Richard Henry Lee Quotes

All, or nearly all, the advantage there is in fixing any constitutional limits to the power of a government, is simply to give notice to the government of the point at which it will meet with resistance.

Every amendment which I am convinced will have the tendency to lesson the danger of civil liberty by the central government will receive my sincere approbation.

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

The government is supposed to conform to our will. By taking the most important thing you have, your health and your health care, and turning that over to the government, you fundamentally shift the power, a huge chunk of it, from the people to the government. This is not the direction that we want the government to go in this nation.

Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

Be most on guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

We can’t trust government to limit its powers to the Constitution.

Our devotion to individual freedom limits our readiness to give central government the power to override our traditional power structure.

The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial of essential powers of free government.

The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

People don't seem to understand that the separation of powers is not about the power of these branches; it's there to protect individual liberty - it's there to protect us from the concentration of power.

The right and the physical power of the people to resist injustice, are really the only securities that any people ever can have for their liberties. Practically no government knows any limit to its power but the endurance of the people.

If government can give you rights, government can take them away from you.

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.

There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained.

I'm not against the government. I'm against this ever-expanding government that doesn't know its limits. And that's how I see the role of the attorney general, as someone in an office that can protect you and defend the Constitution and defend state sovereignty and our individual liberty.

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

The Framers (of the Constitution) were not concerned primarily with favoring one type of government over another, but with limiting the power of government, regardless of its source.

I disapproved from the first moment... the want of a bill of rights to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government …

The American people believe that we ought to control our government. On the other hand, we've seen government more and more controlling us

There exists in modem America the necessity for protecting all of us from arbitrary action by governments more powerful and more pervasive than any in our ancestors’ time.

The greatest threat to our freedom is an all powerful federal government.