Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2021-01-27 Jan 27, 2021I repeat... that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist.~ Benjamin DisraeliBut constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.~ Charles-Louis de SecondatGovernment has within it a tendency to abuse its powers.~ John C. Calhoun Jan 26, 2021The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this -- that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.~ Lysander SpoonerThe law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power; laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power.~ Thomas CooperUnder our form of government, the legislature is not supreme ... like other departments of government, it can only exercise such powers as have been delegated to it, and when it steps beyond that boundary, its acts, like those of the most humble magistrate in the state who transcends his jurisdiction, are utterly void.~ Billings v. Hall Jan 25, 2021If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.~ Alexis de TocquevilleAs the organized Left gained cultural power, it turned into a monster that found perpetual victimhood, combined with thought and speech control, the most efficient way to hold on to that power. Suddenly it was the Left, the protector of liberty, that was setting rules about what could and could not be said or even thought.~ Tammy BruceA people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.~ William O. Douglas Jan 22, 2021It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.~ Edmund BurkeEither you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.~ F. Scott FitzgeraldIt should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.~ John Adams Jan 21, 2021It [government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.~ Alexis de TocquevilleThese decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.~ AnacharsisArticle I, Section 8, of the Constitution, of course, lays out the delegated, enumerated, and therefore limited powers of Congress. Only through a deliberate misreading of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution has the federal government been allowed to overreach its authority and extend its tendrils into every corner of civil society.~ Edward H. Crane Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print