Free Government Quotes

#1. America is still a free country - nobody is saying it isn't - but we accept that, in the face of discernible risk, or even imaginable risk, the government has an obligation to step in and save us.

Patrick Bedard

#2. No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

Noah Webster

#3. I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government.

Milton Friedman

#4. I am sometimes accused of being a dictator because I provoked the extraordinary elections by nominating the interim government. Can you imagine any dictator who provokes free elections in his own country?

Milos Zeman

#5. The government that came into power after the April 1994 elections was going to need a budget. It was drafted by our finance minister, Derek Keys, and he convinced them of the necessity to stay within the free-market principles that had been in force in South Africa for decades.

F. W. De Klerk

#6. The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

Harry Browne

#7. Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals ...

Emma Goldman

#8. [Political] conventions lend themselves to pandering, as few politicians can resist the temptation to tell a national television audience how well they will run the country if elected. The problem is that government is not supposed to run the country - we're supposed to be free.

Ron Paul

#9. I do not want to live under a philanthropy. I do not want to be taken care of by the government ... We do not want a benevolent government. We want a free and a just government.

Woodrow Wilson

#10. Everybody in America has been dependent on the government at some time. We owe everybody in America the right to vote and access to capital. What I say is, let's make America work, let's make democracy and free enterprise work for everybody.

Andrew Young

#11. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

Herbert Marcuse

#12. You can't ignore the reality that faith and family, those two things are integral parts of having limited government, lower taxes, and free societies.

Rick Santorum

#13. The government has no business knowing how much money we make and how we made it. It's none of their business. And that's why I believe that manufacturing is critical. If we can't feed ourselves, fuel ourselves and fight for ourselves, we can't be free.

Mike Huckabee

#14. What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press.

Esther Dyson

#15. Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.

Herbert Hoover

#16. Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.

Jasper Fforde

#17. Free speech is a restraint on government; not an incitement to the citizen.

David McCullough

#18. Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics ... derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.

Benjamin Franklin

#19. Everything you heard about me is true ... I am not a free marketer ... I believe in the heavy hand of government.

Bill De Blasio

#20. , I believe in some type of free market system. I just don't think you'll find an example of one completely free from government intervention.

Kenneth Eade

#21. No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of partiotism.

Andrew Jackson

#22. Capitalism is not a form of government. Capitalism is a symptom of freedom. It is the result of individual rights, which include property rights.

A.E. Samaan

#23. The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#24. Investing capital in the free market creates innovation, businesses, jobs and economic growth. Investing capital in the government creates more bureaucracy, more paperwork and inefficiency.

Michael Ramirez

#25. The danger to a free society is not the guns owned by the citizens but an unconstrained government ... An armed society is a self-governing society, just as a disarmed people are vulnerable to arbitrary power of every kind.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#26. People like getting what they think is free stuff from government.

John Stossel

#27. We must settle this question now
whether in a free government the minority have the right to break it up whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.

Abraham Lincoln

#28. The Government is able to afford a suitable army and a suitable navy. It may maintain them without the slightest danger to the Republic or the cause of free institutions, and fear of additional taxation ought not to change a proper policy in this regard.

William Howard Taft

#29. Cuba ought to be free and independent, and the government should be turned over to the Cuban people.

William McKinley

#30. Unchecked, government social programs are a security threat because they weaken the ultimate line of defense: the free-born citizen whose responsibilities are not subcontracted to the government.

Mark Steyn

#31. It's that Romney is taking advantage of the government's 'free stuff,' too, and has been profiting from it handsomely for a long, long time - even as he rails about the 'free stuff' that the government provides other people.

Jennifer Granholm

#32. We have a government that boasts about free education. Those of us who have scratched below the surface know it is costing us by denying opportunities for others to attend college or university.

Johann Lamont

#33. Father is strength at home, strength in government and strength overseas. Mother represents upbringing, education, the spread of civilization. Children are the lower classes, the lower races, to be brought to maturity and then set free

Theodore Roosevelt

#34. Self-government will not work unless the citizens bear the responsibility to vote in such a way that continues their freedoms and their ability to have free elections, that continues their economic prosperity. They have to vote in a way that does not trade the future for the present. This

Eric Metaxas

#35. What would be the point of being personally whole in a dismembered society, or personally healthy in a land scalped, eroded and poisoned, or personally free in a world entirely controlled by the government or enlightened by television?

Wendell Berry

#36. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.

Thomas Jefferson

#37. The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government.

Sam Houston

#38. Crime is a human behavior problem, not a mechanical problem. Furthermore, if firearms were not very useful for self-defense, then police wouldn't carry them. In a free country, if the government can go armed, so should the citizens, if they so choose.

Charley Reese

#39. Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

James Madison

#40. I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.

Barack Obama

#41. When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development.

Ai Weiwei

#42. Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.

John Adams

#43. Secondly, as a result of this political favoritism, the FDA has become a primary factor in that formula whereby cartel-oriented companies in the food and drug industry are able to use the police powers of government to harass or destroy their free-market competitors.

G. Edward Griffin

#44. In arguing against free enterprise capitalism, the collectivist always adopts the false assumption of a fixed number of jobs in that system. Conversely, in arguing for collectivism, he always assumes that there will be as many jobs as there are workers. The government will make the jobs.

Isabel Paterson

#45. The law is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish.

Frederic Bastiat

#46. Religion is the only solid Base of morals and that Morals are the only possible Support of free governments.

Gouverneur Morris

#47. In a free country, government is a dull and onerous responsibility. It is a parent-teacher conference.

P. J. O'Rourke

#48. Free enterprise makes people prosperous, all people prosperous, and big government makes people poorer.

Marco Rubio

#49. There is no such thing as a 'free' government benefit. Ask small-business owners who are footing skyrocketing bills for bottomless jobless benefits.

Michelle Malkin

#50. Some government expenditure actually makes a profit. Our theatre leads the world. Loads of tourists must be attracted by the fact that you could spend a week in London doing nothing but visit superb museums and galleries, free.

Simon Hoggart

#51. If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled.

Ayn Rand

#52. Poor man! You have many burdens on you: The burdens of your religion, of your culture, of your ignorance, of your oppressive government! Find a wild horse and watch it! You will see what is to be unburdened and free!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#53. A government is free in proportion to the rights it guarantees to the minority.

Alf Landon

#54. The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anticapitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties were eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise.

Ludwig Von Mises

#55. It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

George Washington

#56. In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.

Cal Thomas

#57. Every dollar the federal government does not take from us, every decision it does not make for us, will make our economy stronger, our lives more abundant, our future more free.

Ronald Reagan

#58. Stable government requires the free consent of those ruled. Tyranny, even the tyranny of benevolent despots, cannot bring lasting peace and prosperity. There

Ludwig Von Mises

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

Thomas Jefferson

#60. Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.

Murray Rothbard

#61. Whether we look at capitalism, taxes, business, or government, the data show a clear and consistent pattern: 70 percent of Americans support the free enterprise system and are unsupportive of big government.

Arthur C. Brooks

#62. If President Obama has his way, you won't recognize the government, the free market system, or, frankly, America as you once knew it. His admonitions and his audacious policy goals demonstrate very clear motives: equalize, discourage dissent, and become a nation of apologists.

Bob Ehrlich

#63. I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society it is none of the government's business what ideas a man puts into his mind; likewise, it should be none of its business what drugs he puts into his body.

Thomas Szasz

#64. It's clear that other problems such as [ ... ] the domination of business over government, science, thought, and society, are much bigger than non-free software.

Richard Stallman

#65. Everyone agrees that our ultimate goal is to establish a free, open and democratic Iraqi government and bring our men and women in uniform home as soon as possible.

James T. Walsh

#66. In the United States, the government is bailing out banks, intervening in the economy, yet in Latin America, the Right continues to talk about 'free markets.' It's totally outdated; they don't have arguments; they don't have any sense.

Hugo Chavez

#67. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

U.S. Congress

#68. Man is not free unless government is limited.

Ronald Reagan

#69. We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed.

Abraham Lincoln

#70. In a free government the demand for moral qualities should be made superior to that of talents.

Andrew Jackson

#71. It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas ... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, ... is fundamental to our free society.

Thurgood Marshall

#72. If I say f*** the government, some will clap because they agree and some will clap just because you said f***. I've had countless audience members offer me free drugs but I also got free hernia surgery.

Doug Stanhope

#73. Any time you read that your government is erecting tariff barriers, supporting threatened industries with subsidies, or interfering in any way with free trade between individuals or nations, you must realize that your standard of living is being lowered as a result.

John Pugsley

#74. Free enterprise has done more to reduce poverty than all the government programs dreamed up by Democrats.

Ronald Reagan

#75. The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.

William E. Simon

#76. The Internet has been seen in the West as the quintessential expression of the free exchange of ideas and information, untrammeled by government interference and increasingly global in reach. But the Chinese government has shown that the Internet can be successfully filtered and controlled.

Martin Jacques

#77. For a time, we forgot the American dream isn't one of making government bigger, it's keeping faith with the mighty spirit of free people under God

Ronald Reagan

#78. The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rule of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

Milton Friedman

#79. A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#80. If it was wise, manly, and patriotic for us to establish a free government, it is equally wise to attend to the necessary means of its preservation.

James Monroe

#81. In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant who is to move the whole machine means to regulate and manage the people is fear, by the servile dread of his power. But a free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue.

Samuel Williams

#82. My view is the less the government can do and the more freedom and opportunity you give people, that trusting people and free people and free enterprise - that America has built the greatest country in the history of the world.

Rick Santorum

#83. The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

Thomas Jefferson

#84. Not slaves," said Halyard, chuckling patronizingly. "Citizens, employed by government. They have same rights as other citizens - free speech, freedom of worship, the right to vote. Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works, controlling machines, but now machines control themselves much better.

Anonymous

#85. If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud. When we dropped the bomb, it was not our intention to kill anybody. We have bombed the British Government. The British must quit India and make her free.

Bhagat Singh

#86. If I can only live to see the American union firmly fixed, and free governments well established in our western world, and can leave to my children but a crust of bread and liberty, I shall die satisfied.

George Mason

#87. Our government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free, that civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against abuse of freedom.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#88. A free America ... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

Frank Lloyd Wright

#89. Privacy is absolutely essential to maintaining a free society. The idea that is at the foundation of the notion of privacy is that the citizen is not the tool or instrument of government - but the reverse ... If you have no privacy, it will tend to follow that you have no political freedom ...

Benno C. Schmidt Jr.

#90. As the economy faces such difficulties, more tough questions need to be asked about what the Tories would do if elected. Their ideology of free markets and small government needs challenging. That has to be part of our job.

Lucy Powell

#91. Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

Pete Stark

#92. Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.

Ian Bremmer

#93. Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy.

Ludwig Von Mises

#94. None of us have to settle for the best this administration offers - a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us.

Paul Ryan

#95. We know that government intervention in the free market, and Argentine history has shown this, absolutely ends in a boomerang.

Daniel Morgan

#96. Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.

Dorothy Thompson

#97. You ardently strive for freedom, and I do wish you were free
but, rather than for your sake, so that government won't be.

Franz Grillparzer

#98. When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame.

Jack Kemp

#99. Beginning with the stimulus, Obama has repeatedly inserted the government into the free market for political reasons - and with disastrous results.

Reince Priebus

#100. But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that's over the line, and strikingly unbalanced. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn't free at all. So screw that.

Mark Steyn