“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government.”

- James Madison (Federalist Papers #51)

“America is the greatest country ever. We had the greatest [U.S. Constitution] document, we’ve had the most amount of freedom and the most amount of prosperity. We have a lot of goodness, but you can’t spread goodness with force. So, we cancel out all our goodness when we go around telling people that they either do it our way or we’ll bomb you; if you do it our way, we’ll give you money. That is not what made America great. America is great because we have a great institution and great traditions. We believe in freedom… but we’ve lost our way.”

- Congressman Ron Paul

“The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value. Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress is authorized by the Constitution to make any form of paper money legal tender. The present issue of United States notes has been sustained by the necessities of war; but such paper should depend for its value and currency upon its convenience in use and its prompt redemption in coin at the will of the holder, and not upon its compulsory circulation. These notes are not money, but promises to pay money. If the holders demand it, the promise should be kept.”

- James Garfield (Inaugural Address - 1881)

“Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”

– William Penn

“None are so hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

- Johann von Goethe

“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they also confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.  There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.”

-  John Maynard Keynes

“There is a limit to the taxing power of a State beyond which increased rates produce decreased revenue. If that be exceeded intangible securities and other personal property become driven out of its jurisdiction, industry cannot meet its less burdened competitors, and no capital will be found for enlarging old or starting new enterprises. Such a condition means first stagnation, then decay and dissolution. There is before us a danger that our resources may be taxed out of existence and our prosperity destroyed.”

- Calvin Coolidge

“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.”

- Sir Winston Churchill

“If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They’ll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

In President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, on January 17, 1961, he gave this solemn warning to the nation, in regards to the rising military industry, in The United States:

‎”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

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“The time is now near at hand which will probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves, whether they are to have any property they can call their own, or whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed and they consigned to a state of wretchedness from which they cannot be delivered. Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance or the most abject submission.”

- General George Washington (Address to the Continental Army before the Battle of Long Island)

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

- Senator Barack Obama (2006)

“It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.”

- Ronald Reagan (First Inaugural Address)

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

- Alexis de Tocqueville

‎”If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”

- Governor Ronald Reagan (1975 interview with Reason Magazine)

Further Reading:
Classical Liberalism

“On every question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.”

– F.A. Hayek

“When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is their interest to go to war. Were the money which it has cost to gain, at the close of a long war, a little town or a little territory, the right to cut wood here or to catch fish there, expended in improving what they already possess, in making roads, opening rivers, building ports, improving the arts and finding employment for their idle poor, it would render them much stronger, much wealthier and happier. This I hope will be our wisdom.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“The States are the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace”

- Thomas Paine

“It is better to know the worst, and provide for it, than to delude ourselves with false hope.”

- Patrick Henry