There are more instances of the abridgement of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. Benjamin Franklin They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Justice Louis Brandeis Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent.
Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at becoming the government. Milton Friedman Force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with the most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. In modern economies, profits often are determined more by government subsidies, taxes and regulations than by traditional management or entrepreneurial skills.