Top 100 Free Government Quotes
#1. 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
#2. No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of partiotism.
Andrew Jackson
#3. 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
#4. The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government.
Sam Houston
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. In a free government the demand for moral qualities should be made superior to that of talents.
Andrew Jackson
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. A government which requires of the people the contribution of the bulk of their substance and rewards cannot be classed as a free government ...
Calvin Coolidge
#13. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives.
Abraham Lincoln
#14. Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism - free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence;
Thomas Jefferson
#15. The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency. We have had liberty enough - too much perhaps in some respects - but at all events, liberty to our hearts content.
Thomas D
#16. The object of every free government is the public good, and all lesser interests yield to it. That of every tyrannical government, is the happiness and aggrandizement of one, or a few, and to this the public felicity, and every other interest must submit.
Marcus Junius Brutus The Younger
#17. Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.
Herbert Hoover
#18. God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world.
Millard Fillmore
#19. Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government.
Thomas Jefferson
#20. In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.
Alexander Hamilton
#21. The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation.
Woodrow Wilson
#22. An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government.
James Madison
#23. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue.
George Mason
#24. In vain shall Great Britain confer upon her colonies the free government and liberal principles of legislation, for which she is distinguished, if she do not carry with her the revelations of God.
John Strachan
#25. If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
Edmund Burke
#26. country devoid of natural resources, but which enjoys peace, a fair judicial system and a free government is likely to receive a high credit rating. As such, it may be able to raise enough cheap capital to support a good education system and foster a flourishing high-tech industry. The
Yuval Noah Harari
#27. Free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands, and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#28. The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.
John Adams
#30. It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.
George Washington
#31. In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.
John Marshall
#32. We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.
Abraham Lincoln
#33. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
Thomas Jefferson
#34. The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.
James Madison
#35. By this action, the Government has proved that so long as it exists, none of us are truly free. Government and freedom are mutually exclusive. So if we value freedom, there's only one conclusion. It's time to get rid of this leftover relic we call Government.
Max Barry
#36. Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?
{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821}
John Adams
#37. The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world.
George Washington
#38. Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.
Benjamin Franklin
#39. Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who do not like free government, that here we count heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also ...
William McKinley
#40. [I]n the next place, to show that unless these departments be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation which the maxim requires, as essential to a free government, can never in practice be duly maintained.
James Madison
#41. I am for reformation by emigration. The emigration of the mind before the revolution of the state. The soul and mind must be free before one has a right to be a member of a free government.
Ameen Rihani
#42. There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
John Adams
#43. When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.
Grover Cleveland
#44. Large and permanent military establishments ... are forbidden by the principles of free government, and against the necessity of which the militia were meant to be a constitutional bulwark.
James Madison
#45. In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed.
Noah Webster
#46. Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you can;but never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.
Lord Chesterfield
#47. The First Amendment provides the only kind of security system that can preserve a free government - one that leaves the way wide open for people to favor, discuss, advocate, or incite causes and doctrines however obnoxious and antagonistic such views may be to the rest of us.
Hugo Black
#48. A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.
James Madison
#49. After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government.
Calvin Coolidge
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government.
Milton Friedman
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.
Harry Browne
#56. 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
#57. [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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
Herbert Marcuse
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.
Herbert Hoover
#65. 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
#66. Free speech is a restraint on government; not an incitement to the citizen.
David McCullough
#67. Everything you heard about me is true ... I am not a free marketer ... I believe in the heavy hand of government.
Bill De Blasio
#68. , 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. People like getting what they think is free stuff from government.
John Stossel
#74. 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
#75. Cuba ought to be free and independent, and the government should be turned over to the Cuban people.
William McKinley
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.
James Madison
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. 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
#90. Religion is the only solid Base of morals and that Morals are the only possible Support of free governments.
Gouverneur Morris
#91. In a free country, government is a dull and onerous responsibility. It is a parent-teacher conference.
P. J. O'Rourke
#92. Free enterprise makes people prosperous, all people prosperous, and big government makes people poorer.
Marco Rubio
#93. 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
#94. If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled.
Ayn Rand
#95. 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
#96. A government is free in proportion to the rights it guarantees to the minority.
Alf Landon
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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
