If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot therefore maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

The office of government is not to confer happiness but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

We should reject big government and look inside ourselves for all the things that built this country into what it was.

A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence the morality the justice and the interest of the people themselves.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

Mankind when left to themselves are unfit for their own government.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials but the voters of this country.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And of course sometimes the government confirms their opinion.