Liberty Quotes

"[A]s all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ..." -Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father Source: before the Constitutional Convention, June 2, 1787.
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Benjamin.Franklin.Quote.C4AE

"The history of the welfare state is the history of public enterprise pushing out private organization. The impact was largely unintentional, but natural and inevitable. Higher taxes left individuals with less money to give; government’s assumption of responsibility for providing welfare shriveled the perceived duty of individuals to respond to their neighbors’ needs; and the availability of public programs gave recipients an alternative to private assistance, one which did not challenge recipients to reform their destructive behavior." -Doug Bandow (1954- ) columnist, author, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute Source: National Service -- or Government Service?, Policy Review, P. 34, September-October, 1996
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Doug.Bandow.Quote.9136

"At home, fellow citizens, you best know whether we have done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These covering our land with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of produce and property." -Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Source: Second Inaugural Address
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.6726