If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means 'to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal' would bring terrible retribution.
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Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
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Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
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Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires and likewise a weighing of relative social values.
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America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
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Organization can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgment.
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Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires; and likewise a weighing of relative social values.
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Men long for an afterlife in which there apparently is nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders.
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In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.
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Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
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America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
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If you will just start with the idea that this is a hard world,it will all be much simpler.
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Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.
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We shall have lost something vital and beyond price on the day when the state denies us the right to resort to force...
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The right to be alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized man.
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We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
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The most important political office is that of private citizen.
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If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
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