“Anyone who is so old-fashioned as to stop and think, instead of being swept along by rhetoric, can understand that a budget– any budget– is not a record of hard facts but a projection of future financial plans. A budget tells us what will happen if everything works out according to plan.”  Thomas Sowell  Talking Points vs. Realty

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“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

Dr. Adrian Pierce Rogers of Love Worth Finding Ministries, Pastor Emeritus of Bellevue Baptist Church.

“[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.”

–George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 14 June 1778

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
Thomas Jefferson

“It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition.”

–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 19 August 1785

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men,
undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”  - Thomas Paine

“’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” —Thomas Paine 

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken

“Only a moral and virtuous people are capable of freedom. The more corrupt and vicious a society becomes, the more it has need of masters.” Ben Franklin

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” —Samuel Adams

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only
as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my
neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither
picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Nothing is more essential… than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable character.” —Samuel Adams

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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 consciences.” C.S. Lewis

“It 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.” John Adams

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” –James Madison

“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.” Samuel Adams

“We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.” Ronald Reagan Address to National Association of Realtors, March 28, 1982

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” Ronald Reagan

“Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil.” —Doug Patton

“Posterity — you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” John Quincy Adams

“America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier,exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” James Madison

“Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws. He is obliged, consequently, to contribute his share to the expense of this protection; and to give his personal service, or an equivalent, when necessary. But no part of the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people. In fine, the people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent.”

– John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

“Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be…”

John Adams

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