John Basil Barnhill quotes

When the people fear a government, they're a tyranny. When a government fears the people, there is liberty.
-- John Basil Barnhill

#Government #People #Liberty

I've never needed government to hold my hand.

If you have a government that is elected, they need to do the hard work - because if they don't, they won't be around the next time the ballot box is open.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions.

There's the South Pole, said Christopher Robin, and I expect there's an East Pole and a West Pole, though people don't like talking about them.

Once a leader delegates, he should show utmost confidence in the people he has entrusted.

Perhaps worse still is what liberal societies might do to themselves in the face of this new and different threat [of terrorism]. They begin, by small but dangerous increments, to cease to be as liberal as they once were. They begin to restrict their own hard-won rights and freedoms as a protection against the crminial minority who attempt (and as we thus see, by forcing liberty to commit suidcide, succed in doing) to terrorise society.

Then shoulder to shoulder! Let us engirdle the little circle of the earth with the chains that bind us to each other. To one end let us aim our thoughts, and to one end let us aim our souls. Hail, dawn of liberty, behind thee is the redeeming sun.

On Positive Liberty: The business of the State is to use its organizing powers for the purpose of furnishing the necessary conditions which allow this people freely to unfold its creative faculties.