Famous, and some Not So Famous, Quotes

This section guides you to public and private resources to learn more about our Government

Cicero: 55 BC

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

Niccolo Machiavelli: May 3, 1469 – June 1527:

From this arises an argument: whether it is better to be loved than feared. I reply that one should like to be both one and the other; but since it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

Ben Franklin: Jan 17, 1706 – Apr 17,1790:

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Samuel Adams: Sept 27, 1722 – Oct 2, 1803

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

James Otis Jr: Feb 5, 1725 – May 23, 1783:

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle.

Edmund Burke: Jan 12, 1729 – July 1797:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Patrick Henry: May 29, 1736 – Jun 6, 1799:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Thomas Paine Feb 9, 1737- June 8, 1809:

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable.

Benjamin Rush: Dec 24, 1745 – Apr 19, 1813:

Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families.

James Madison: Mar 16, 1751 – Jun 28, 1836:

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.

William Henry Harrison: Feb 9, 1773 – Apr 4, 1841:

The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital… if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what is has enacted today

Stephen Decatur: Jan 5, 1779 – Mar 22, 1820:

Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!

Millard Fillmore: Jan 7, 1800 – Mar 8, 1874:

It is not strange… to mistake change for progress.

Alexis de Tocqueville: July 29, 1805 – Apr 16, 1859:

The America Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

John Stuart Mill: May 20, 1806 – May 8, 1873:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Reverend William Boetcker: 1873 – 1962:

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.

You cannot establish security on borrowed money.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.

Somerset Maugham: Jan 25, 1874 – Dec 16, 1965:

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.

Winston Churchill: Nov 30, 1874 – Jan 24 1965:

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

A nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Will and Ariel Durant: William James Durant Nov 5 1885 – Nov 7, 1981 and Ariel ( Chaya Kaufman) Durant May 10, 1898 – Oct 25, 1981:

Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.

George Orwell: (Eric Arthur Blair) Jun 25, 1903 – Jan 21, 1950:

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Gen. Curtis LeMay: Nov 15, 1906 – Oct 1, 1990:

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.

Barry Goldwater: Jan 1, 1909 – May 29, 1998:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything.

William F. Buckley: Nov 24, 1925 – Feb 27, 2008:

I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard.

Martin Luther King: Jan 15, 1929 – Apr 4, 1968:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Adrian Rogers: Sep 12, 1931 – Nov 15, 2005:

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Teddy Roosevelt: Nov13, 1887 – July 12, 1944:

Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.

Gen. William T. Sherman: Feb 8, 1820 – Feb 14, 1891:

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

Gen George S. Patton: Nov 11, 1885 – Dec 21, 1945:

The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

Ronald Reagan: Feb 6, 1911 – Jun 5, 2004:

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggressions is cheap.

Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.
We don’t have a trillion dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion dollar debt because we spend too much.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are; I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

I hope we once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.

Man is not free unless the government is limited.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

John F. Kennedy: May 29, 1917 – Nov 22, 1963:

Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life.

Margaret Thatcher: Oct 13, 1925 -

Conservatives have excellent credentials to speak about human rights. By our efforts and with precious little help from self-styled liberals, we were largely responsible for securing liberty for a substantial share of the world’s population and defending it for most of the rest.

To be free is better than to be un-free – always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect.

Yet the basic fact remains every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost. That is why, like marriage (in the Prayer Book’s words) regulation should not be enterprise, nor taken in hand, undividedly, lightly, or wantonly".

The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

Thomas Sowell: June 30, 1930 -

There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.

Rush Limbaugh: Jan 12, 1951 -

Compassion is defined not by how many people are on the government dole but by how many people no longer need government assistance.

The world’s biggest problem is the unequal distribution of capitalism. If there were capitalism everywhere, you wouldn’t have food shortages.