The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
-- Tacitus

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
-- William Pitt

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
-- Thomas Jefferson

It is not disease, but the physician; it is the pernicious hand of government alone which can reduce a whole people to dispair.
-- Junius

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 satisfied; 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

If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should all want bread.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
-- George Bernard Shaw

A tyrant...is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
-- Plato

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
-- Justice William O. Douglas

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
-- Mark Twain

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
-- Benjamin Franklin

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
-- John Locke

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they never use.
-- Kierkegaard

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his palace, his possessions are safe.
-- Christ, Luke 11:21

You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.
-- Japanese Admiral Yamamoto