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"That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself."

– Abraham Lincoln

"The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatsoever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."

– Adam Smith

"Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom. Socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

– Alexis de Tocqueville

"Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mold upon our presumption."

– Edmund Burke

"Towards the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your happy state, it is requisite that you resist the spirit of innovation upon its principles however specious the pretexts."

– George Washington

"The First step in world service is the maintenance of the United States. If the United States fails, the best hopes of mankind fail with it. Strong, generous, and confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin."

– Henry Cabot Lodge

"Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself."

– Ronald Reagan

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."

– Theodore Roosevelt

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?"

– Thomas Jefferson