James Bovard famous quotes

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.
-- James Bovard

#Law #America #Liberty

The first step in saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose it unless fundamental political changes occur.
-- James Bovard

#Political #Liberty #Firsts

As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board.
-- James Bovard

#Rights #Long #People

It is one of the great tragedies of the US, that most learn most of what they know about the government from the government.
-- James Bovard

#Government #Tragedy

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-- James Bovard

#Humor #Two #Sheep

A democratic government that respects no limits on its power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect.
-- James Bovard

#Rights #Government #Waiting

The Federal Government is exploiting public fear to redefine the relationship between the rulers and the American people.
-- James Bovard

#Government #Usa #People

There is no virtue in denying the law of gravity, and there should be no virtue in denying the limitations of government. ... The more we glorify government, the more liberties we will lose.
-- James Bovard

#Government #Law #Liberty

Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the Presidency.
-- James Bovard

#Winning #Government #Voting

The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule.
-- James Bovard

#Father #Equality #Law

It is unfortunate that Americans are no longer aware of what the constitution says and what their rights are. Because of that, we are often very passive about what happens when the government violates those rights.
-- James Bovard

#Rights #Government #Constitution

Freedom to vote is valuable primarily as a means to safeguard other freedoms.
-- James Bovard

#Mean #Vote #Valuable

Today's citizen is obliged to find his freedom only in the narrow ruts pre-approved by his bureaucratic overlords. "Risk-free liberty" is the ideal of the Welfare State: citizens are permitted only liberties which have been declawed, defanged, neutered, certified and wrapped in benevolent restrictions.
-- James Bovard

#Risk #Liberty #Citizens

Well, one of the first things is to restore the rule of law, to place the government back under the cage of law. Another thing is to stop falling for the myth of democracy.
-- James Bovard

#Fall #Government #Law

Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority.
-- James Bovard

#Taken #Rights #Two

It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism - as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way.
-- James Bovard

#Government #People #Political

As soon as people drop the reins on government, government will leash the people.
-- James Bovard

#Government #People #Reins

There is no safe political refuge for those afraid to take responsibility for their own lives.
-- James Bovard

#Responsibility #Political #Safe

Some of the folks on both sides might be sincere, but it does seem as if it is only the opposition that cares about the Bill of Rights most of the time.
-- James Bovard

#Rights #Two Sides #Doe

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.
-- James Bovard

#Class #People #Definitions

People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.
-- James Bovard

#Selfish #Lying #Mean

Politicians nowadays treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer's patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued. It doesn't matter what untruths the people are fed because they will not long remember. But in politics, forgotten falsehoods almost guarantee new treachery.
-- James Bovard

#Long #People

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. By trying to seize far more power than is necessary over American citizens, the federal government is destroying its own legitimacy. We face a choice not of anarchy or authoritarianism, but a choice of limited government or unlimited government .
-- James Bovard

#Government #Law #America

Its contempt for citizens ... is so routine, and so unlimited, that the agency has become a kind of Frankenstein, running wild and terrorizing Americans at will. The IRS hypocritically requires mistake-free returns when its own books are in shambles. It demands exorbitant sums of money without regard to the accuracy of its claims. It doesn't hesitate to use every possible maneuver to get what it wants, sometimes destroying businesses -- and lives -- in the process.
-- James Bovard

#Running #Mistake #Book

The people = government doctrine is equivalent to political infantilism -- an agreement to pretend that the citizen's wishes animate each restriction or exaction inflicted upon him.
-- James Bovard

#Government #Agreement #People

No-knock police raids destroy Americans' right to privacy and safety. People's lives are being ruined or ended as a result of unsubstantiated assertions by anonymous government informants. ... Unfortunately, no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state, and local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment. ... No-knock raids in response to alleged narcotics violations presume that the government should have practically unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control what others ingest.
-- James Bovard

#War #Agency #Government

As we learned from the Clinton administration and much of the media, a machine gun in the hands of a federal agent is now a symbol of benevolence and concern for a child's well-being.
-- James Bovard

#Children #Gun #Media

However accurate or inaccurate the agency's numbers may be, tax law explicitly presumes that the IRS is always right -- and implicitly presumes that the taxpayer is always wrong -- in any dispute with the government. In many cases, the IRS introduces no evidence whatsoever of its charges; it merely asserts that a taxpayer had a certain amount of unreported income and therefore owes a proportionate amount in taxes, plus interest and penalties.
-- James Bovard

#Agency #Government #Law

Some politicians are aware of the Bill of Rights. It seems that the opposition party is far more likely to invoke it, to wave it in the air, this is what we saw from a lot of republicans during the Clinton Administration, and we are seeing the same from Democrats under Bush.
-- James Bovard

#Party #Rights #Air

If so many Americans are looking for the government to save them, then it is hard to have a dignified search for a shepherd in chief.
-- James Bovard

#Government #Shepherds #Chiefs

We are asking the wrong question. The issue is not who should be trusted with all the power of the Presidency. Instead, we must ask how much power any candidate can be trusted with.
-- James Bovard

#Issues #Asking #Should

Liberty is a political firewall that limits the damage government can do to the individual.
-- James Bovard

#Government #Political #Liberty

Gun laws are an attempt to nationalize the right of self-defense. Politicians perennially react to the police's abject failure to prevent crime by trying to disarm law-abiding citizens. The worse government fails to control crime, the more the politicians want to restrict individuals' rights to defend themselves. But police protection in most places is typical government work - slow, inefficient, and unreliable...
-- James Bovard

#Gun #Government #Self

To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power. To distrust government is simply to trust humanity - to trust in the ability of average people to peacefully, productively coexist without some official policing their every move. The State is merely another human institution - less creative than Microsoft, less reliable than Federal Express, less responsible than the average farmer husbanding his land, and less prudent than the average citizen spending his own paycheck.
-- James Bovard

#Moving #Average #Land

How many McDonald's gift certificates would it take to sway a lot of Americans to pledge to never publicly criticize the U.S, President?
-- James Bovard

#Mcdonalds #President #Certificates

Freedom is whatever the president says it is, pending revision.
-- James Bovard

#War #President #Revision

The more that voting is glorified as a panacea, the more lackadaisical people become about preserving their constitutional rights.
-- James Bovard

#Rights #People #Voting

It is important to recognize and politics positive thinking is often the slaves' virtue - something that people do to con themselves about the burden and change being placed upon them.
-- James Bovard

#Positive Thinking #People #Important

Part of the reason that the government's fear mongering is succeeding is because so many people are so ignorant, that it is easier for government to frighten people in submission.
-- James Bovard

#Fear #Government #People

There has been so much power concentrated. There is no leash on that power anymore and Americans face the situation that this power is getting momentum with each passing year with each presidency.
-- James Bovard

#Years #Momentum #Faces

The average American family head will be forced to do twenty years' labor to pay taxes in his or her lifetime.
-- James Bovard

#Average #Years #Pay

If an election is simply a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions, then this is not a very noble form of government.
-- James Bovard

#Government #One Day #Noble

It is hard to know how many people do, but given that the people are so docile towards the rulers, nowadays, very few Americans show the passion for freedom that our forefathers had.
-- James Bovard

#Passion #People #Docile

It is amazing to think after all that has happened in this country in the last few years, the last few decades, that so many people have this blind faith that government is our friend and therefore, we don’t need protections against it.
-- James Bovard

#Country #Thinking #Government

It has been surprising to me that so few conservatives have voiced concern over the precedence that are being set in favor of suppression by this so-called conservative administration.
-- James Bovard

#Favors #Administration #Conservative

I was amazed at how easy it was for the Clinton Administration to basically cover what they did at Waco in the fog of lies and avoid any responsibility for it.
-- James Bovard

#Lying #Responsibility #Fog

Entire generations of Americans have come of age since the ancient time when the president's power was constrained by a duty of candor to the American people.
-- James Bovard

#People #Age #President

The more expansive government is, the more perils people face in daily lives, be it from IRS agents or from child support services, or from other agencies that often have little or no legal restraints on their power.
-- James Bovard

#Children #Agency #Government

Once freedom is equated with a certain material standard of living, confiscation becomes the path to liberation.
-- James Bovard

#Path #Standards #Certain

For the average person walking down a dark street late at night, a promise from a politician is worth far less than a .38 Special.
-- James Bovard

#Dark #Night #Average

This is a case if the President is permitted to be above the law, then we no longer have a republic.
-- James Bovard

#Law #President #India