Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
All governments, the worst on earth, and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.
Government is essentially immoral.
Freedom under law is hard work. If rulers cannot be trusted with arbitrary power, it is up to citizens to raise their voices at injustice.
People like getting what they think is free stuff from government.
Everybody in America has been dependent on the government at some time. We owe everybody in America the right to vote and access to capital. What I say is, let's make America work, let's make democracy and free enterprise work for everybody.
We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.
It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.
We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer.
The government, in my judgment, cannot create money; the government can give its note, like an individual, and the prospect of its being paid determines its value.
It's not good for government to tell people that the world owes them a living and that things are free.