Alan K. Simpson Quotes

Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.

If you aren't free to protect yourself when the government puts its thumb on that freedom, then you're not free at all.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

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

My government will protect all liberties but one—the liberty to do away with other liberties.

The real strength of the democratic theory in opposition to the fascist or communist is that the fascist frankly states that certain people will tell other people what they shall do to be happy, and those other people have little or nothing to say about it. In theory the communists were to do everything in common, in practice a small group there also tells other people what they shall do to achieve their objectives. So far more nearly than any other form of government, the democratic form has allowed people to shape their own government

When an American government takes on characteristics that elevate the state above the individual, it must be vigorously opposed as a form of, or step toward, tyranny.

The worst way to defend our freedom is to let our leaders start taking away our freedoms! It is exactly during times like these [a national crisis] that we need more freedom of speech, a strong and critical press, and a citizenry that is not afraid to stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes.

A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

The Democratic Party will never desert the freedoms of our people under the guise of pretending to protect them.

The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

The more laws that governments pass, the less individual freedom there is. Any student of history will tell you that. Totalitarian countries ban pretty much everything.

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

If a free society is ever destroyed in America, it will be done in the name of one particular vision of liberty and freedom.

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

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

The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.

People have rights and government must be kept from trampling on them.

He who opposes the public liberty overthrows his own.

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

Our founding fathers undertook to create a country based on a notion of individual liberty because they were fleeing from countries in Europe where the government held too much power. They would look at what's happening today in John Ashcroft's Justice Department and say, 'Where have we gone wrong?'

This is the first time that the Federal Government has told a free people what kind of government they must have. If they can do that, they can tell you what time to go to bed, what time to get up, and whether to have pork and beans for lunch.

Every stupid policeman, fanatical judge, or moralist for revenue, can successfully abridge freedom of speech by the lawless use of power, and the hysterical mob of pretending lovers of liberty and democracy will stand by an applaud, --so low have we fallen since our American Constitutions were written. We see how the very essence of tyranny thrives under the forms of democracy

It doesn’t keep us safe and it doesn’t keep us free if we give up our liberties to the government.

Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt. Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?