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• One thing is that, unlike any other Western democracy that I know of, this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of government.
  We are constituted not for efficient operation of government, but for minimizing the possibility of abuse of power....
• Love your country, but never trust its government. -- Robert A. Heinlein.
• The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy--a policy worthy of imitation.
  All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship....
• All governments are more or less combinations against the people.
  . .and as rulers have no more virtue than the ruled....
• Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.
  -- Marquis de Lafayette, on the birth of the United State...
• 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 calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer....
• The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law.
  For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced....
• The true strength of a country is best demonstrated by the willingness of its government to tolerate challenges from it's own citizens.
• Love your country but never trust its government.
  -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania...