“Big Government means small citizens: it corrodes the integrity of a people, catastrophically.”

“...small government gives you big freedoms--and Big Government leaves you with very little freedom. The opposite of Big Government is not small government, but Big Liberty. The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion-dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher--and you make it very difficult ever to change back.”

“The small meannesses bred by the law of competition corrode men's character as rust spoils steel.”

“It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.”

“Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.”

“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”