Madison, Jefferson, Bastiat & Sobran

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."
--James Madison

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
--Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
--Thomas Jefferson

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
--Thomas Jefferson

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
--Frédéric Bastiat

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
--Frederic Bastiat

"If you want the government to intervene domestically you’re a liberal, if you want the government to intervene abroad you’re a conservative, if you want the government to intervene both domestically and abroad you’re a moderate, and if you don’t want the government to intervene either domestically or abroad you’re an extremist."
--Joe Sobran