Strom Thurmond Quotes

If two people of the same sex fall in love and want to marry, why would our government stand in their way?

It's often difficult for conservatives to separate overall government intervention from a question as simple as the census.

We just simply want to get back to basics, get - restore essentially the constitutional foundation of the country, and that means the federal government becoming less onerous, less involved in every - basically every item of our lives. And what that means is there does have to be some transition.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

People in Eastern Washington should be confident in knowing that the government will not come and seize their property or farm land. Legislation is needed to correct this decision and restore the principle of having limited government involvement.

I think the American people have become more reliant upon government and less reliant upon themselves and that they now tend to put security ahead of freedom, but I think freedom is the most important aspect of our lives.

But look what happens when the government gives you rights. When the government gives you rights, unlike when God gives you rights, the government can take them away. When government gives you rights, the government can tell you how to exercise those rights.

No American conservative has ever argued that the government should never be involved in peoples' lives. That is anarchy, and we don't argue for that.

We should have a very limited federal government.

I believe that government is too large, costs too much, spends too much, and has too much regulatory power in our lives.

Throughout American history many of our social gains and much of our progress toward democracy were made possible by the active intervention of the federal government.

Before my tenure, people didn't seem to think that citizens had a right to limit the size of their government.

Under the Constitution, the Militia must ever be estimated the bulwark of civil and individual liberty. Directed by public sentiment, it will guard us from the oppression of power; regulated by wisdom, and patronized by the Government, it will secure us from anarchy; officered, trained and supported by the States, it is the guarantee of their sovereignty and union; and properly armed and disciplined, ... it forms an impenetrable barrier to the invader.

I am going to make Washington as irrelevant to your lives as possible

The industrial revolution has made necessary changes in the methods and distribution of the profits of production; it is my bottommost faith that it has not made necessary changes in our old theories of individual rights against government.

When the government acts to preserve and defend certain rights, it may take actions that some people see as just the opposite – as the violation of their rights.

Any government intrusion into the economy deters the alleged beneficiaries from voicing their views or participating in civic life.

'Freedom' means a lot to conservatives, but they have such a narrow sense of what it means. They think a lot about freedom from - freedom from government, freedom from regulation - and precious little about freedom to. Freedom to is absolutely something that has to be safeguarded by good government, just as it could be impaired by bad government.

It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.

If people cannot limit government they will not for long be free.

I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.

You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.

[J]ust because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right.

I've been involved in the intelligence side of the federal government for a long time. We all know that we have to have a balance between security to protect the American people and liberty. We take an oath to protect and defend the constitution and the American people.