Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

If you like small government you need to work hard at having a strong national defense that is not so militant. Personal liberty is the purpose of government, to protect liberty - not to run your personal life, not to run the economy, and not to pretend that we can tell the world how they ought to live.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

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.