On raising taxes: “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”
On spreading the wealth: “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
On environmentalism: “Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
On health care for all provided by government: “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
On deregulation: “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”
On change: “It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.”
On Bush: “No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.”
On the alleged patriotic duty to pay high taxes: “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
On the government bailout: “That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”
On guns: “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
On ACORN’s use of tax money to fund Democrats: “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
On restoring the so-called Fairness Doctrine: “Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”