Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic.
Freedom is the nature of man; every person is self-controlling and himself responsible for his thoughts, his speech, his acts.
Rose Wilder Lane, Discovery of Freedom: Man’s Struggle Against Authority (1943).
J.-B. Say, A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition, 1832), Chapter XVII, Section I, p. 168.
A tax can never be favorable to the public welfare, except by the good use that is made of its proceeds.
While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing is ours except time.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Epistles to Lucilius.
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Benedict de Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus (1667), Chapter Five, as liberally rendered in A Natural History of Peace (1996) by Thomas Gregor.