A Quote by Ayn Rand

The government's only proper job is to protect individual rights against violence by force or fraud ... to protect men from foreign invaders ... to settle disputes among men according to objective laws ... The greatness of the Founding Fathers was how well they understood this issue and how close some of them came to understanding it perfectly.

Ayn Rand

Quote Topics

According Against Against Violence Among Came Close Disputes Fathers Force Foreign Founding Founding Fathers Fraud Government Greatness How Individual Individual Rights Invaders Issue Job Laws Men Objective Only Perfectly Proper Protect Rights Settle Some Them Understanding Understood Violence Well

Quote Author

Ayn Rand
Russian - Writer
February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982

The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

Ayn Rand

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force.

Ayn Rand

It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress.

Bill Sali

I do believe that it was through divine providence that the Founding Fathers drafted a document that created a government that didn't trust each other - hence the separation of powers. And then, to close the deal, the Bill of Rights was added to continue to protect individual rights and freedoms.

John Shimkus

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence.

Ayn Rand

The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

Ayn Rand

The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

Ayn Rand

Now I realize it's fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should encourage others to read the Bible. That we're told we'll violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny.

Ronald Reagan

Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others.

George Washington

Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.

Mary Frances Berry

The government's only functions are to protect the rights of the individual; therefore, you need a police force and an army.

Neil Peart

Our Founding Fathers drafted the Bill of Rights to ensure that We the People could determine how best to protect our communities.

Mike Quigley

The government passed more laws to protect women from dirty jokes than to protect men from death by faulty rafters at a construction site.

Warren Farrell

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.

Ayn Rand

I honestly never understood how violence against women became a women's issue. 95 percent of the violence men are doing to women.