Police Power Quotes

• The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Struggle, Political, Police

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• The aim of all struggles for liberty is to keep in bounds the armed defenders of peace, the governors and their constables. The political concept of the individual's freedom means: freedom from arbitrary action on the part of the police power.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Struggle, Mean, Political

  Ludwig Von Mises (1978). “Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The”, p.90, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong doing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Exercise, Power, Police

  Annual Message to Congress, 6 Dec. 1904. Known as the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine

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• We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

  George Orwell

  Power, Intention, 1984 Important

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.354, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Challenges, Police, Risk

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the F”, p.107, Simon and Schuster

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• It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

  David Brin

  Power, Corruption, Favourite

  David Brin (1997). “The Postman”, GuildAmerica Books

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• The whole drug war is nothing but a pretext to increase police power and personnel, and that, of course, is dead wrong. So many created imagined drug offenses.

  William S. Burroughs

  War, Police, Drug

  Source: www.litkicks.com

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• The most personal thing I've put in [Touch of Evil] is my hatred of the abuse of police power. It's better to see a murderer go free than for a policeman to abuse his power.

  Orson Welles

  Evil, Hatred, Police

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• September 11th does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur.

  Ron Paul

  Law, Creating, Police

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• Congress constitutionally lacks general police powers.

  Mike Lee

  Police, Congress

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• The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

  David Brin

  Power, Belief, Corruption

  David Brin (1997). “The Postman”, GuildAmerica Books

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• I urge you to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have no choice but to submit to being schooled by strangers.

  John Taylor Gatto

  Choices, Police, Mind

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• John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' also speaks urgently to today's concerns: the cratered trail of dreams for Mexican immigrants seeking a promised land in the Western [United States]; the perfidy of banks in foreclosing on poor people's homes; and the insurgent urge of the book's protagonist, Tom Joad, to speak truth to police power. 'Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy,' Tom promises, 'I'll be there.' In Salinas, Calif., Ferguson, Mo., or Staten Island, N.Y., Tom's truth goes marching on.

  Richard Corliss

  Dream, Book, Home

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• The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

  Joseph Story

  Government, People, United States

  Joseph Story (1851). “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution”, p.296

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• The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Struggle, Men, Community

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• It is not true that the perfection of police power is the result of the state's Machiavellianism or of some transitory influence. The whole structure of society implies it, of necessity. The more we mobilize the forces of nature, the more must we mobilize men and the more do we require order.

  Jacques Ellul

  Men, Order, Perfection

  "The Technological Society". Book by Jacques Ellul, translated by John Wilkinson, p. 102, 1964.

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• Taking legislative authority away from the federal government doesn't necessarily mean freer individuals. It might just mean granting vastly more authority to the states--which already have far broader police powers than most of us would care to admit.

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Mean, Government, Police

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• Remember, government is not an enlightened organization designed to promote public welfare. It is barbaric, uncivilized force…military and police power put to the service of the insiders who control it. Yes, there are constraints on the way the insiders use their power. There are ‘checks and balances,’ built into the constitution, for example. And there are cultural norms and traditional prohibitions. But eventually, the norms and traditions wear off, like painkillers. And then, the pain of raw government begins again.

  Bill Bonner

  Pain, Government, Organization

  "Careful Steps to Avoid a 'Dystopian Future'" by Bill Bonner, dailyreckoning.com. January 12, 2012.

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• Secondly, as a result of this political favoritism, the FDA has become a primary factor in that formula whereby cartel-oriented companies in the food and drug industry are able to use the police powers of government to harass or destroy their free-market competitors.

  G. Edward Griffin

  Dark, Fda, Government

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• [Ayn] Rand accepts that when she supports military conscription, even indirectly. Also, she starts her politics from the premise that the State must have police power. She fails to take into account the inevitability that once you start with police power you're going to have a police State.

  Murray Bookchin

  Military, Support, Police

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• To hold that Congress has general police power would be to hold that it may accomplish objects not intrusted to the general government, and to defeat the operation of the 10th Amendment, declaring that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

  Melville Fuller

  Government, People, Police

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• Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity.

  H. L. Mencken

  Order, Law, Evil

  H. L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.45, Read Books Ltd

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• It is within the police power of the state to prohibit public use of fighting words that create a danger of breach of the peace, but simply to prohibit public use of fighting words is too broad. Those words may sometimes be used in situations where there is no danger.

  Ithiel de Sola Pool

  Fighting, Power, Police

  Ithiel de Sola POOL (2009). “Technologies of Freedom”, p.64, Harvard University Press

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• The government can back up its tastes and beliefs with the police power. That is why it cannot be permitted tastes and beliefs. Most emphatically, it cannot be permitted to define one group as being privileged over another group of people. It was wrong in the days of Jim Crow; it is wrong in the days of affirmative action.

  Charles A. Murray

  Government, People, Police

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• The thing that bugs me is that the people think the FDA is protecting them - it isn’t. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it’s doing are as different as night and day.

  Herbert L. Ley, Jr.

  Night, Thinking, Cancer Treatment

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