Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
Revolutionary General Welfare quotations
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.
With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
I thought the function of the government was to promote the general welfare, not to provide it.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one;
since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several states, a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.
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.
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.
If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.
..When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.
I imagine an America that can actually change.
That we become a nation that prospers again but without pillaging the resources of nations that make their people hate us. That we become a nation that, as the constitution says in its preamble, its very first paragraph, 'promotes the general welfare' of its people.
But did the Founding Fathers ever intend for the federal government to involve itself in education, health care or retirement benefits? The answer, quite clearly, is no. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 8 - which contains the general welfare clause - seeks to restrain federal government, not expand it.
Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
Patriotism should be sought for and will be found in right living.
No man can be a good Latter-day Saint and not be true to the best interests and general welfare of his country.
The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably bound together. ... The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all.
An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest;
a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.
This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.
But the general welfare must restrict and regulate the exertions of the individuals, as the individuals must derive a supply of their strength from social power.
The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.
We are attempting, by this Constitution, to abolish factions, and to unite all parties for the general welfare.
Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.
I wish the government would read the Constitution.
I think that would probably help quite a bit. And maybe they did read it and maybe they got confused when they read the preamble which says one of the duties is to promote the general welfare.
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare.
.. they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.
Even if, as is generally the case, everything that the ad says about the product is scrupulously honest, or at any rate scrupulously avoids outright dishonesty, the implication of the direct address of most commercials - that the announcer speaks with the viewer's welfare at heart - is fraudulent.
There is no other planning for freedom and general welfare than to let the market system work.
For me, liberals are people who seek to use government to promote the general welfare.
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
Patriotism is the intelligent appreciation that one's own welfare is inseparably connected with the general welfare and that to prosper personally one must intelligently do his utmost to maintain the general prosperity.
No right of preference exists in favor of person, property, or business.
Personal claims and ambitions must yield in favor of whatever best serves the general welfare.
For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.
The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare.
Nor should this Court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven for reform movements.
To establish justice and to promote the general welfare, America does not need the abortion license.
If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.
When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.
The natural tendency of the state is inflation.
This statement will shock those accustomed to viewing the state as a committee of the whole nation ardently dispensing the general welfare, but I think it nonetheless true.