Of Government
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?"
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1781
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defence, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man's deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defence. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbour, provided your gang is bigger than his.
Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged