Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it.
ATTRIBUTION:
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), U.S. president. Address, September 9, 1912, to the New York Press Club. The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 25, p. 124, ed. Arthur S. Link.
In the 1912 campaign Wilson was violently attacked by his opponent Theodore Roosevelt for this statement, which was held to be a betrayal of the Progressive cause.
