These limited government quotes will inspire you. In political philosophy, limited government is the concept of a government limited in power. It is a key concept in the history of liberalism.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging limited government quotes, limited government sayings, and limited government proverbs.
Best Limited Government Quotes
- “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“The truth was that all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” ~ James Madison
- “The truth was that all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” ~ James Madison
- “The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.” ~ George Washington
- “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions” ~ Daniel Webster
- “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” ~ Abraham Lincoln , Limited government quotes from the constitution
- “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“Government is best which governs least” ~ Thomas Paine
- “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” ~ James Madison
- “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” ~ H. L. Mencken
- “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
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“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.” ~ James Madison
- “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.” ~ Thomas Paine
- “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you!” ~ Pericles
- “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” ~ Mark Twain
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“It is not the function of 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 H. Jackson
- “The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.” ~ John Locke
- “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” ~ Norman Thomas
- “The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all . . . . It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain” ~ Frederic Bastiat
- “A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
- “Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.” ~ W. Somerset Maugham
- “Man is not free unless government is limited.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” ~ James Madison
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“A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you.” ~ Ramsey Clark
- “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
- “That government is best which governs least.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas.” ~ Ron Paul
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“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
- “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters” ~ Daniel Webster
- “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
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.” ~ Tom Clancy
- “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” ~ Learned Hand
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“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.” ~ Charles A. Beard
- “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.” ~ Noah Webster
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“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “When all government …in little as in great things… shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
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“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.” ~ Calvin Coolidge
- “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” ~ Joseph Story
- “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” ~ James Madison
- “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.” ~ John Stuart Mill
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“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” ~ Patrick Henry
- “Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
- “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be tomorrow.” ~ Alexander Hamilton
- “Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.” ~ James Madison
- “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” ~ C. S. Lewis
