothing with it I think is a disservice to the Constitution. — Don Young

As it began, rain ended quickly in Yorkshire. There was no gradual waning of water, no silent mist to ease the way from heavy drops to dry skies. Instead, there was a simple change, like the snuffing of a candle. One moment, there was pounding rain, and the next ... silence. — Sarah MacLean

As Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute says, what these cases have in common is a view by the Justice Department that "federal power is virtually unlimited: Citizens must subsume their liberty to whatever the experts in a given field determine the best or most useful policy to be. — John Fund

Generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you. But it doesn't say what the state or federal government must do on your behalf. — Barack Obama

Reviewers and critics can be overly cynical. If something the least bit sentimental comes up, they'll often start flying off the handle. But I'm like, 'Wait a minute, you've had those times in your life. Everybody has.' — Gilbert Hernandez

I've been involved in the intelligence side of the federal government for a long time. We all know that we have to have a balance between security to protect the American people and liberty. We take an oath to protect and defend the constitution and the American people. — Barack Obama

Jefferson feared that Hamilton had plans radically at odds with the Constitution. As he saw it, Hamilton wanted to warp the federal government out of constitutional shape, converting it into a copy of the British government, built on debt, corruption, and influence. Hamilton's goal, Jefferson charged, was to ally the rich and well born with the government at the people's expense, creating a corrupt aristocracy leagued with the government against the people and destroying the virtue that was the basis of republican government. Only a republic could preserve liberty, Jefferson insisted, and only virtue among the people could preserve a republic. — R.B. Bernstein

It is true that liberty is not free, nor is it easy. But tyranny - even varying degrees of it - is much more difficult, and much more expensive. The time has come to rein in the federal government, put it on a crash diet, and let the people keep their money and their liberty. — Ron Paul

Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty. — Ron Paul

The swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no ... when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart ... and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape ... or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth - then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth. — Walt Whitman

I think it is wrong for the federal government to force Christian individuals, businesses, pastors, churches to participate in wedding ceremonies that violate our sincerely held religious beliefs. We have to stand up and fight for religious liberty. That's where this fight is going. — Bobby Jindal

We were endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We were not endowed by the Federal Government. We were not endowed by entitlements. We were not endowed by pork barrel spending; we were not endowed by budgetary earmarks. — Lawrence Kudlow

It becomes all therefore who are friends of a Government based on free principles to reflect, that by denying the possibility of a system partly federal and partly consolidated, and who would convert ours into one either wholly federal or wholly consolidated, in neither of which forms have individual rights, public order, and external safety, been all duly maintained, they aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth. — James Madison

Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency. — Charles Evans Hughes

Our situation is truly delicate & critical. On the one hand we are in need of a strong federal government founded on principles that will support the prosperity & union of the colonies. On the other we have struggled for liberty & made costly sacrifices at her shrine and there are still many among us who revere her name to much to relinquish (beyond a certain medium) the rights of man for the dignity of government. — Mercy Otis Warren

And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions. — Samuel Adams

If the Tenth Amendment were still taken seriously, most of the federal government's present activities would not exist. That's why no one in Washington ever mentions it. — Thomas Woods

The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution. — Ronald Reagan

The State Legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this Government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power, than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a Federal Government admit the State Legislatures to be sure guardians of the people's liberty. — James Madison

The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed unanimously in the House, won 97 votes in the Senate, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Twenty states have passed their own versions of this law, and 11 additional ones have religious-liberty protections that state courts have interpreted to provide a similar level of protection. — Edwin Meese

The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of citizens of the United States; and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess. — Thomas Jefferson

Weeds are luckier than flowers because they are not killed for their beauties! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I trust the federal government not to trample on civil liberties. — Tucker Carlson

New Zealand and SA should take this dimension into account, the skills South Africans are presently contributing to New Zealand. — Helen Clark

Either 'the group' is superior or the individual is superior. Marxism, socialism, fascism, and pure democracy are all forms that give power to 'the group' and then use violence to force individuals to obey the dictates of 'the group'. The concept of liberty is one in which the individual - in the exercise of his unalienable rights - is superior to every and all powers. That is what the Founders intended. That is what we are supposed to have under the 'contracts' of the Declaration of Independence and the state and federal constitutions. That is what I am entitled to as an American. That is what I insist upon. And that is what I will kill for. — Dave Champion