"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." -- Herbert Spencer

"It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master." -- Ayn Rand

"When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." -- Jonathan Swift

"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, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791

"For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute." -- H.L. Mencken

"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." --John Stuart Mill

"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error." -- Robert Houghwout Jackson, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge at the War-Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." -- Thomas Sowell

"The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs." -- F.A. Hayek

"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." -- Thomas Paine

 "One single object. . . [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Livingston, March 25, 1825

"A wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

"We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute."
-- Thomas Paine

"[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction." -- James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention [June 6, 1788]

" 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."  -- Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1776

"The State is great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." -- Frederic Bastiat