I seem to remember a similar quote by de Tocqueville.
Nice collection of quotes, BTW.
Oh, the irony! I suspect it is not coincidental that Lincoln in this quote sets out roles for the church, the legislature, and the judiciary, but makes no mention of the executive branch.
LIBERTY
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
- Thomas Jefferson
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
- Thomas Jefferson
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
- Lord Acton
The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power.
- Douglass MacArthur
When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.
- George Mason
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
- George Bernard Shaw
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.
- Woodrow Wilson
Government
Governments will always misuse the machinery of the law as far as the state of public opinion permits.
- Emile Capouya
A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it -- it keeps him upright.
- Robert Heinlein
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
- Thomas Jefferson
I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
- Thomas Jefferson
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
- H.L. Mencken
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
- H.L. Mencken
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights.
- H.L. Mencken
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
- P.J. O'Rourke
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
- Ayn Rand
For in a Republic, who is "the country?" Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
- Mark Twain
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.
- Woodrow Wilson
Tyrants and Tyranny
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
- Aesop
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
- Edmund Burke
It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.
- Benjamin Disraeli
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
- Robert Heinlein
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
- Thomas Jefferson
A tyrant...is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
- Plato
Truth
The most important truths are likely to be those which...society at that time least wants to hear.
- W. H. Auden
A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous.
- Alfred Adler
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
- Thomas Jefferson
The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
- Mark Twain