Libertarian Quotes

(in no particular order)

A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished. – Anonymous

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw
America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. – James Bovard
War is just one more big government program. – Joseph Sobran
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. – John Adams (1814)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)
If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. – P.J. O'Rourke
The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. – Mark Twain (1866)
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein
The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. – Edmund Burke (1899)
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. – Thomas Jefferson
The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. – Mark Skousen
A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)
The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. – John Hay (1872)
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. – James Bovard (1994)
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. – Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. – Thomas Jefferson
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Goethe
When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. – Gary Lloyd
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. – H.L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. – H.L. Mencken
It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. – Henry George
Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable. – Anonymous
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater (1964)
Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. – Lord Acton
The power to tax is the power to destroy. – John Marshall
[On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. – Lysander Spooner
In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. – Leo Tolstoy
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. – Samuel Adams
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. – Somerset Maugham
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. – Alexander Tytler
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy
The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. – Frank Zappa
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. – Justice Learned Hand
It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. – Charles A. Beard
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. – Edward R. Murrow
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. – Thomas Jefferson (1781)
The desire to rule is the mother of heresies. – St. John Chrysostom
Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter
It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. – Justice Casey Percell
No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. – Edmund A. Opitz
The government was set to protect man from criminals – and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. – Ayn Rand
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. – Mark Twain
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. – Edward Langley
I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights. – Abraham Lincoln
Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. – Thomas Paine
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. – Harry Emerson Fosdick
The state in which the rulers are the most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed; and the state in which they are the most eager, the worst. – Anonymous
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. – Calvin Coolidge
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. – Thomas Jefferson
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. – Voltaire
The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. – Herbert Hoover
Give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry
First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I'm not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I'm not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I'm not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me. – Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)
Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one. – Thomas Paine
There's never been a good government. – Emma Goldman
We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk. – Millicent Fenwick (1983)
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. – Montesquieu
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. – P. J. O'Rourke
Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. – Henry David Thoreau
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress. – Mark Twain
Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it. – Cullen Hightower
You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest. – Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct. – Thomas Jefferson (1799)
The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1976)
The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire. – Joseph Sobran (1995)
Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. – Allan H. Meltzer (1993)
When important issues affecting the life of an individual are decided by somebody else, it makes no difference to the individual whether that somebody else is a king, a dictator, or society at large. – James Taggart (1992)
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power. – P. J. O'Rourke (1992)
Here's your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute – often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is. – Charley Reese (1998)
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. – Milton Friedman
The best government is the one that charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone. – Thomas Rudmose-Brown (1996)
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. – P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
The Government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. – Ronald Reagan
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. – James Madison
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals … It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of. – Albert Gallatin (1789)
The Constitution shall never be construed … to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. – Samuel Adams
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. – Alexis De Toqueville
I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. – Thomas Jefferson (1800)
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change. – Al Gore
If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. – Winston Churchill
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. – Charles Peguy
The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. – George Washington
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.
He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. – the Bible, Luke 22:36.
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest. – Mahatma Gandhi, in Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446
Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. – Benjamin Disraeli, 1874
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. – UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29(3).
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. – P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. – Ronald Reagan (1986)
I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. – Sidney Hook
War is the health of the State. – Randolph Bourne (1917)
Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. – Douglas Casey (1992)
If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist. – Joseph Sobran (1995)
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. – Voltaire (1764)
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. – William Pitt (1783)
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. – P.J. O'Rourke
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. – Barry Goldwater (1964)
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. – Will Rogers
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. – Milton Friedman
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H.L. Mencken
There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. – P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. – Robert A. Heinlein
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. – Pericles (430 BC)
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money – if a gun is held to his head. – P.J. O'Rourke
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. – Herbert Spencer (1891)
More laws, less justice. – Marcus Tullius Ciceroca (42 BC)
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. – Thomas Jefferson
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others. – William Allen White
I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. – Thomas Jefferson (1823)
America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. – John Quincy Adams (1821)
An Avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he a establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. – Thomas Paine (1795)
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. – Frederic Bastiat
Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your government is doing to you. – Joseph Sobran (1990)
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it. – Daniel Webster (1834)
The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time. – Justice George Sutherland (1938)
The era of resisting big government is never over. – Paul Gigot (1998)
Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. – Thomas Paine (1776)
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies. – Honore de Balzac
Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production. – Ludwig von Mises (1920)
If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government that is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. – James Madison
Let the people think they govern and they will be governed. – William Penn (1693)
In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: Littering, noise, and chewing gum. Teachers last year were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: Rape, assault, and suicide. – William Bennett (1993)
The threat posed by humans to the natural environment is nothing compared to the threat to humans posed by global environmental policy. – Fred L. Smith (1992)
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom – they are the pillars of society. – Henrik Ibsen (1877)
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent. – H. L. Mencken
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? – Thomas Jefferson (1801)
This country is a one-party country. Half of it is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn't make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians. – Hugh Downs (1997)
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. – Lord Acton (1887)
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. – Mao Zedong (1938)
The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community. – David D. Boaz (1997)
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. – Winston Churchill (1903)
If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. – Thomas Sowell (1992)
War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results. – Joseph Sobran (1991)
There never was a good war or a bad peace. – Benjamin Franklin (1773)
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. – Daniel Webster (1782-1852)
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. – Albert Einstein
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. – George Bernard Shaw
In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. – Thomas Jefferson
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests. – Patrick Henry
The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it. – Thomas Edison
The Constitution is a written instrument. As such, its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when it was adopted, it means now. – South Carolina v. United States, 199 U.S. 437, 448 (1905)
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens. – Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. – H.L. Mencken
Collectivism doesn't work because it's based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person's "fair share" of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless. – P. J. O'Rourke, "How to Explain Conservatism"
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. – Ludwig von Mises
The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. – Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC
Liberals want the government to be your Mommy. Conservatives want government to be your Daddy. Libertarians want it to treat you like an adult. – Andre Marrou
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
Liberty consists in doing what one desires. – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free. – Harry Browne
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. – Noam Chomsky
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. – Aldous Huxley
The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills. – Thomas Jefferson
America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. – Ayn Rand
There's always someone telling you not to do something. The main thing is just to ignore them. – Tim Robbins
Everyone thinks about changing the world, but no one thinks about changing himself. – Leo Tolstoy
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. – Plato
Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention. – Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner. – Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session (February 1982)
When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both. – James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
If we have to kill 12 people to save 1 human life it will have been worth it. – Unknown
Virtually all reasonable laws are obeyed, not because they are the law, but because reasonable people would do that anyway. If you obey a law simply because it is the law, that's a pretty likely sign that it shouldn't be a law. – Unknown
The U.S. Constitution may be flawed, but it's a whole lot better than what we have now. – Unknown
The welfare state reduces a citizen to a client, subordinates them to a bureaucrat, and subjects them to rules that are anti-work, anti-family, anti-opportunity and anti-property … Humans forced to suffer under such anti-human rules naturally develop pathologies. The evening news is the natural result of the welfare state. – Unknown
I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people. – John Anderson, Independent presidential candidate, 1980
When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will. – Fredric Bastiat, early French economist
Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire. – Ludwig Mises,
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial … the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. – Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928
Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies. – Alan Burris, "A Liberty Primer"
Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers. – Frank Chodorov
The legacy of Democrats and Republicans approaches: Libertarianism by bankruptcy. – Nick Nuessle, 1992
Truth and news are not the same thing. – Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer. – Henry Kissinger
We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. – Stephen Schneider, environmental activist, in "Discover", Oct. '89
I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS. – Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism
Let the people decide through the marketplace mechanism what they wish to see and hear. Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this box of transistors and tubes when we don't do the same for Time magazine? – Mark Fowler, FCC Chairman
The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it. – James A. Donald
Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. – Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist
The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books. – Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist
Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark - Mapp vs. Ohio
If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread. – Thomas Jefferson
Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation. – Fletcher Knebel, historian
Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. – George Santayana
Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his. – John Locke, 1690
There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation. – James Madison
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. – Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher
Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does. – US District Judge James C. Paine, addressing the Federal Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991
The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. – Congressman Ron Paul, 1987
The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave. – Ayn Rand
I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics. – Ayn Rand
They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here? – Paul Harvey 8/31/94
Even the most Bush-happy, flag suckling jack-arse knows deep-down inside that something is wrong. America is over and everyone knows it. The New World Order has a dying empire odor and changing the channel ain't going to make this go away. – Jello Biafra
If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence … and the courts must abide by that decision. – US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006
Love your country but fear its government. – N.E. folk wisdom
Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? – Daniel Webster
There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, "Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you." – Walter Williams, economist and syndicated columnist
National Health Insurance means combining the efficiency of the Postal Service with the compassion of the I.R.S. … and the cost accounting of the Pentagon. – Louis Sullivan/Connie Horner quoted by Novak in _Forbes_
Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA – ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State. – Heinrich Himmler
The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words. – The Atlanta Journal
Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities. – Michael Cloud
The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk". – Harry Browne
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. – Ronald Reagan
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom. – Justice William O. Douglas
Why doesn't everybody just leave everybody else the hell alone? – Jimmy Durante
This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future! – Adolph Hitler [1935] The Weapons Act of Nazi Germany.
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military. – William S. Burroughs
To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors. – John Stuart Mill
When taxes are too high, people go hungry. – Lao Tsu
Show me a movement that doesn't hate somebody and I will join it at once. – Robert Anton Wilson
What's *just* has been debated for centuries but let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn *belongs* to you – and why? – Walter Williams
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. – Henry David Thoreau
No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: "But what would you replace it with?" When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with? – Thomas Sowell
A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort … is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence. – Ayn Rand
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. – Thomas Paine
One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license. – P.J. O'Rourke
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. – Abraham Lincoln
The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer the people become. – Lao Tsu
When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. – Thomas Jefferson
In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place. – Mohandas Gandhi
Force always attracts men of low morality. – Albert Einstein
A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot – because the first leads inevitably to the second. – Harry Browne
It is not charity if it's at the point of a gun. – Unknown
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. – Ayn Rand
When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress? – Marilyn French
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. – Ronald Reagan
There is no more country – everyone go home. – Bracken
I'm not going to pontificate and tell you to execute your government at dawn, but it wouldn't be a bad idea. – John Lydon
Society exists for the benefit of its members – not the members for the benefit of society. – Herbert Spencer
When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty. – George Mason
What is a Communist? One who has yearnings – for equal division of unequal earnings. – Ebenezer Elliot
Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. – Mary McCarthy
Equality of opportunity is freedom, but equality of outcome is repression. – Dick Feagler
There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation. – Frédéric Bastiat
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace. – H. L. Mencken
A man should be upright, not be kept upright. – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee. – F. Lee Bailey
Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless. – Kenneth Baker
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. – Mikhail Bakunin
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone. – Fr&eactue;déric Bastiat
People fear witches, and burn women. – Justice Louis Brandeis
The American heritage was one of individual liberty, personal responsibility and freedom from government … Unfortunately … that heritage has been lost. Americans no longer have the freedom to direct their own lives … Today, it is the government that is free – free to do whatever it wants. There is no subject, no issue, no matter … that is not subject to legislation. – Harry Browne
Communism is like one big phone company. – Lenny Bruce
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. – Edmund Burke
If we have learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot Federalize Virtue. – George Bush
It must never be unpatriotic to support your country against your government. It must always be unpatriotic to support your government against your country. – Stephen T. Byington
Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging than the drug itself. – Jimmy Carter
The office of the government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves. – William Ellery Channing
If you ruin your life, you will pay the price of rehabilitating yourself … We are not punished for our sins, but by them. Liberty means responsibility. – Michael Cloud
We are living in a sick society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them. – William L. Comer
America was born of revolt, flourished on dissent, became great through experimentation. – Henry Steele Commager
Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business. – Calvin Coolidge
You can only be free if I am free. – Clarence Darrow
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment. – Philip K. Dick
When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all. – Justice William O. Douglas
A tyranny based on … deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself. – Albert Einstein
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
That which we call sin in others is experiment for us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. In giving them freedom, we free ourselves. – Marilyn Ferguson
Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace. – Milton Friedman
Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless or, which is the same thing, corrupt. – Mohandas Gandhi
The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. – Ulysses S. Grant
The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. – Alexander Hamilton
Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison. – John Hardwick
Past studies by and large confirm the prediction that higher minimum wages reduce employment opportunities and raise unemployment, particularly among teenagers, minorities and other low-skilled workers. – Masanori Hashimoto
We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation. – William Hazlitt
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery! Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. – Adolf Hitler
I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own. – Billie Holiday
Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control. – Jack Hugh
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. – Charles Evans Hughes
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. – Thomas Jefferson
It's no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense of duty. – Albert Einstein
On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. – Thomas Jefferson
According to George Hitchings, co-winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in medicine, FDA's five-year delay in approving the antibacterial drug Septra cost 80,000 lives. – Sam Kazman
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
I let go of all desire for the common good, and the good becomes as common as the grass. – Lao Tsu
If men are good, you don't need government; if men are evil or ambivalent, you don't dare have one. – Robert LeFevre
Low-income workers as a group are the major victims of minimum wage legislation. – Keith B. Leffler
Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. – Abraham Lincoln
Public educators, like Soviet farmers, lack any incentive to produce results, innovate, to be efficient, to make the kinds of difficult changes that private firms operating in a competitive market must make to survive. – Carolyn Lochhead
Those who attack the rationale of the game, and not the players, are its most formidable adversaries. – James J. Martin
Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. – Mohandas Gandhi
If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded. – Karl Marx
In 1950, the average family of four paid 2% of its earnings to federal taxes. Today it pays 24%– William R. Mattox, Jr. (sometime before 1996)
Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy. – Ludwig von Mises
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun.
Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet. – Lyle Myhr
In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew … Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up then because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up. – Reverend Martin Niemoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the Gestapo in 1937.
It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money. – P.J. O'Rourke
Petty laws breed great crimes. – Ouida
The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. – Edith Packer
When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny. – Thomas Paine
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. – Thomas Jefferson
The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. All initiation of force is a violation of someone else's rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it's supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals. Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense. – Congressman Ron Paul, (R) Texas
As you increase the cost of the license to practice medicine, you increase the price at which the medical service must be sold and you correspondingly decrease the number of people who can afford to buy the service. – William Pusey, then president of the American Medical Association
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
The American Dream was not about government's taking huge sums of money (under the label of "taxation") from citizens by force. The American Dream was about individualism and the opportunity to achieve success without interference from others. – Robert Ringer
Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it. – Will Rogers
I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control. – George L. Roman
The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day. – Theodore Roosevelt
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. – Seneca
Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out … People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically "right." Guns ended that, and a social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. – L. Neil Smith (from The Probability Broach)
Let him who would move the world, first move himself. – Socrates
What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long. – Thomas Sowell
The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. – Mohandas Gandhi
However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible. – Herbert Spencer (from "The Right To Ignore The State")
The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit … Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do … He does not keep "protecting" you by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that. – Lysander Spooner
If I were a Brazilian without land or money or the means to feed my children, I would be burning the rain forest too. – Sting
I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society it is none of the government's business what ideas a man puts into his mind; likewise, it should be none of its business what drugs he puts into his body. – Thomas Szasz
That government is best which governs least. – Henry David Thoreau
In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man and brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot. – Mark Twain
I love my country far too much to be a nationalist. – Unknown
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. – Voltaire
If even one new drug of the stature of penicillin or digitalis has been unjustifiably banished to a company's back shelf because of exceedingly stringent regulatory requirements, that event will have harmed more people than all the toxicity that has occurred in the history of modern drug development. – William Wardell
It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something. – John Wayne
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any body of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. – Noah Webster
Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy. – Orson Welles
Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage. – Walter Williams
Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence. – Robert Anton Wilson
Government, in its last analysis, is organized force. – Woodrow Wilson
Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it. – Cousin Woodman
The proper direction of man's thought is not toward the creation of new laws for government, but toward the acceptance of every person's moral dignity. – Edmund Yates
The higher entry standards imposed by licensing laws reduce the supply of professional services … The poor are the net losers, because the availability of low-cost service has been reduced. In essence, the poor subsidize the information research costs of the rich. – S. David Young
The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge. – U.S. vs. Dougherty, 1972
The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. – Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun, August 29, 1558
We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: … an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand … the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education … We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents … The government must undertake the improvement of public health – by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor … by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth. We combat the … materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of the common good before the individual good. – From the political program of the Nazi Party, adopted in Munich, February 24, 1920
I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials. – George Mason.
The proverb warns that "You should not bite the hand that feeds you." But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself. – Thomas Szasz
When freedom is outlawed … Only outlaws will be free! – Anon
I have always thanked all my enemies profusely for expanding my horizons. – Unknown
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. – The Wizard of Oz
People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us. – Joseph Sobran May 13, 1998 (commenting on US vs Microsoft)
I believe the states can best govern our home concerns and the federal government our foreign ones. – Thomas Jefferson
It took about 150 years, starting with a Bill of Rights that reserved to the states and the people all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government, to produce a Supreme Court willing to rule that growing corn to feed to your own hogs is interstate commerce and can therefore be regulated by Congress. – David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. – J. Edgar Hoover
First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards. – Mark Twain
The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder. – Frédéric Bastiat
The police can't stop an intruder, mugger, or stalker from hurting you. They can pursue him only after he has hurt or killed you. Protecting yourself from harm is your responsibility, and you are far less likely to be hurt in a neighborhood of gun-owners than in one of disarmed citizens – even if you don't own a gun yourself. – Harry Browne
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke
Patriotism means loving our country, not the government. – Michael Cloud
Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not belong – in effect, legalized theft. – Walter Williams
The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people. – Justice William O. Douglas
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this. – Albert Einstein
I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. – Milton Friedman
One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman. – Mohandas Gandhi
The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits. – Thomas Jefferson
There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be. – Lao Tsu
You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have. – P.J. O'Rourke
A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody. – Thomas Paine
Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to please one's fellow man … that's what competition is all about: "outpleasing" your competitors to win over the consumers. – Walter Williams
To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine. – Robert Anton Wilson
A strong body makes a strong mind. As to the species of exercise I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your walks. – Thomas Jefferson
The World's Smallest Political Quiz is the single best outreach tool we libertarians have. –George Getz, Libertarian Party press secretary
Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins. – Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, whose testimony convicted John Gotti
Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. – Josef V. Stalin
In our desire to have government become our benefactor and sustainer, we have allowed it to become our taskmaster and overlord. As a result, we have become little more than well-fed, well-entertained slaves to the state. Freedom, as envisioned by our forefathers, is gone. – Chuck Baldwin 2001 (www.chuckbaldwinlive.com)
To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. – Richard Henry Lee (who drafted the Second Amendment as well as the rest of the Bill of Rights) 1788
Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles. – Gerry Spence
I say that the Second Amendment doesn't allow for exceptions – or else it would have read that the right "to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise." And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong – because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience. – Harry Browne, meetings with NRA's EVP, Wayne LaPierre and other panelists at a gun rights rally in Hot Springs, AR, 8/8/2000
The angels and the devils are definitely within us, not within the machines we use. – Michael Dertouzos
The limitation of tyrants is the endurance of those they oppose. – Frederick Douglass
Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice. – William Lloyd Garrison
The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency. – Eugene McCarthy
The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy. – John Jay, Joint-author of the Federalist Papers and first U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice
There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something. – Thomas Edison
The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all. – H. L. Mencken
Most economic fallacies derive … from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. – Milton Friedman, Economic Freedom and Representative Government; 1973
Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man – in temperament, character, and capacity – and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so. – Frank Chodorov
When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves. – George Pataki
Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. – Ronald Reagan
The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression. – Alexander Berkman
Live and let live. – Friedrich von Schiller
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable … – H. L. Mencken
It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. – Emiliano Zapta, Mexican revolutionary
The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization. – Henry Hazlitt
Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks. – Thomas Sowell, a black sociologist, author and columnist
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. – Abraham Lincoln
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated. – Thomas Paine
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. – The Declaration of Independence
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence. – Henri Frederic Amiel
Liberty is always unfinished business. – Anonymous
And now that the legislators and do gooders have futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems. And try liberty … – Frederic Bastiat, 1850
Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hangs on the results. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the greatest historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us. – Ludwig von Mises
If our country is to survive and prosper, we must summon the courage to condemn and reject the liberal agenda, and we had better do it soon. – Walter E. Williams, "The Gathering Racial Tragedy"
I think we need to find out why the citizens of the world's wealthiest, most envied, most powerful country are so cynical, so distressed, so angry, so ticked of about so many things. – William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever. – George Orwell, 1984
Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present – and there isn't even any certainty about the past. – Harry Browne
A man who walks down the centre line of a road risks getting hit from both sides. – Alexander Ziatanovic
It ain't so much what a man doesn't know that causes him so many problems, but what he knows that ain't so. – Will Rogers
To take what there is, and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived – to dig deep into the actual and get something out of it – this doubtless is the right way to live. – Henry James
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. – Shakespeare
Men are most apt to believe what they least understand. – Montaigne
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. – Dresden James
I have thought that a man of tolerable abilities may work great changes if he first forms a good plan and makes the execution of that same plan his whole study and business. – Benjamin Franklin
For all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, "It might have been!" – John Greenleaf Whittier
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes. – Bernard DeFoutenelle
People never believe in volcanoes until the lava actually overtakes them. – George Santayana
After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident, it makes you wonder about history. – Bits & Pieces
A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today. – Robert E. Lee
Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an "independent" agency operated by selfless public servants striving to "fine-tune" the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat. – Thomas J. DiLorenzo
I do not deny the allegation, I deny the allegator. – Jesse Jackson [!]
Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk. – Bertolt Brecht
The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny. – Michael Parenti
Any story sounds true until someone tells the other side and sets the record straight. – Proverbs 18:17
War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength. – George Orwell
The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. – George Orwell, 1984
For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade. – Noam Chomsky
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us all. – Justice William O. Douglas
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff. – Adlai Stevenson
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but the newspapers. – Thomas Jefferson
When the mass media in some foreign countries serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of their government, the result is ludicrous propaganda. When the mass media in our country serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of the U.S. government, the result is responsible journalism. – Norman Solomon
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. – Second Amendment to the Constitution
An armed society is a polite society. – Robert A. Heinlein
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. – H L. Mencken
We must remember that government, no matter how hard it tries, cannot protect an individual from themselves. This legislation is simply one more attempt by big government to tell us that they know what is best for us. It is not the first time and it will not be the last. – Peter Calcagno
Washington is not America. It has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire. – Richard Maybury
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think. – Adolf Hitler
Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's own need to think. – Adolf Eichmann, Memoirs written after his 1960 capture by Israel.
A man's home may be his castle, but that does not keep the government from taking it. – United States v. Hendler, 952 F2d 1364 (Fed Cir 1991)
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness. – George Washington
A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished. – John Stuart Mill
The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide. – R. J. Rummel, Death by Government
A nation that expects the government to prevent churches from burning, to control the price of bread or gasoline, to secure every job, and to find some villain for every dramatic accident risks an even larger loss of life and liberty. – William A. Niskanen, For a Less Responsive Government, Cato Policy Report,
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime. – Max Stirner
The pattern is as old as human life. The new rulers use more and more force, more police, more soldiers, trying to enforce more efficient control, trying to make the planned economy work by piling regulations on regulations, decree on decree. The people are hungry and hungrier. And how does a man on this earth get butter? Doesn't the government give butter? But government does not produce food from the earth; Government is guns. It is one common distinction of all civilized peoples, that they give their guns to the Government. Men in Government monopolize the necessary use of force; they are not using their energies productively; they are not milking cows. To get butter, they must use guns; they have nothing else to use. – Rose Wilder Lane
The state is a force incarnate. Worse, it is the silly parading of force. It never seeks to prevail by persuasion. Whenever it thrusts its finger into anything it does so in the most unfriendly way. Its essence is command and compulsion. – Michael Bakunin
In every State, the government is nothing but a permanent conspiracy on the part of the minority against the majority, which it enslaves and fleeces. – Michael Bakunin
We are going to tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
… thou shall not steal, even by majority vote … – Gary North; Conspiracy
In levying taxes and in shearing sheep, it is well to stop when you get down to the skin. – Austin O'Malley
Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens. – Ludwig von Mises
A [tax loophole is] something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform. – Russell B. Long
[S]tatism is but socialized dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others – on the grand scale. There is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any other social program. – Leonard Read
There's another major hurdle to a new year of prosperity: our tax code. No human being understands it. The current code, which runs over 8,000 pages and countless thousands more pages of IRS rulings and interpretations, is beyond redemption. ..Incalculable amounts of the nation's intellectual brainpower are devoted to the dead-end task of coping with the current tax code. Over one-half million people in the U.S. make their living off it, whether in lobbying, lawyering, tax preparing, or accounting. … Americans spend five and one-half billion hours a year filling out tax forms … and spend between $100 billion and $300 billion to comply with the current code. – Malcolm S. Forbes,
In increasing numbers, Americans believe that it is the responsibility – nay, the duty – of the federal government to take the earnings of some Americans and redistribute them to other Americans for various and sundry "good" reasons including "fairness." Citizens who know it is wrong to use force to take money from a neighbor have rationalized that it is OK for the government to do it for them. – Linda Bowles, nationally syndicated columnist
The average family pays more in taxes than it spends on food, clothing, and shelter combined. – Congressman Dick Armey, Why a Flat Tax? Durell Journal of Money and Banking, Spring 1995
The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself. – Hilaire Belloc
How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four. – Gloria Steinem, American feminist
Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments … Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils.? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs. – Von Mises, Human Action
The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it. – William Greider, One World Ready or Not
Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains. – Jean Jacques Rosseau. The Social Contract, 1762
Pugsley's First Law of Government: All government programs accomplish the opposite of what they are designed to achieve. – John Pugsley
Everything government touches turns to crap. – Ringo Starr
One of the things the government can't do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt. – Lee Iacocca
With all that IMF money, the Thailand's and Mexico's are spared the consequences of their fiscal incompetence, and Wall Street's heavy hitters are spared the consequences of their stupid investments. The global economy is a rigged game, rigged so Third World politicians, rich investors and global corporations win – and U.S. taxpayers lose. – Patrick J. Buchanan
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion. – Hugo Black
If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't. – Hyman G. Rickover
If we do not halt this steady process of building commissions and regulatory bodies and the special legislation like huge inverted pyramids over every one of the simple constitutional provisions, we shall soon be spending many billions of dollars more. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
The proper and limited use of government is to invoke a common justice and keep the peace – and that is all. – Leonard Read
I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. – Thomas Jefferson
The bureaucrat's first objective, of course, is preservation of his job – provided by the big-government system, at the taxpayers expense. … Whether real world problems get solved or not is of secondary importance. It doesn't take much cynicism, in fact, to see that the bureaucrats have a vested interest in not having problems solved. If the problems did not exist (or had been invented), there would be no reason for the bureaucrat to have a job" – William Simon, former U.S Treasury Secretary
What is so bad about big government? My indictment of big government is that it is bad because it attacks liberty, prosperity, progress, harmony, and morality. Thanks to big government, we have significantly less of all of those good things than we would if we had been able to keep government right-sized. Big government is cancerous. Like a cancer, it hurts the body and tends to spread, doing more and more harm as it grows. It is time for some radical surgery. – George C. Leef, director of FEE's Freeman Society Discussion Clubs
Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy. – Charles Peters, How Washington Really Works
We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes. – J. William Fulbright
The era of big government is over. – Bill Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 23, 1996
A tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government. – Spiro T. Agnew
A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures? – Cicero
You can't give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad – in fact, to do anything it wants. – Harry Browne
Once upon a time, government budgets were balanced, our money was sound, the streets were safe, and taxes imposed by all levels of government took less than 10% of our income. – Harry Browne
Through an unwieldy combination of big government, big military, big business, big labor and big cities, we have created an unworkable mega-nation which defies central management and control. Not only is the United States too big, but it has also become too authoritarian and too undemocratic, and its states assume too little responsibility for the solution of their own social, economic, and political problems. – Dr. Thomas Naylor, professor emeritus of economics at Duke University
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. – Edmund Burke
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, can never willingly abandon it. – Edmund Burke
The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work. – Frederich von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Of all 36 ways to get out of trouble, the best way is – leave. – Chinese Proverb
Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied. – Arthur Miller
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from mistaken conviction. – Blaise Pascal
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. – Edmund Burke
A government is not legitimate merely because it exists. – Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Resistance to tyranny is service to God. – James Madison
We do many things at the federal level that would be considered dishonest and illegal if done in the private sector. – Donald T. Regan
[During the 20th century] … 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners. – R. J. Rummel, Death by Government
Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery. – Thomas Jefferson
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. – Plato circa 400 B.C.
The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves. – Dresden James
I am unable to accept the idea that I should be an obedient subject of a gang of corrupt, unprincipled thugs who pontificate about freedom while enslaving the population. – John Pugsley, JPJ Nov 96
By the year 2012, projected outlays for entitlements and interest on the national debt will consume all tax revenues collected by the federal government … There will not be one cent left over for education, children's programs, highways, national defense, or any other discretionary program. – Bipartisan U.S. Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform
Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it. – Richard Lamm, former Gov of Colorado
A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property – an unpaid tax bill. – Hans F. Sennholz, Debts & Deficits
There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. – Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but a swindling futurity on a large scale. – Thomas Jefferson
I fear for our nation. Nearly half of our people receive some kind of government subsidy. We have grown weak from too much affluence and too little adversity. I fear that soon we will not be able to defend our country from our sure and certain enemies. We have debased our currency to the point that even the most loyal citizen no longer trusts it. – A Roman Senator in A.D. 63
The Social Security system did not begin as an attempt to sabotage people's ability to plan for retirement, but it has worked out that way. The politicians who originally planned the system probably had no idea how it would turn out. But today's politicians know the system is rotted, and yet they refuse to make the changes necessary to free the American people from it. Instead, they make it worse. – Ed Clark 1980 LP presidential candidate, A New Beginning
While the feds … leave Social Security off their books, the government's obligation to make benefit payments to current and near-term Social Security recipients is certainly no less real than its obligation to pay interest on its Treasury bonds. – Laurence K. Kotlikoff, Harvard Business Review, "From Deficit Delusion to Generational Accounting", May-June, 1993
The one with the primary responsibility to the individual's future is that individual. – Dorcas Hardy, Director, Social Security System
We should distinguish at this point between "government" and "state" … A government is the consensual organization by which we adjudicate disputes, defend our rights, and provide for certain common needs … A state on the other hand, is a coercive organization asserting or enjoying a monopoly over the use of physical force in some geographic area and exercising power over its subjects. – David Boaz
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice. – Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
The thing that differentiates people from animals is money. – Gertrude Stein
If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living. – Yiddish proverb
Money, not morality, is the principle of commercial nations. – Thomas Jefferson
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses. – Winston Churchill
Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead. – Friedrich von Schiller
The real issue is control. The Internet is too widespread to be easily dominated by any single government. By creating a seamless global economic zone, anti-sovereign and unregulatable, the Internet calls into question the very idea of a nation-state. – John Perry Barlow
Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. Bankruptcies and losses concentrate the mind on prudent behavior. – Allan H. Meltzer
You doubt that … your great country … is on the wane? I say only this – look around you. – Saint Griseus
In the United States we have, in effect, two governments … We have the duly constituted Government … Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution. – Congressman Wright Patman
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. – Henry Ford
Law! What do I care about the law? Ain't I got the power? – Cornelius Vanderbilt
Does America really need 70 percent of the world's lawyers? … Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million lawsuits coursing through our system annually? – Dan Quayle August 13, 1991
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. – Martin Luther King Jr.
If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected – those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! – and listens to their testimony. – James Baldwin, African-American Author, "No Name in the Street"
… the next revolution … will be when those who work refuse to support those who don't. – Walter Hickel
The standard of living of the common man is higher in those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy entrepreneurs. – Ludwig von Mises
There are two kinds of people – those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group, there is less competition there. – Indira Gandhi
Political elections do not choose leaders of society. Rather, they are an exercise in which groups of people choose individuals who will assist them in looting other groups of individuals, those folks who were unfortunate enough not to be able to elect their own political strongman. The process can be downright blatant, as is the case in African and Asian countries, or it can be relatively subtle as it is in the United States, where the trappings of "constitutionality" and "rule of law" hide many of the more nefarious goings on. – William Anderson, Are Politicians Leaders? 10/19/2000
Our two-party system is a fraud, a sham, a delusion. On foreign policy, trade, immigration, Big Government, we have one-party government, one party press; and conservatives are being played for suckers. – Patrick J Buchanan
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. – Tom Lehrer
Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top". – Walter E. Williams
Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends. – George F. Will, Newsweek
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. – Groucho Marx
Men rise from one ambition to another – first they seek to secure themselves from attack, and then they attack others. – Machiavelli
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as we do when the baby gets hold of a hammer. – Will Rogers
Wherever politics intrudes upon economic life, political success is readily attained by saying what people like to hear rather than what is demonstrably true. Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insincerity and mendacity. – Hans F. Sennholz
Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. – John F. Kennedy
80 percent were hypocrites, 80 percent liars, 80 percent serious sinners … except of Sundays. There is always boozing and floozing … I don't have enough time to tell you everybody's name. – William Miller, Congressional doorkeeper
Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs. – P.J. O'Rourke
A concern for states rights, local self government and regional identity used to be taken for granted everywhere in America. But the United States is no longer, as it once was, a federal union of diverse states and regions. National uniformity is being imposed by the political class that runs Washington, the economic class that owns Wall Street and the cultural class in charge of Hollywood and the Ivy League. – Michael Hill, professor of British History, University of Alabama
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory. – John Kenneth Galbraith
Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him. – Charles DeGaulle
Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. – Ronald Reagan
Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics. – Albert Camus
It may be true … that "you can't fool all the people all the time", but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country. – Will & Ariel Durant
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. – Mark Twain
Politicians can't give us anything without depriving us of something else. Government is not a god. Every dime they spend must first be taken from someone else. – Gary Asmus
Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made. – Otto Von Bismark
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. – Helen Keller
Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death. – James Madison
Citizen participation [is] a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire. – Daniel P. Moynihan
If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects. – Henry David Thoreau
Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election. – Joseph Sobran
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. – Thomas Jefferson
Multiple political parties are a fact of life throughout Europe and most of the West. Today the only countries without strong multiparty political systems are the United States and a number of third world military dictatorships. – Thomas H. Naylor
Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing. – Bernard Baruch
It is indeed a singular thing that people wish to pass laws to nullify the disagreeable consequences that the law of responsibility entails. Will they never realize that they do not eliminate these consequences but merely pass them along to other people? The result is one injustice the more and one moral the less. – Frederic Bastiat
Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it. – Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
The voice of the majority is no proof of justice. – Johann von Schiller
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood, if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be like tomorrow. – James Madison, Federalist Paper #62
A great many laws in a country, like many physicians, is a sign of malady. – Voltaire
An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. – Martin Luther King Jr.
Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money. – Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651
The rule of law can be wiped out in one misguided, however well-intentioned, generation. – William T. Gossett, President ABA
Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. – Benjamin Franklin
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
The Constitution is not hearsay. It is not a bunch of legal myths passed along by word of mouth. It is not a depository for judicial delusions and ideological pipe dreams. It is not a figment of some justice's Marxian imagination. It is a written document – a legally binding contract whose words, spirit and intent are clear. – Linda Bowles, nationally syndicated columnist
The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it. – Felix Frankfurter, Graves vs. New York; 1939
We the people are the rightful master of both congress and the courts – not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. – Abraham Lincoln
Terrorism is a direct response to the crimes our government has committed against foreigners (besides which, the actual terrorists are within our own government) – Gore Vidal
If [drugs] didn't exist, our government would have to invent them, the better to enact laws aimed at keeping the citizens "sinless and obedient." – Gore Vidal
Going to war accelerated the move from indirect to direct rule. Almost any state that makes war finds that it cannot pay for the effort from its accumulated reserves and current revenues. Almost all war-making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat – including men – from reluctant citizens who have other uses for their resources. – Charles Tilly
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. – Plato, 347 B.C.
Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects. – Tolstoy
I say one evil empire down … one to go. – Michael Moore, The Big One
The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters. And that's beginning to happen. More than six decades of hard work for American liberty beginning with the Old Right opposition to the Roosevelt Revolution and continuing with the Mises Institute, is beginning to bear fruit. – Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. 11-27-96
The leviathan state, that monster devouring civilization in this century, is in the throes of death. This is not a wish or a prediction, but a conclusion drawn from a broad look at the trends of the last decade and a half, which, if we take the right steps, can continue on into the next century. What has happened around the world – nations states collapsing, markets outwitting planners, citizens rising up against government masters – can and is happening here at home. – Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant. – Charles de Gaulle
No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. [!] – Abraham Lincoln
We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we have lately been confederated. All we ask is to be let alone – that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will, we must resist to the direst extremity. The moment that this pretension is abandoned, the sword will drop from our grasp, and we shall be ready to enter into treaties of amnesty and commerce that cannot but be mutually beneficial. So long as this pretension is maintained, with a firm reliance on that Divine Power which covers with its protection the just cause, we must continue to struggle for our inherent right to freedom, independence, and self government. – President Jefferson Davis' first address to the Confederate Congress
In our government-controlled schools we are taught that Lincoln was our greatest president because his war ended slavery and saved the Union. As usual, the other side of the story – the side that reflects poorly on the government – somehow gets lost. – Richard J. Maybury, The Abe Lincoln Hoax
So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many many other evils … the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel. – Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. – Abraham Lincoln [!], January 12, 1848 speech in Congress
Federalism is not when the central government graciously allows the states to do this or that. That is just another form of administration. True federalism is when the people of the states set limits to the central government. Fundamentally, federalism means states rights. The cause of states rights is the cause of liberty. They rise or fall together. – Clyde C. Wilson
For 134 years the American people have been led to believe that the right of secession had been overturned by a "verdict of arms," but that isn't true … It is true the shot fired at Fort Sumter was a mistake since it provided the pretext for the Southland to be invaded by foreign troops, but the right of secession realized through the ballot box remains an essential part of our constitutional order. – George Kalas, Chairman Emeritus, The Southern Party
The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back. – H.L. Mencken
The future inhabitants of [both] the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better. – Thomas Jefferson
I expect to see trade wars, foreign policy disasters, a few race riots, a decrease in personal liberty, higher taxes, higher inflation and probably, economic collapse. The silver lining is, secession will probably become more feasible. – Charley Reese, What the next four years has in store for us column Nov. 8.1996 in Orlando Sentinal
Up until the late unpleasantness of the Civil war, then, the right of secession was more or less taken for granted in many quarters, and there has never been any amendment or even a Supreme Court decision saying it's improper. – Samual Francis, Secession May Be Legal But Not Expedient, Conservative Chronicles
If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. – Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address
The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their Nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so … – Alex de Tocqueville, Democracy In America
If [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession from the British empire of 3,000,000 of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. – New York Tribune, December 17, 1860
The United States has become too big, too authoritarian, and too undemocratic. Its states assume too little responsibility for the solution of their own social, economic, and political problems. So starved for revenue are our states that they are all too willing to abdicate to the federal government their responsibilities for public education, criminal justice, employment, and environmental protection. Fine tuning or patch our badly crippled political system will do little to turn the situation around. There is only one solution to the problems of America – peaceful dissolution, not piecemeal devolution. – Thomas H. Naylor & William H. Willimon, Downsizing the U.S.A.
The error is in the assumption that the General Government is a party to the constitutional compact. The States … formed the compact, acting as sovereign and independent communities. – John C. Calhoun
The procedure of secession was to have an election for delegates to a state convention, to meet in convention, and to adopt ordinances of secession. This was done in accord with the Southern understanding of what would be in keeping with the United States Constitution. It had, after all, been ratified by the states acting through conventions. Could they not "un-ratify"it – secede from the Union – in the same fashion? – Clarence Carson, A Basic History Of The United States
Our government is an agency of delegated and strictly limited powers. Its founders did not look to its preservation by force; but the chain they wove to bind these States together was one of love and mutual good offices … – Jefferson Davis
If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you. – William E. Simon
A democracy is a place where numerous elections are held, at great cost, without issues, and with interchangeable candidates. – Gore Vidal
Taxation with representation ain't so hot either. – Gerald Barzan
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic. – Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
A few pithy slogans on guns:
1. An armed person is a citizen. An unarmed person is a subject.
2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
3. Six-shooter: The original point and click interface.
4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
7. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.
8. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
9. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.
10. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
11. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.
12. What part of "shall not be infringed" don't you understand?
13. The Second Amendment is in place in case they ignore the others.
14. 64,999,987 firearm owners killed no one yesterday.
15. Guns only have two enemies: Rust and Politicians.
16. Know guns, Know peace and safety. No guns, no peace nor safety.
17. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
18. 911 – government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.
19. Assault is a behavior, not a device.
20. Criminals love gun control – it makes their jobs safer.
21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
22. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.
23. We don't enforce unconstitutional laws; we REPEAL them.
24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
25. The American Revolution would never have happened with "gun control."
The difference between death and taxes is, death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. – Will Rogers
The Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals. It does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government. It is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government. – Ayn Rand
Government should stay the hell out of people's business. – Senator Barry Goldwater
Greedy capitalists get money by trade. Good liberals steal it. – David Friedman
"A well-crafted pepperoni pizza, being necessary to the preservation of a diverse menu, the right of the people to keep and cook tomatoes, shall not be infringed."
I would ask you to try to argue that this statement says that only pepperoni pizzas can keep and cook tomatoes, and only well-crafted ones at that. This is basically what the so-called states rights people argue with respect to the well-regulated militia, vs. the right to keep and bear arms. – Bruce Tiemann
The New Deal Court essentially told Congress: It doesn't matter what the Constitution says or what limits on government it establishes, you are empowered to spend money on whatever you please. And so Congress does, even though its profligacy has placed the nation in great economic peril. – Stephen Moore, Director of Fiscal Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, March, 1997
"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...." – Congressional Oath of Office
The word politics is derived from the words "poly" meaning many and "ticks" meaning blood sucking parasites. – Anonymous
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. – Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stuart, 1791. ME 8:276
We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money. – David Crockett, Congressman 1827-35
I never consider a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. –Thomas Jefferson
Experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms [of government], those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. – Thomas Jefferson 1779
We Americans have no commission from God to police the world – Benjamin Harrison
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. –Benjamin Franklin
Switzerland is a land where crime is virtually unknown, yet most Swiss males are required by law to keep in their homes what amounts to a portable, personal machine gun. –Tom Clancy
To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them. – George Mason
You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money. – P.J. O'Rourke
Government is not the solution, but rather the cause of our problems. – Ronald Reagan
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand. – Milton Friedman
Fire, water, and government know nothing of mercy. – Albanian Proverb
When words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty. – Confucius
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. – George Eliot
Politics is the art of obtaining money from the rich and votes from the poor on the pretext of protecting each from the other. – Anonymous
There is only one way to kill capitalism – by taxes, taxes, and more taxes. – Karl Marx
If there is no wind, row. – Chinese Proverb
[We] should not blame a gun itself for any crime or any acts of violence, any more than we can blame a pen for misspelling a word. – Senator Wallace F. Bennett (R-UT), Congressional Record, 5/16/68
Politicians never accuse you of "greed" for wanting other people's money – only for wanting to keep your own money. – Joseph Sobran
When politicians say "I'm in politics," it may or may not be possible to trust them, but when they say, "I'm in public service," you know you should flee. – Albert Jay Nock
Man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. – Ronald Reagan, farewell address, 1/11/89
All socialism involves slavery. – Herbert Spencer
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. – Will Rogers
Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm. – Malayan proverb
Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots. –John Adams 1793
Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark. –Walter Lippmann 1937
Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed. –Joseph Stalin
It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that "compassion." – Harry Browne
Whatever the issue, let freedom offer us a hundred choices, instead of having government force one answer on everyone. – Harry Browne
I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution. – Harry Browne
Immigrants used to come to America seeking freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from government. Now they come looking for free health care, free education, and a free lunch. – Harry Browne
The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it. – Harry Browne
Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats. – Harry Browne
Government seems to operate on the principle that if even one individual is incapable of using his freedom competently, no one can be allowed to be free. – Harry Browne
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. – Albert Camus
A society that puts equality … ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. – Milton Friedman
Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty. We're working on a third generation which has little in the way of education about what our Constitution means and why it was written. Thus, we've fallen easy prey to charlatens, quacks, and hustlers. – Dr. Walter Williams
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master. – Sallust
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. – Thomas Sowell
Gun bans don't disarm criminals, gun bans attract them. – Walter Mondale
A society based on the freedom to choose is better than a society based on the principles of socialism, communism and coercion. – Milton Friedman
Political leaders in capitalist countries who cheer the collapse of socialism in other countries continue to favor socialist solutions in their own. They know the words, but they have not learned the tune. – Milton Friedman
We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ... – Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)
Americans are so enamoured of equality they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. – Alexis de Tocqueville
The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. – John F. Kennedy
In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance. – Thomas Jefferson, 1824
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. – Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Give a good man great powers and crooks grab his job. – Rick Gaber
Politicians, like bombers, seldom see their victims. – Donald Boudreaux, Chairman, George Mason University Department of Economics
For those looking for security, be forewarned that there's nothing more insecure than a political promise. – Harry Browne
Patrick Henry did not say, "Give me absolute safety or give me death." – John Stossel, ABC News journalist
The Declaration, after all, catalogued the assaults on our freedoms committed by Britain's King George III. What has been built up over the last two and a quarter centuries is a structure that dwarfs George III's regime. – K.E. Grubbs, Jr., Investor's Business Daily, 7/3/01
Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy. – US House Congressional Resolution 48 "A Republic; not a Democracy", sponsored by Ron Paul, 3/6/01.
There's no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom. – Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964 (1909-1998)
A people incapable of protecting themselves will lose their rights as a free people, becoming either servile dependents of the state or of the criminal predators who are their de facto masters. – Robert Cottrol, George Washington University law professor
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best. – Thomas Sowell
The illegal drug trade is the financial engine that fuels many terrorist organizations around the world, including Osama bin Laden. – Dennis Hastert, House Speaker
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law … that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts. – H. L. Mencken
Most people want security in this world, not liberty. – H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more. – Gore Vidal
Contrary to popular opinion, the Constitution was not – and is not – a grant of rights to the citizenry. Instead, the Constitution is a "barbed-wire entanglement" designed to interfere with, restrict, and impede government officials in the exercise of political power. – Jacob Hornberger, 11/01
When freedom prevails, the ingenuity and inventiveness of people creates incredible wealth. This is the source of the natural improvement of the human condition. – Brian S. Wesbury
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton
To be governed … is to be watched, inspected, directed, indoctrinated, numbered, estimated, regulated, commanded, controlled, law-driven, preached at, spied upon, censured, checked, valued, enrolled – by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
There seems to be an attitude that government ownership of land is good as long as you call it "open space" … All it is is socialism. – Douglas Bruce, Colorado tax-reduction activist
Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production. – Ayn Rand
The "private sector" of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and...the "public sector" is, in fact, the coercive sector. – Henry Hazlitt
Americans have the mistaken viewpoint that Lady Liberty is only a peacetime luxury who is ill-equipped to fight the nasties. Therefore, they reason, we need an equally nasty Big Brother. Americans have forgotten that Lady Liberty is one ferocious mother when protecting her children. – Mary Ruwart
Try to halt violence by restricting gun ownership and you won't halt violence. But you will create entire classes of new criminals – people who make paperwork errors, violate technical specification of the law, or rebel against the new restrictions. And you'll create new bureaus, new enforcement arms, new prisons to punish them. You'll make hordes of lawyers and bureaucrats very happy. Organized criminals will be grateful to the naive moral crusaders ("useful idiots") as they profit by selling an illegal product. And ordinary street criminals will bless fools, legislators, and "leaders" for making their job so much safer. – JPFO's "Bill of RIghts Sentinel", Fall 2001.
What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion. – Ayn Rand
For libertarians, freedom entails the right of people to live their lives any way they choose, so long as their conduct is peaceful. For conservatives, freedom entails the right of government to do just about anything it wants, even if its conduct is violent. – Jacob Hornberger
A caged canary is safe but not free. – Walter Williams
The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of "freedom". – Joe Sobran
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse. – Thomas Sowell
Politicians, like diapers, have to be changed frequently – and for the very same reason. – Anonymous
The reason welfare is bad is not because it costs too much, nor because it "undermines the work ethic," but because it is intrinsically at odds with the way human beings come to live satisfying lives. – Charles Murray
Public Schools too often fail because they are shielded from the very force that improves performance and sparks innovation in nearly every other human enterprise – competition. – Robert Lutz/Clark Durant
He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them. – Spinoza
The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly. – Thomas Sowell
If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both parents working. – Thomas Sowell
The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, capable not only of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting 100 impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations. – Adam Smith
Education – compulsory schooling, compulsory learning – is a tyranny and a crime against the human mind and spirit. Let all those escape it who can, any way they can. – John Holt
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline. – Milton Friedman
The public school system: "Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority." – Walter Karp, Editor Harper's Magazine
The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good. – Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826 3rd US President & Founding Father)
"Democracy – A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic – negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard for consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy." – 1928 U.S. Army Training Manual
… so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. – Voltairine de Cleyre
Arms are the only true badge of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave. – Andrew Fletcher 1698
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. – Milton Friedman
Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions. – Milton Friedman
The elementary truth is that the Great Depression was produced by government mismanagement [of money]. It was not produced by the failure of private enterprise. – Milton Friedman
The essential notion of a capitalist society … is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force. – Milton Friedman
Consider Social Security. The young have always contributed to the support of the old. Earlier, the young helped their own parents out of a sense of love and duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else's parents out of compulsion and fear. The voluntary transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds. – Milton Friedman
The American people are becoming more and more afraid of, and are running away from, their own revolution. – Leonard E. Read
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. – John Stuart Mill
I shall exert every faculty I possess in aiding to prevent the Constitution from being nullified, destroyed, or impaired; and even though I should see it fail, I will still, with a voice feeble, perhaps, but earnest as ever issued from human lips, and with extinguish, call on the people to come to its rescue. – Daniel Webster
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks … It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. – Samuel Adams
The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other. – William E. Simon
Freedom is not a luxury for a few wealthy nations; as many of our liberal pundits try to tell us, but a necessity for the poor and hungry. – Edward P. Coleson
Were it necessary to bring a majority into a comprehension of the libertarian philosophy, the cause of liberty would be utterly hopeless. Every significant movement in history has been led by one or just a few individuals with a small minority of energetic supporters. – Leonard E. Read
Man must have the right of choice, even to choose wrong, if he shall ever learn to choose right. – Josiah C. Wedgwood
Central planning will eventually destroy individual liberty by concentrating all political power in one person or in a committee; furthermore, it will eventually end our prosperity by laying the dead hand of state control on the economy. – Robert M. Thornton
The greatest threat to the future of our nation – to our freedom – is not foreign military aggression … but the growing dependence of the people on a paternalistic government. A nation is no stronger than its people and the best measure of their strength is how they accept responsibility. There will never be a great society unless the materialism of the welfare state is replaced by individual initiative and responsibility. – Charles B. Shuman
The king has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent Swarms of Officers to harass our People and eat out their substance. – U.S. Declaration of Independence
Few of us seem to want to keep government out of our personal affairs and responsibilities. Many of us seem to favor various types of government guaranteed and compulsory "security." We say that we want personal freedom, but we demand government housing, government price controls, government-guaranteed jobs and wages. We boast that we are responsible persons, but we vote for candidates who promise us special privileges, government pensions, government subsidies, and government electricity. – Dean Russell
The beneficial effect of state intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and so to speak, visible, while its evil effects are gradual and indirect and lay out of sight … Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favor upon governmental intervention. – A. V. Dicey
The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone. – Justice Louis Brandeis
It must be obvious that liberty necessarily means freedom to choose foolishly as well as wisely; freedom to choose evil as well as good; freedom to enjoy the rewards of good judgment, and freedom to suffer the penalties of bad judgment. If this is not true, the word "freedom" has no meaning. – Ben Moreell
There is nothing new in state interventionism. It is as old and reactionary as societal organization itself. Always, when it permeates the body politic, it kills the nation. – Spruille Braden
Throughout forty centuries of human experience, price controls at their best have always been a miserable failure. At their worst, they have led to famine and bloodshed – to defeat and to disaster. – Irving S. Olds
Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live – not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences. – Irving Kristol
Given man's nature, freedom will always be in jeopardy, and the only question that need concern each of us is if and how well we took our stand in its defense during the short period of time when we were potentially a part of the struggle. – Benjamin Rogge
It seems that wherever the Welfare State is involved, the moral precept, "Thou shalt not steal," becomes altered to say: "Thou shalt not steal, except for what thou deemest to be a worthy cause, where thou thinkest that thou canst use the loot for a better purpose than wouldst the victim of the theft." – F. A. Harper
We must remember that the principal instrument of government is coercion and that our government officials are no more moral, omnipotent, nor omniscient than are any of the rest of us. Once we understand the basic principles which must be observed if freedom is to be safeguarded against government, we may become more hesitant in turning our personal problems and responsibilities over to that agency of coercion, with its insatiable appetite for power. – W. C. Mullendore
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few … No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. – James Madison
Property is the fruit of labor. Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. 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 work diligently to build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence. – Abraham Lincoln
The essential quality of a free economy is that it cannot be planned. It leaves the solution of problems to the inspiration of the individuals in the untrammeled population. When something approaching a free economy has existed, it has always worked better than the schemes of any planners. – Thomas H. Barber
See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. – Frédéric Bastiat
The proliferation of bureaucrats and its invariable accompaniment, much heavier tax levies on the productive part of the population, are the recognizable signs, not of a great, but of a decaying society. Historians know that both phenomena were especially marked in the declining eras of the Roman Empire in the West and of its successor state, the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. – William Henry Chamberlin
Government-to-government foreign aid promotes statism, centralized planning, socialism, dependence, pauperization, inefficiency, and waste. It prolongs the poverty it is designed to cure. Voluntary private investment in private enterprise, on the other hand, promotes capitalism, production, independence, and self-reliance. – Henry Hazlit
Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. – Ayn Rand
Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?" – Thomas Paine
Painful as it may be to hear it, there's nothing special about the people of this country that sets them apart from the other people of the world. It is the Bill of Rights, and only the Bill of Rights, that keeps us from becoming the world's biggest banana republic. The moment we forget that, the American Dream is over. – Alexander Hope, "Looking Forward"
Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. – Henry Grady Weaver, author of a classic book on freedom, The Mainspring of Human Progress
The greatest productive force is human selfishness. – Robert Heinlein
I do not challenge the dedication and sincerity of those who disagree with the freedom philosophy and confidently promote government solutions for all our ills. I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas. – Ron Paul
If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. – Milton Friedman
If you don't risk anything, you risk even more. – Erica Jong
The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others – with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means. – Henry Grady Weaver, author of a classic book on freedom, The Mainspring of Human Progress
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. – Mark Twain
There is no limit to the ingenuity of man if it is properly and vigorously applied under conditions of peace and justice. – Winston Churchill
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. – George Bernard Shaw
Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut. – Daniel Greenberg
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. – John Henry Boetker
There is only one success - To be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley
If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies. – Milton Friedman - Economist. Awarded 1976 Nobel Prize in economics.
They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened. – William F. Buckley, Jr. (founder of National Review)
A traffic jam is a collision between free enterprise and socialism. Free enterprise produces automobiles faster than socialism can build roads and road capacity. – Andrew Galambos
"Let me tell you how it will be. There's one for you, nineteen for me. 'Cause I'm the taxman." – George Harrison, (From song "Taxman" on The Beatles album Revolver 1966)
The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects – his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity. – Henry Hazlitt
Libertarians believe the answer to America's political problems is the same commitment to freedom that earned America its greatness: a free-market economy and the abundance and prosperity it brings; a dedication to civil liberties and personal freedom that marks this country above all others; and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade as prescribed by America's founders. – The Libertarian Party: A Short History, 2000
We're told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We're told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it's hard to reach the drive through window at McDonald's from a speeding train. And we're told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine? – P.J. O'Rourke
When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics." – P.J. O'Rourke
This country was founded by religious nuts with guns. – P.J. O'Rourke
When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads. – Ron Paul, M.D., Republican congressman from Texas and Libertarian Party candidate for President in 1988
Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly "reforming" their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact that they're always busy "reforming" is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times. – Lawrence W. Reed, economist, in The Freeman
Those (who) seek to establish systems of Government based on the regimentation of all Human Beings by a handful of individual rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order." – Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of The United States
Liberals love to say things like, "We're just asking everyone to pay their fair share." But government is not about asking. It is about telling. The difference is fundamental. It is the difference between making love and being raped, between working for a living and being a slave. The Internal Revenue service is not asking anybody to do anything. It confiscates your assets and puts you behind bars if you don't pay. – Thomas Sowell, Forbes, July 1994
Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenseless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will perform them. – Lysander Spooner
The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster. – Ludwig von Mises
Economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics. – Ludwig von Mises
Who the hell is FICA and who said he could have any of my paycheck! – From the movie Ferris Buehler's Day Off
Dependence leads to subservience. – Thomas Jefferson
Libertarians have quietly become America's best organized and most significant third party. Unlike flash-in-the-pan parties organized around cults of personality like Ross Perot's and Ralph Nader's, Libertarians have organized at the grass roots for the long haul. They are fast approaching the point where they may force the major parties to reckon with Libertarian ideas. – Bob Ewegen, The Denver Post, 11/24/01
When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame. – Jack Kemp
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred. – Thomas Jefferson
I can think of few plainer, more direct abridgments of the freedoms of the First Amendment than to compel persons to support candidates, parties, ideologies or causes that they are against. – Justice Black Lathrop v. Donohue, 367 U.S. 820, 873 (1961) (Black, J. dissenting).
The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit. – Samuel Gompers
Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth. – Rudolph Rummel
When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered. – Dorothy Thompson, newspaper columnist
What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you. – Ludwig von Mises
According to the Tax Foundation, taxes now consume more than 38% of the average family's budget. That is more than is spent on food, clothing, housing, and transportation combined. Compare this to the plight of medieval serfs. They only had to give the lord of the manor one-third of their output -- and they were considered slaves. So what does that make us? – Daniel Mitchell, The Washington Times, 3/9/99
The same government that brought you urban renewal is likely to make an even worse mess of suburban renewal. – Steven Hayward, The National Review, 3/22/99
Our government, taxes, and ideas of freedom are already duplicates of the Old World. Our politicians determine how we should live our lives – and our individual liberties are sacrificed for the benefit of the Fatherland. – Harry Browne
He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines and plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists. – Ludwig von Mises
Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men. – Mortimer Adler (1902-2001)
Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered. – Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny. – William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), Life, 1848
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. – Ramsey Clark, U.S. Attorney General, New York Times, 10/02/77
The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority … It is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people. – Frank I. Cobb (1869-1923), LaFollette's Magazine, 01/20
Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive. – Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998), Freedom and Order, 1966
Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment. – Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998), Freedom, Loyalty and Dissent, 1954
It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition that he may abuse it. – Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), Address, First Protectorate Parliament, 1654
Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use this same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like. – Alan Dershowitz, in The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason, 82 Mich L. Rev., 204 (Dan Gifford), 1995
The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen – a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person's] life. – William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Osborne v. United States
It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest. – William O. Douglas (1898-1980), Henry v. United States, 1959
Of all the tyrannies on human kind
the worst is that which persecutes the mind.
– John Dryden (1631-1700), The Hind and the Panther, 1687
Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we're not vigilant. – Clint Eastwood, Parade Magazine, 1/12/97
Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them. – Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969), U.S. President, Reader's Digest, 12/63
Here in America we are descended in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. – Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), U.S. President, Speech, Columbia University, 1954
Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State. – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Journal, 1839
He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action are not impeded, whose desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into that which he would avoid. – Epictetus (ca 55-135 A.D.), Discourses, ca 100 A.D.
Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine. – Victor Ferkiss, Technological Man: The Myth and the Reality, 1969
We are willing enough to praise freedom when it is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. – E. M. Forster (1879-1970), Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951
"For your own good" is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction. – Janet Frame, Faces In The Water, 1982
Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience. – Victor Frankl (1905-1997), The Will To Meaning
The more laws the more offenders. – Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), Gnomologia, 1732
The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society" or the "nation," which is only a collection of individuals. – Emma Goldman (1869-1940), The Place of the Individual in Society
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another … All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. – Emma Goldman (1869-1940), My Disillusionment in Russia, 1923
The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease, the right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong. – Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), Seventy Years of Life and Labor, 1925
I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution. – Ulysses S. Grant (1882-1885), U.S. President, Inaugural Address, 4 March 1869
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought. – Graham Greene (1904-1991)
The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians. – Angelica Grimke (1805-1879), Anti-Slavery Examiner, September 1836
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. – A. Whitney Griswold (1909-1963), New York Times, 24 February 1959
Whenever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. – Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), Almansor: A Tragedy, 1823
To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or knaves. – Claude-Adrien Helvetius
What seems fair enough against a squalid huckster of bad liquor may take on a different face, if used by a government determined to suppress political opposition under the guise of sedition. – Learned Hand (1872-1961), Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, United States v. Kirschenblatt, 1926
I cannot assent to the view, if it be meant that the legislature may impair or abridge the rights of a free press and of free speech whenever it thinks that the public welfare requires that it be done. The public welfare cannot override constitutional privilege. – John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Patterson v. Chicago
In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. – John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
The liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop. – Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812-1870), From the Other Shore, 1849
A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to. – Granville Hicks (1901-1982)
Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure. – William E. Hocking (1873-1966), Freedom of the Press, 1947
There can be no freedom without freedom to fail. – Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), The Ordeal of Change, 1964
If there is any principle of the constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. – Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, United States v. Schwimmer, 1929
Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. – Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr. (1809-1884), Elsie Venner, 1861
Truth, in its struggles for recognition, passes through four distinct stages. First, we say it is damnable, dangerous, disorderly, and will surely disrupt society. Second, we declare it is heretical, infidelic and contrary to the Bible. Third, we say it is really a matter of no importance either one way or the other. Fourth, we aver that we have always upheld it and believed it. – Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams, 1923
Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency. – Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948), Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, Home Building & Loan Assn v. Blairsdell, 1934
The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our history abundantly attest. – Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Lovell v. City of Griffin, 1938
I believe the State exists for the development of individual lives, not individuals for the development of the state. – Julian Huxley (1878-1975)
Free speech is meaningless unless it tolerates the speech that we hate. – Henry J. Hyde, U.S. Congressman, Speech, 5/3/91
It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. – Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, American Communications Assn v. Douds, 1950
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote; they depend on no elections. – Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette, 1943
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. – Thomas Jefferson (1743-1846), U.S. President, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. – Thomas Jefferson (1743-1846), U.S. President, Letter to Abigail Adams, 22 February 1787
We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear – unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called "the insolence of elected persons" – in word, free men … – Gerald W. Johnson (1890-1980), American Freedom and the Press, 1958
Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence, and his personal life are private. – Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973), Remarks, 3/10/67
A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. – Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933
The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. – John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), U.S. President, Speech, University of California, 3/23/63
At the heart of western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man … is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society. – Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968), U.S. Senator, Speech, University of Capetown, 6/6/66
Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves. – D. H. Lawrence (1885-1938), 1915
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution. – Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861
In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs. – Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society, 1937
To argue against any breach of liberty from the ill use that may be made of it, is to argue against liberty itself, since all is capable of being abused. – Lord George Lyttleton (1709-1773)
What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose; the right to create for yourself the alternative of choice. Without the responsibility and exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. – Archibald Macleish (1882-1982), 12/04/37
If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. – Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969
To change masters is not to be free. – Jose Marti y Perez (1853-1895)
Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love; for a man may love his brother so much that he feels himself thereby appointed his brother's keeper. – Everett Dean Martin (1880-1941), Liberty, 1930
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore our belief in our own guidance. – Henry Miller (1891-1980), The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941
I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether things are so. – Michel de Montaigne (1532-1592), Essays
There is no crueler tyranny that that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. – Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), The Spirit of the Laws, 1748
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. – John Morley (1838-1923), Critical Miscellanies
In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary. – Kathleen Norris
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm. – P. D. Ouspensky (1878-1947), A New Model of the Universe, 1931
A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it. – William Penn (1644-1718), Some Fruits of Solitude in Reflections and Maxims
No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents. – Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), in Liberty and the Great Libertarians (C. Spradling)
A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns. – Mario Puzo, The Godfather
If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance, we must provide a safe place for their perception. – Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), U.S. President, Speech, 6/30/38
One evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily … My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said "Let him touch it." So I touched it – and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty. – John Ruskin (1819-1900), The Story of Arachne, 1870
There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all. – Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Arizona v. Hicks, 3/3/87
There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders. – Alan K. Simpson, U.S. Senator, New York Times, 9/26/82
The liberty the citizen enjoys is to be measured not by governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the paucity of restraints it imposes upon him. – Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Social Statics, 1850
A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited. – Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Social Statics, 1850
The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it's invalid on its face. – Potter Stewart (1915-1985), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Walker v. Birmingham, 1967
Laws are like cobwebs which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. – Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Gullivers Travels, 1726
Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity; they loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, thus confronting them with the possibility of insignificance. – Thomas Szasz, The Untamed Tongue, 1990
Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority. – William Howard Taft (1857-1930), U.S. President, Veto Message, Arizona Enabling Act, 1911
No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. – Roger B. Taney (1777-1864), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ex parte Milligan, 1866
Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law. – Clarence Thomas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights. – Clarence Thomas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country we punish men for the crimes they commit but never for the opinions they have. – Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), U.S. President, Message, Veto of the McCarran Act, 9/22/50
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. – Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), U.S. President, Speech, Columbia University, 4/28/59
From the utopian viewpoint, the United States constitution is a singularly hard-bitten and cautious document, for it breathes the spirit of skepticism about human altruism and incorporates a complex system of checks, balances and restrictions, so that everybody is holding the reins on everybody else. – Chad Walsh, From Utopia to Nightmare, 1962
But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies. – Alan Watts (1915-1973), Tao: The Watercourse Way, 1975
Live free or die. – New Hampshire State Motto
Tax reform means, "Don't tax you, don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree." – Russell Long
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. – Milton Friedman
Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them. – Lily Tomlin
The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power. – General Douglas MacArthur
The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments. – U.S. Senator William Borah
When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare. – Howard Kershner
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. . .I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. – President Thomas Jefferson
The history of liberty is the history of limitations on the power of government, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the processes of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties. – President Woodrow Wilson
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. – Albert Einstein, scientist
When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government. – President Grover Cleveland
It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part. – Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. – President Calvin Coolidge
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it. – Milton Friedman, Nobel prize-winning economist
"Need" now means wanting someone else's money. "Greed" means wanting to keep your own. "Compassion" is when a politician arranges the transfer. – Joseph Sobran, columnist.
Form 1040 was chosen by the IRS because for every $50 you earn, you get 10 and they get 40. – Jay Leno
The War on Drugs is a price support system for terrorists and drug pushers. It turns ordinary, cheap plants like marijuana and poppies into fantastically lucrative black market products. Without the War on Drugs, the financial engine that fuels terrorist organizations would sputter to a halt. – Ron Crickenberger, Libertarian Party Political Director 2/4/02
Whenever there is some trouble in any area of the economy, the simplest solution to many people is "Let the government fix it." Yet … every time the government uses its money or its power to favor this group or that … the net result is such a web of supports, subsidies, interventions and controls that it is almost impossible for a nation to find its way back into a dynamic system of really free enterprise. – Lawrence Fertig
More worrisome is the notion that our civil liberties are subject to cancellation in times of crisis. Our Constitution seeks to protect rights the Framers deemed inalienable. It faces its gravest tests in times of crisis. – Clint Bolick Reason Magazine, 12/02
I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence "democracy," and the other, "tyranny." – Karl Popper
The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. – James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism … – U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Davis, Ex Parte Milligan (1866)
Libertarianism is the philosophy which says that you can run your life better than the government can, and you have the right to be left alone in order to do it. – Anonymous
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who wanted to sell me a bucket,
But he could not, because,
There were too many laws,
So he threw up his hands and said, "Vote Libertarian!" – Anonymous
Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from. – Thomas Sowell
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. – George Orwell
Gun registration is a gateway drug. – Mark Gilmore
Those who beat their swords into plough shares shall plough for those who don't. – Anonymous
Letting lawyers make laws is like letting doctors make diseases. – Anonymous
Legalize Freedom: Vote Libertarian. – Anonymous
The Constitution is the Contract with America. – Anonymous
There may be two libertarians in the world who agree on absolutely everything, but I am not one of them. – Anonymous
My freedom is more important than your great idea. – Anonymous
If 50 million people say a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing.– David Severn
As the growing emphasis on feelings crowds out reason, facts will play a smaller role in public discourse. – Paul Craig Roberts
Democrats can never get any sleep because they are afraid somebody somewhere is making too much money. Republicans can never get any sleep because they are afraid somebody somewhere is having too much fun. – Anonymous
In a democracy, two wolves and a sheep take a majority vote on what's for supper. In a constitutional republic, the wolves are forbidden on voting on what's for supper, and the sheep are well armed. – Anonymous
… the American Colonists under King George III had it pretty good compared to us. They would wonder why we haven't taken up arms and seceded yet. – Lew Goldberg
The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government. – Joseph Sobran
Anything called a "program" is unconstitutional. – Joseph Sobran
How about a chip for everyone, either in their right hand or in their forehead, to make sure no one gets away with anything? Problem is … while "they" are keeping track of us, who will be keeping track of "them"? – Cheryl DeJesus
Control's real name is bondage. The logical conclusion would be, if giving up some rights produces a better society, then by giving up all our rights we could produce a perfect society. – Citizens' Rule Book
The poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow though it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement. – William Pitt
The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened. – Norman Thomas
The Ten "Cannots" of Political Economy:
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot help the wage-earner by tearing down the wage-payer.
You cannot further the brotherhood of mankind by encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative.
You cannot help man permanently by doing for them what they could do and should do for themselves.
– Although often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, he did not say this. The exact origin of this quote is unknown.
Our Constitution is not a body of law to govern the people; it was formulated to govern the government, to make government the servant and not the master of the people. – William F. Jasper
Six Miracles of Socialism:
There is no unemployment, but no one works.
No one works, but everyone gets paid.
Everyone gets paid, but there is nothing to buy with the money.
No one can buy anything, but everyone owns everything.
Everyone owns everything, but no one is satisfied.
No one is satisfied, but 99 percent of the people vote for the system. – Anonymous
Why Common Thieves Are Better Than Socialists:
Thieves have the guts to do the job themselves.
Thieves don't steal in the name of "justice".
Thieves don't masquerade as "liberals".
Thieves don't comprise a unified political mob of millions.
Thieves don't loath freedom and individuality.
Thieves don't undermine the Constitution.
Thieves don't promote mind control via "political correctness" and "hate" crimes.
Thieves don't own/control the "establishment" media.
Thieves don't indoctrinate our children to be unquestioning drones of the state.
Thieves can be arrested.
– Mark Gilmore
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. – Frederic Bastiat
The Five Iron Laws of Big Government:
1. Big Government doesn't work.
2. Big Government makes things worse, often hurting the very people it is intended to help.
3. Big Government creates new problems.
4. Big Government is costly and wasteful.
5. Big Government diverts money and energy from positive, productive uses.
That's why we must make government small! – Small Government Act to End the Income Tax in Massachusetts 02/06/02
Always behave like a duck – keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath. – Jacob Braude
In order to prevent democracy from becoming a tyranny over minorities, individual rights must supersede all democratic voting and all regulations. Rights must come first. Laws should come second, and only to protect those rights; nothing more. – Stuart K. Hayashi
Not in government or force, not in slavery or war, but in the creative, and thereby spiritual, power of freedom, shall our inspiration be found. – F.A. Harper, founder Institute for Humane Studies
Giving a politician access to your wallet is like giving a dog access to your refrigerator. – Tim Barber
Everyone wants to save the planet but no one wants to help Mom clean the dishes." – P.J. O'Rourke, in All the Trouble in the World
State-mandated compassion produces, not love for ones fellow man, but hatred and resentment. – Lizard
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny. – James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat, 1838
Choose loss rather than shameful gains. – Greek proverb
A vote is "wasted" when someone fails to vote their conscience. – Jesse Ventura
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. – John Kennedy, 1962 dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners
Each and every time someone says "there ought to be a law" they are saying that men with guns should enforce their will on innocent others. – Michael Barnett
No nation was ever ruined by trade. – Benjamin Franklin
Nationalized health is synonymous with delays, waiting lists, rationing, and high taxes. – Dr. Christopher Lyon
Political correctness is tyranny with manners. – Charlton Heston, speaking before the Arizona State Legislature
The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. – Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson
The Second Amendment is the Equal Rights Amendment. – Jannalee Tobias
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. – Thomas Jefferson.
The average American family head will be forced to do twenty years' labor to pay taxes in his or her lifetime. – James Bovard, Lost Rights
There's nothing that does so much harm as good intentions. – Dr. Milton Friedman, as interviewed in "Is America No. 1?" by John Stossel.
It's illegal to say to a voter "Here's $100, vote for me." So what do the politicians do? They offer the $100 in the form of Health Care, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, tobacco subsidies, grain payments, NEA payments, and jobs programs. – Don Farrar - average guy, age 51
Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demand for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen. – Ayn Rand
If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains", if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed". – Ayn Rand
Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man's well-being is not their goal. – Ayn Rand, Theory and Practice
It is a free market that makes monopolies impossible. – Ayn Rand
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other. – Oscar Ameringer
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. – Albert Camus
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. – Winston Churchill
Jury: Twelve people who determine which client has the better lawyer. – Robert Frost
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. – Mahatma Gandhi
If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so. – Thomas Jefferson
The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas. – John Kane
Politics is the means by which the will of the few becomes the will of the many. – Howard Koch
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity. – Irving Kristol
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule. – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian. – Robert Orben
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. – George Orwell 1984
Every nation ridicules other nations -- and all are right. – Arthur Schopenhauer
Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed. – I. F. Stone
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. – Alfred Adler
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right. – Ashleigh Brilliant
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is statistics. – Josef Stalin
The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. – David Friedman
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty. – Henrik Ibsen
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. – Bertrand Russell
When the rich make war it's the poor that die. – Jean-Paul Sartre
Remember, to them it is us who are the enemy. – N. F. Simpson
Draft beer, not people. – Anonymous
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. – Anonymous
Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we've used the ones we have? – Anonymous
Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. – John F. Kennedy
You [should] not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered – Lyndon Johnson, former President of the U.S.
The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. – John Locke, "A Treatise Concerning Civil Government"
Don't ever think you know what's right for the other person. He might start thinking he knows what's right for you. – Paul Williams, "Das Energi"
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. – Claire Wolfe
Since there is no such entity as "the public," since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that "the public interest" supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others. – Ayn Rand
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, "Make us your slaves, but feed us." – Dosteovsky's Grand Inquisitor
Since outright slavery has been discredited, "democracy" is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept. – Joseph Sobran in The Myth of 'Limited Government'
Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves. – Joseph Sobran in The Myth of 'Limited Government'
To entrust the government with the power of determining the education which our children receive is entrusting our servant with the power to be our master. – David Nasaw
Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. – Chinese proverb
The common denominator in all government activity is the use of force: Government either forces you to do things, forces you not to do things, or forces you to pay for things. – Doug Newman
Our current philosophy of government may be summarized six words: If it sounds good, do it. – Doug Newman
All the fiery rhetoric of the Founders was directed at a "tyrant" who taxed his subjects at a rate of about three percent. Today, we in "the land of the free" are taxed at about 50 percent when you add federal, state, and local taxes. What kind of government would do this? A dictatorship would. – Doug Newman
Electing even a few Libertarians to a governing board, is akin to having a designated driver in a roomful of drunks. – Doug Klippel, LP County Chair, Jacksonville, FL
If the government can't keep drugs away from inmates who are locked in steel cages, surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, drug-tested, strip-searched, X-rayed, and videotaped – how can it possibly stop the flow of drugs to an entire nation? – Ron Crickenberger
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. – Manifesto of the Communist Party - Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. – Winston Churchill
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. – Linus Pauling
Mystical references to "society" and its programs to "help" may warm the hearts of the gullible, but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats. – Thomas Sowell
We don't have a budget crisis. We have a spending crisis. – Jonathan Hill, Citizens for a Sound Economy
Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come. – Chinese proverb
There is a word sweeter than mother, home or heaven. That word is liberty. – Epitaph of Matilda Joslyn Gage, suffragist and abolitionist (1826-1898)
We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know. – W. H. Auden
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. – Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right. – William Safire
Truth is not determined by majority vote. – Doug Gwyn
If you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names. – Elbert Hubbard
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee. – Graham Summer
Before you criticize people, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you've got a mile-long head start. And you have their shoes. – The Lion
When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail. If you're going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce. – Life's Little Instruction Book
Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. – Theodore Roosevelt
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. – Galbraith's Law
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. – Isaac Newton
Avoid suspicion: when you're walking through your neighbor's melon patch, don't tie your shoe. – Chinese Proverb
You should emulate your heroes, but don't carry it too far. Especially if they're dead. – Anonymous
After each war there is a little less democracy to save. – Brooks Atkinson
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner. – James Fenimore Cooper, American author, 1789-1851
War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means. – Carl von Clausewitz
There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism -- by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide. – Ayn Rand, LA Times, 9/2/62
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms, disarm only those who are neither inclined, nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. – Thomas Jefferson, 1764
If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is – and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive. – Thomas Sowell
There are many paths to libertarianism. Many reasons for becoming a libertarian. Ethical: Embracing the "Non-Aggression Principle". Opposition to the use of force. Pragmatic: Freedom works. Freedom is practical and effective and efficient. Utilitarian: Freedom provides the greatest good for the greatest number. Egoistic: Freedom benefits you. Freedom is in your self-interest. Altruistic: Freedom benefits others. Freedom is in their interest. Outcome: Freedom produces results that you want. It maximizes individual choice. Freedom promotes and rewards personal responsibility. Freedom creates prosperity. – Michael Cloud
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas. – H.L. Mencken
Property rights are not the rights of property; they are the rights of humans with regard to property. They are a particular kind of human right. – David Friedman
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. – James Madison (1751-1836)
It is better to correct your own faults than those of another. – Democritus
In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present. – Tony Petito
[Statists] believe that government should make decisions for individuals. Since individuals usually prefer to make their own decisions, coercion and compulsion become necessary correctives. – Theodore Forstmann (From remarks delivered during the 1997 Shavano Institute for National Leadership)
Answer fools with silence. – Iranian Proverb
Democracy says it is acceptable to take money or property from a nonconsenting individual because he is outnumbered. – Unknown
Isn't it about time we found Congress in contempt of The People? – Anonymous
What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race. – Thomas Sowell
BATF=Bad Attitude Towards Freedom – Anonymous
If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other's throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace. – Voltaire
Writing to Washington won't help; he's dead! – Anonymous
A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. – Justice Atonin Scalia
Orwell is starting to look like an optimist! – Anonymous
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges. – H.L. Mencken
FBI=Freedom Bashers, Inc. – Anonymous
Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action. – Ayn Rand
Defend America against the government. – Anonymous
A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim. – L Neil Smith
When only the police have guns, it's called a police state. – Anonymous
The government is not your daddy. The government is not your mommy. – Anonymous
Work harder, millions on welfare on depending upon you. – Anonymous
Criminals obey "gun control" laws in the same manner politicians follow their oaths of office. – Anonymous
To permit is to control. – Unknown
This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave. – Unknown
If there's anything a public servant hates to do it's something for the public. – Anonymous
If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. – Thomas Jefferson
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for. – Thomas Jefferson
Republicans don't want anyone having more fun than they do, and the Democrats don't want anyone making more money than they do. Libertarians want you to make money and have fun. – Andre Marrou, LP Presidential candidate
I don't want my children fed or clothed by the state, but I would prefer that to their being educated by the state. – Max Victor Belz, Grain dealer, Grundy County, Iowa
The early American knew that freedom was nothing more than the absence of external restraint on behavior; the government could not give you freedom, it could only take it away. – Frank Chodorov, Time for Secession
The American experiment has come and gone. Whatever freedoms the people still might have as their own, are monitored and registered and taxed at virtually every turn. – Jeff Baxter
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom. – F.A. Hayek
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. – Alexis de Tocqueville
Many people today think that the government's job is to take care of us. But I agree with the Delcaration of Independence, which says that the government's job is to secure our rights (our inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness). – Tom Parker
An inherent weakness of a pure democracy is that half the voters are below average intelligence. – Unknown
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. – Woodrow Wilson
The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively. – Walter Lippmann
Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief. – Arthur Schnitzler
I cannot undertake to lay my finger upon an article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. – James Madison
It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights – the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery – hay and a barn for human cattle. – Alexis De Tocquiville
In a society obsessed with arranging every detail of existance, the unintended is ominous. – Unknown
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. – Alan Ashley-Pit
Government is, at every level, a means to gather in the labor and wealth of the people, and then instruct the people about new restrictions or monitoring of their lives. – Jeff Baxter
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful. – Leo Tolstoy
Nobody can be trusted with unlimited power. The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom. – Rudolph Rummel
Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps. – David Lloyd George
If a donkey bray at you, don't bray at him. – George Herbert
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy. – Unknown
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights. – H.L. Mencken
If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized. – Lysander Spooner
The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage. – Walter Williams
Blind belief can be comforting, but it can easily cripple reason and productivity, and stop intellectual progress. – Dr. James Randi
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. – Thomas Jefferson
The plans differ; the planners are all alike… – Frederic Bastiat
We want our rulers to be quarterbacks rather than merely referees. – Doug Newman
"Solve" and "Problems" are not in the constitution. – Doug Newman
There are three things which I do not want the government choosing for me: my doctor, my school, and my God. – Doug Newman
Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women? – Martin Luther
If you feel driven to feed the poor, get your checkbook out and keep your tyrannical mouth shut about it. – Lew Goldberg
Politics is a clash of interests masquerading as a clash of principles. – Anonymous
Can't feed'em? Then don't breed'em. – Anonymous
A personal note to the Founding Fathers: We're sorry. We blew it. You made it possible for us to live free and we blew it. We've given up nearly every personal liberty in the name of a false sense of security sold to the masses by the same type of maniacal government about which you warned us and against which you fought so bravely. We now have to ask permission to take a leak on an airline flight. We never deserved you. – Phil Murphy 7/4/02
Democracy is indispensable to Socialism. – V.I. Lenin
Democracy is the road to Socialism. – Karl Marx
Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex, intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple, stupid behavior. – Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of Visa Corp
There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion. – Frank Chodorov (1887-1966), American Essayist and Journalist
The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments. – Henry Clay (1777-1852), US Senator
I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds … I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution. – Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th US President
The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people. – Bill Clinton, 42nd US President
You can't say you love your country and hate your government. – Bill Clinton, 42nd US President
If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees. – Bill Clinton, 42nd US President
I can spend your money better than you can. – Bill Clinton, 42nd US President
Any president that lies to the American people should have to resign. – Bill Clinton, 42nd US President
Look not to the politicians; look to yourselves. – Richard Cobden (1804-1865), Member of Parliament
Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty. – Calvin Coolidge, 30th US President
If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero. – Vassilis Epaminondou, Greek Social Reformer
The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side. – Theodore J. Forstmann, American Business Executive and Philanthropist
Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you. – Benjamin Franklin
Adam Smith's key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange can take place unless both parties do benefit. – Milton Friedman
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. – Milton Friedman
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work. – Milton Friedman
What kind of a society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm. – Milton Friedman
Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist seeking to bring comfort to the needy – all are pursuing their interests, as they see them, as they judge them by their own values. – Milton Friedman
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. – Milton Friedman
When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he does't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you. – Milton Friedman
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed. – Robert A. Heinlein
Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry. – Thomas Jefferson
The most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the "best" sources. – Walter Karp (1934-1989), American Journalist and Political Theorist
Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people. – JFK
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. – F.A. Hayek
The supply of government exceeds the demand. – Lewis H. Lapham II, Editor, Harper's Magazine, and Author
War has become a spectator sport for Americans. – Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque, Co-founder, Center for Defense Information
To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying. – Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794), Member of Continental Congress, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Senator
Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure. – Robert LeFevre (1911-1986), Political Theorist, Educator, Journalist and Author
Give peace a chance. – John Lennon
Democracy: The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked, and elect the best man to do it. – Benjamin Lichtenberg
Successful … politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. – Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), American Journalist and Author
Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience … – John Locke (1632-1704), English Political Philosopher
The end of the law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. – John Locke (1632-1704), English Political Philosopher
Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork. – Harold Lowman
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it. – General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), Supreme Allied Commander, General of the U.S. Army
No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation. – General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), Supreme Allied Commander, General of the U.S. Army
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen. – George E. MacDonald (1824-1905), Scottish Novelist
It is no more the function of government to impose a moral code than to impose a religious code. And for the same reason. [1947] – Robert M. MacIver (1882-1970), Scottish Sociologist
… The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature … the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war. – James Madison (1751-1836), 4th U.S. President
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. – James Madison (1751-1836), 4th U.S. President
Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos. – John Marshall (1755-1835), Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government … – US Constitution, Article 4, Section 4.
The word "Democracy" cannot be found in the American Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution, or in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, or the Constitutions of any of the States. – Unknown
Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds. – Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), U.S. Supreme Court
Unless a good deed is voluntary, it has no moral significance. – Everett Dean Martin (1880-1941), Political Philosopher
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. – Guy de Maupassant (1850-1892), French Author
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. – H.L. Mencken
The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. – H.L. Mencken
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called. – John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Economist and Philosopher
The true remedy for most evils is none other than liberty, unlimited and complete liberty, liberty in every field of human endeavor. – Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912), Belgian Economist and Philosopher
A right without an attendant responsibility is as unreal as a sheet of paper which has only one side. – Felix Morley (1894-1981), American Journalist, Educator and Author
It is a reality attested by all history that if a republic assumes imperial functions it will not remain a republic. – Felix Morley (1894-1981), American Journalist, Educator and Author
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government. – Thomas Paine (1737-1809), American Revolutionary and Author
A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state. – Isabel Paterson (1886-1961), American Author
The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity. – Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Novelist and Philosopher
As government expands, liberty contracts. – Ronald W. Reagan, 40th U.S. President
It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright. – Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), American Economist, Historian, Political Theorist, and Author
It is easy to be conspicuously "compassionate" if others are being forced to pay the cost. – Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), American Economist, Historian, Political Theorist, and Author
The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State. – Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), American Economist, Historian, Political Theorist, and Author
War does not determine who is right–only who is left. – Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), English Philosopher, Author, 1950 Nobel Prize-Winner in Literature
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country – Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), English Philosopher, Author, 1950 Nobel Prize-Winner in Literature
The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage. – Thucydides (460-400 B.C.), Greek Historian
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave. – Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French Philosopher and Author
The program of [classical] liberalism, condensed into a single word, would have to read: property. – Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), Austrian Economist and Author
This, then, is freedom in the external life of man–that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows. – Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), Austrian Economist and Author
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 (1881-1973), Austrian Economist and Author
The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave. – Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), Austrian Economist and Author
The rights of the individual should be the primary object of all governments. – Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814), American Playwright, Poet, Historian
The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure. – George Washington
When the fox administers justice, the chickens will always be found guilty. – Cat Farmer
The main point of a constitution is to put limits on what aspects of life are subject to majority rule. – Ronald Bailey
If none were to have Liberty but those who understand what it is, there would not be many freed Men in the world. – Lord Halifax
When the people have no tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one. – Lord Lytton
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. – James Madison
The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity. – Thomas Sowell
It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. – Ayn Rand
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic. – H.L. Mencken
Where Liberty dwells, there is my country. – Benjamin Franklin
Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. – Robert Heinlein
All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says. – Walter B. Wriston
It's easier to scare someone than to persuade him. – Edwin Feulner, president of The Heritage Foundation
8 words summarize the American philosophy of life: Live and let live; Let's make a deal. 8 words summarize American foreign policy: We're better than you; Do it our way. – Gary North
lib·er·tar·i·an: One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state. – American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
The Senate voted 97-0 for an anti-spam bill to stop those annoying things you get on your computer. The senators made it very clear that when you start misleading the American people and start taking their money over false promises, that's our turf, buddy! – Jay Leno
As you may have heard, the U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? Think about it – it was written by very smart people, it's served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we're not using it anymore. – Jay Leno
Word for today: Eleutherophobia. e·leuth·er·o·pho·bi·a – n. 1. The fear of freedom. – From www.panphobia.com
In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car. – Lawrence Summers
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government. – Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)
Suppose the Second amendment said "A well-educated electorate being necessary for self-governance in a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed." Is there anyone who would suggest that means only registered voters have a right to read? – Robert Levy, Georgetown University professor
The government's War on Poverty has transformed poverty from a short-term misfortune into a career choice. – Harry Browne
An inevitable consequence of socialism is the division of society into two groups: those who are consuming government "services" and those who are paying for them. – Lee Robinson
Private enterprise creates; government destroys. That is the great economic lesson of our times and all times. – Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
It is much cheaper and enormously more profitable for the special interests to purchase the regulatory favors of Washington's political harlots than to compete in a fair, unsubsidized markeplace. – Lee Robinson
Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help... – Gandhi
... an increase in the power of the State ... does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress... – Gandhi
The intent of the Second Amendment is to arm the people to frighten government and to keep it in check. – Ted Lang
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to F. W. Gilmer, 1816
Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. – Thomas Jefferson
If you are not outraged you are not paying attention – Unknown
Socialists like to tout their confiscation and redistribution schemes as noble and caring, but we should ask if theft is ever noble or caring. – Robert Hawes
The greatest gift of freedom is that it allows us to govern ourselves, and the greatest burden of freedom is that it requires us to govern ourselves. – Robert Hawes
A great danger that we face in our modern world is to get so caught up in the pursuit of the blessings that freedom has given us that we come to take freedom itself for granted, and thus fail to see to its maintenance. – Robert Hawes
All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void. – Marbury vs Madison
Can you think of a single area of government in which George Bush hasn't already made things worse than Bill Clinton did? – Harry Browne in Bill Clinton on Steroids (1/22/04)
Everyone is entitled to his own opnion, but not his own facts. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. – Daniel Webster
Profit is a signal that valuable services are being rendered to people on a voluntary basis. – Lew Rockwell
Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. – Lew Rockwell
98% of Americans support the use of mass transit by others. – The Onion (satire newspaper)
You don't need a degree in political science to know what freedom is. – Andrew Wiegand
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. – Thomas Jefferson
As our rights fade out, we accept perpetual war for perpetual peace, the two parties fuse into one, and the government becomes more powerful than at any time in our history. – Kevin Maley
Even the lion has to defend himself against flies. – Anonymous
The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty – and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies. – H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, Feb. 12, 1923
Expecting the government to fight the deficit is like expecting the Mafia to fight crime. – Anonymous
80% of success is showing up. – Woody Allen
F x S=k. The product of freedom and security is a constant. – Anonymous
Four Boxes of Freedom: Soap, Ballot, Jury, Cartridge. – Anonymous
Freedom is still the most radical idea of all. – Anonymous
At the day of judgment we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done. – Thomas A Kempis
Have no fear. The next President will promise not to raise taxes. – Anonymous
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement. – Anonymous
Rather suffer an injustice than commit one. – Anonymous
Space has no beginning or end and goes on to infinity with no limits! Like taxes, but on a much smaller scale. – Anonymous
Syntax? Why not, they tax everything else. – Anonymous
Taxpayers don't have to take a civil service exam to work for the government. – Anonymous
The chief purpose of government is to perpetuate the government. – Anonymous
The politicians' three R's: this is Ours, that is Ours, everything is Ours. – Anonymous
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits. – Anonymous
Time cuts down all, Both great and small. – Anonymous
Things happen the day you decide you're going to make them happen. – Pam Lontos
Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true. – Anonymous
Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents? – Anonymous
A soft answer turneth away wrath. – Anonymous
A threefold cord is not quickly broken. – Anonymous
Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead. – Anonymous
By forcing an individual to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, it violates the ideals of justice and liberty that the flag is meant to represent. –ACLU
Publics schools are institutions of coercion. Students are coerced to attend them. Parents are coerced to pay for them. – Gary Reed
A proliferation of new laws creates a proliferation of new loopholes.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. – Oscar Wilde
Any system that takes responsibility away from people, dehumanizes them.
Ask more questions than you answer.
Bad law is more likely to be supplemented than repealed.
Being right is seldom enough. Even the best ideas must be packaged and sold.
Better to be 10% effective doing something worthwhile than 100% in something worthless.
Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.
Change your thoughts and you change your world. – Norman Vincent Peale
small government is beautiful – Carla Howell
All generalizations are false. There are absolutely no absolutes. You can be sure that nothing is certain. It's really bad, even evil, to make or pronounce moral judgments. – FreedomKeys.com
What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else. – Tom Clancy on Kudlow and Cramer 9/2/03
The majority of Americans get their news and information about what is going on with their government from entities that are licensed by and subject to punishment at the hands of that very government. – Neal Boortz
What the government gives, it must first take away. – John S. Coleman
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. – Thomas Jefferson
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. – James Madison
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. – Abraham Lincoln
I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. – Booker T. Washington
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever. – Unknown
The reverse side also has a reverse side. – Unknown
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. – Jeannette Rankin
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. – Bill Cosby
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. – E. F. Schumacher
We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by. – Will Rogers
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. – Bertrand Russell
Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they? – George Carlin
The problem with political jokes is they get elected. – Henry Cate VII
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself public property. – Thomas Jefferson
It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose." – Darrin Weinberg
Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse. – Adlai E. Stevenson
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. – Stanislaw J. Lec
A problem well stated is a problem half solved. – C.F. Kettering
I hear and I forget. I see and I believe. I do and I understand. – Confucius (B.C. 551-479)
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem. – Ashleigh Brilliant
The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." – Thomas Jefferson
The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. – Friedrich A. Hayek, in "The Road to Serfdom"
The fatal flaw in socialism is twofold: first, the conceit inherent in the desire to plan the lives of others; second, the force necessary to impose that plan on unwilling subjects. This is not a formula for freedom but for tyranny. – Jim Peron in The Ideals of Tyranny
Remember that the key words in the sentence "I want to help you" is "I want". – G James
Liberty is born of self-interest. It effects goodwill to all through its practice, and it generates goodwill in everyone as a consequence. – Richard Rieben
If voting made a difference, they would make it illegal. – Donal Scannell, at the Conference on World Affairs, Boulder CO, 4/6/04
The greatest danger is from legal drugs. – Terry McNally, at the Conference on World Affairs, Boulder CO, 4/6/04
Poverty is the greatest cause of terrorism. – Azmat Hassan, at the Conference on World Affairs, Boulder CO, 4/6/04
In almost all matters, the real question should be: why are we letting government handle this? – Harry Browne
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either the one or the other, but not both at the same time. – Friedrich von Hayek
That measures of this nature [the draft] should be debated at all in the councils of a free government is cause of dismay. The question is nothing less than whether the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered and despotism embraced in its worst form. – Daniel Webster
The Constitution: it's not just a good idea, it's the law. – Michael Badnarik, 2004 LP Presidential candidate
The root source of wealth is human ingenuity. This has no known bounds, so the amount of wealth in existence can always be increased. That's why capitalism is called "making money". – Marc Geddes
I'd rather live free with some peril than be a protected slave of government. – Dave Duffy
Democracy is not a system of liberty, but a form of tyranny: the tyranny of the majority. – Robert Garmong
A hallmark of democracy is pressure-group warfare, as each group seeks to claim the status of a majority and exploit all the rest. – Robert Garmong
It makes no difference, in principle, if this "collective will" is divined by the edicts of a dictator or by majority vote – so long as the rights of the individual may still be sacrificed. – Robert Garmong
Individualists unite! – Treveor Sutherland, Hamilton County TN LP Chairman
A constitution is the law governing government. – Wesley F. Deitchler, LP News 5/04
The government that we gave limited power to – to protect our rights – has grown into a hideous behemoth that continually increases its power and now enslaves the people, and causes strife throughout the world. – Tom Parker
Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others. – Groucho Marx
Many say that since all the signers of the Constitution were Christian, this is a Christian country. However, they were all white males as well. Are we a White Male Country? – "bostnfound", in a Free State Project forum, 7/04
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. – Thomas Jefferson
Most people ... aren't just ignorant or stupid: they genuinely prefer government control of their own and their neighbors' lives. We can hand out flyers for the rest of our lives, publish as many books as we like, make speeches until we're blue in the face, and most of them aren't going to change their minds. While they disagree among themselves about the details, authoritarians of one sort or another constitute an overwhelming majority. – Max Orhai, Liberty Magazine, 6/04, page 23
Benevolence comes from within as a reflection of our personal, individual sense of well-being. To force it, externally – through moral intimidation (altruism), social intimidation (duty), or at the point of a gun (legislation) – debilitates our personal sense of well-being and negates the source of benevolence. – Richard Rieben (4/7/04)
How many libertarians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None. The free market will handle it. :-)
It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. – George Washington
I can now comprehend the fact that there is no possibility of freedom in this Country. It's too late. Call me a bad American, but I am ashamed and hang my head low when I think of what America has become. … The experiment is over, freedom lost, tyranny won. – Mike Wasdin, 9/7/04
Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. – James Madison
Unlike the world of free-markets, in political government when some individuals win, other individuals lose. – Robert Klassen, 10/3/02
When a majority rules, a minority is ruled. – Robert Klassen, 10/3/02
The price of a "free" public education is freedom. – Capitalism.org
All wars are fought over one premise; my god is better than yours. – Mike Wasdin
It is commonly believed that the rights of the American people come from the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth. – Jacob G. Hornberger [Our rights are inalieanable; they exist independently of government, not because of government.]
Borrow, spend, tax and ... promise, promise, promise is the formula for a long and successful political career. – Hal O'Boyle
We get to go to the polls every couple of years and choose between two flavors of the same gruel. The inmates get to elect the guards. Then, having exercised our rights as free citizens of a great social democracy, we go back to obeying orders. – Hal O'Boyle
The government says: You are free to do anything we want. – Anonymous
The political ballot box stands for – willingness to be ruled by somebody other than yourself. – Alvin Lowi, Jr.
If voting could change things, it would be illegal. – Unknown
Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. – Unknown
The next time some academics tell you how important "diversity" is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department. – Thomas Sowell
We've been thoroughly trained in government institutions where every day for twelve of our most impressionable years we took a loyalty oath before starting our work. Hal O'Boyle
To protect us from terrorists our government treats us like terrorists. Hal O'Boyle
Government failure is always used as an excuse for government expansion. Government thrives on crisis and incompetence. – Jim Babka of DownsizeDC.org
Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. – Ambrose Bierce
If we all stop voting, will they just go away? – Bumper Sticker
The price of empire is terrorism. – Greenbacks
We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every aspect of human life and society. Some people regard this as good and "progressive," others regard it as tyrannical; but either way, it's a fact, a transformation as great as, say, the Industrial Revolution. Absolutely nothing is now beyond the scope of State power. – Joseph Sobran, 1/27/04
The chances of your being harmed by terrorists are mathematically minute. The chance of your being robbed by your own government? That’s easy: 100 per cent. – Joseph Sobran, 1/1/04
A limited government is a contradiction in terms. – Robert LeFevre, The Fundamentals of Liberty
The most destructive thing governments do is divide people against each other, all in competition over the reins of the state. – Anthony Gregory
The war on "terror" will never be over, it will just change locations. Like the war on drugs, prostitution, pornography, and the many others that will follow, it is a war on humanity. These wars will never be won; the State will just keep creating new boogiemen to frighten us with. The sheep will anxiously anticipate the next fall guy the State offers up as a sacrifice for the war on whatever happens to be next. Be careful, the next pawn could be me or you. – Mike Wasdin
The seeds of today's runaway government were planted when it was decided that government should help those who can't help themselves. From that modest, compassionate beginning to today's out-of-control mega-state, there's a straight, unbroken line. Once the door was open, once it was settled that the government should help some people at the expense of others, there was no stopping it. – Harry Browne .
When you think of the good old days, think one word: dentistry. – P. J. O'Rourke
Vows made in a storm are forgotten in calms. – Old English saying
If the Tenth Amendment were still taken seriously, most of the federal government's present activities would not exist. That's why no one in Washington ever mentions it. – Thomas E. Woods, Jr. in The Policitally Incorrect Guide to American History
The problem is big government. If whoever controls government can impose his way upon you, you have to fight constantly to prevent the control from being harmful. With small, limited government, it doesn’t much matter who controls it, because it can’t do you much harm. – Harry Browne
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. – Baseball legend Yogi Berra
A country that goes out of its way to imprison the innocent has no business preaching democracy to the world. – Paul Craig Roberts
The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this. – Rep. Ron Paul in Democracy Is Not Freedom
Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery. – Frank Chodorov
There's small choice in rotten apples. – William Shakespeare
How to obtain freedom has been, and is, mankind's most important quest. – John A Pugsley, intro to "None of the Above".
All of political history history can be summed up as a struggle to throw the bad guys out and put the good guys in. – John A Pugsley, intro to "None of the Above".
A democracy is rule by the majority; a republic is the rule of law. This is a very critical distinction. – Steven LaTulippe
Voting is the opiate of the masses. – Steven LaTulippe
As the state grows, one’s sense of self-ownership is destroyed, liberty is traded for "security," the human spirit diminishes, and the citizenry increasingly thinks and behaves like dependent children. – Eric Englund in Income Taxes, Obesity, and Other Maladies of Nanny Statism 2/28/05.
To shackle future generations, with such monstrous debt and liabilities [$50+ trillion of unfunded federal liabilities], is tantamount to selling them into tax slavery. – Eric Englund in Income Taxes, Obesity, and Other Maladies of Nanny Statism 2/28/05.
We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless we limit the government's power to tax. No tinkering with this, that, or the other law will stop the trend toward socialism. We must repeal the Sixteenth Amendment. – Frank Chodorov in The Income Tax: Root of all Evil (PDF)
Government is force, and politics is the process of deciding who gets to use it on whom. This is not the best way to solve problems. – Richard Grant, The Incredible Bread Machine, 1999
The good governor should have a broken leg and keep at home. – Cervantes
A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. – Lysander Spooner
People do not walk barefoot because there are no government shoe factories. – Anonymous
What difference is it to me if a decision is forced upon me by a dictator or by half of my neighbors? Either way my right to free, peaceful action has been nullified. – Stephen H. Foerster
An anarchist is anyone who believes in less government than you do. – Robert LeFevre
You don't need a treaty to have free trade. – Murray Rothbard
Public schools are government-established, politician- and bureaucrat-controlled, fully politicized, taxpayer-supported, authoritarian socialist institutions. In fact, the public-school system is one of the purest examples of socialism existing in America. – Thomas L. Johnson
Democracy is not rule by the people. Democracy is rule by the majority. This stinks when you are in the minority and the majority hates you. This is why libertarians prefer markets over democracy. – Carl Milsted
Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It's just a goddamned piece of paper! – George W Bush (11/05)
Government is about stealing and nothing else. That's all it's ever been about. That's all it'll ever be about. – L. Neil Smith
Trying to have the government protect your rights, is like trying to have the fox guard the henhouse. – Max Raskin, 12/19/06
Democracy is not freedom, it is just enslavement to the morals of the majority. – greap, 1/10/07
Voting is the measure by which the people's belief in government, and its inevitability and necessity, is gauged. – Paul Hein, 3/30/07
The United States has become the opposite of what was intended by our Founding Fathers. It is now not free, but rather sunk in dictatorial morass. – Gary Barnett, 6/6/07
[George W Bush has] done more to dismantle the Bill of Rights, and our constitutionally mandated checks and balances, than anyone in history. – Kerry Tomasi, 5/31/07
There is no "I" in Democracy – Retta Fontana, 5/10/07
The whole theory of democratic voting is that the majority prevails and the losers submit. This is the very antithesis of freedom (in which, thanks to the market, everybody wins). – Jim Davies, 9/17/07
The Constitution has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. – Lysander Spooner
In the US, 49% of the vote = 0. – Bill Walker, 11/14/07
As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and self-serving. – John Stossel, 11/14/07
If I had to use a single word to describe what is fundamentally wrong with government today, I would use the word fraud. – Robert Higgs in Against Leviathan, pg xv.
Government is essentially the negation of liberty. – Ludwig von Mises
The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. – Margaret Thatcher
In today's world the government intrudes into the free market with taxes, tariffs, fees, rules, regulations, subsidies, licensing, directives, mandates, and insider favoritism until everything is so thoroughly politicized that nothing works and then declares, "The free market has failed. What's needed is more government." – Gary Reed, 10/11/09
The road to freedom is not paved with politics. – Kent McManigal, 10/20/09
Politics is aggression. – tzo, 8/10/10
History teaches that nations do not learn from history. – Bruce Fein, American Empire Before the Fall, 8/10
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace-makers for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. – Herman Goering, Nazi leader
Politics is a Suggestion Box for slaves. – Stefan Molyneux
Opposition to tyranny, when one's sole purpose is to usurp the tyrant and retake the throne, is NOT "working for liberty". – Steve Trinward, 11/23/10
Fascism is [...] arbitrary rule by a charismatic head of state. – Tibor R. Machan, 11/29/10
The first lesson of economics is that we live in a world of scarcity. There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to ignore the first lesson of economics. – Thomas Sowell
The ability to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while. – Albert Einstein
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. – Ronald Reagan
People are upset. They know something is wrong. But they don't know what. The real explanation is too complicated. They won't sit still for it. So, they look for scapegoats - the rich...the banks...the Chinese. – Bill Bonner in The Natural Course of the US Empire, 10/20/11.
[T]he US is headed for ruin and revolution. The revolution will almost certainly be put down, violently. But the ruin cannot be stopped. – Bill Bonner in The Natural Course of the US Empire, 10/20/11.
We can't wait for Congress to do its job. So where they won't act, I will. – President Obama, Speech to students at U of Colorado, 10/26/11
We kill them to make them free, butcher their families because they must be democratic. – Fred Reed, War and the Free Will of Pool Balls, 10/29/11
Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don't realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay. – Paul Craig Roberts, Living in a Delusional World, 10/30/11
The federal government views the Constitution as its enemy. – Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, So Long, America, 11/10/11
The greatest danger facing our nation isn't terrorism, global warming or the energy crisis. It is out-of-control, unbridled government spending. – R. Lee Wrights, The Fair Tax Isn't Fair; It's a Farce, 01/08/12
Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free. – Lawrence W. Reed (President of the Foundation for Economic Education), Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy
Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex. – Frank Zappa
Democracy does not mean freedom. It is just as much a form of dictatorship - the dictatorship of the majority and the State. – Beckman and Karsten in their book Beyond Democracy
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. – H.L. Mencken
Democracy is a "religion" in every sense of the word: It deals with an unseen, mystical force (the popular will); it has a priestly class that discerns the popular will (politicians and the media); it has martyrs (soldiers), rituals (voting) and dogmas ("every vote counts"); it aims to fulfill the spiritual need of human beings to be a part of something larger than themselves; and it treats non-believers (non-voters) as heretics to be shamed and ostracized. – Ellen Finnigan 10/9/12
No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains. – Richman's Law, 9/28/12
The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting. – Charles Bukowski
[T]he Constitution is itself unconstitutional, i.e., incompatible with the very doctrine of natural human rights that inspired the American Revolution. – Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "On the Impossibility of Limited Government and the Prospects for a Second American Revolution", 2/18/13
When you "vote the bums out", you just get new bums. – 10th Amendment Center 01/01/15
The Constitution is not just an imperfect document; it is a flawed document. Although it is often viewed as written to limit the power of the federal government, just the opposite is true. – Laurence M. Vance in The Worst Part of the Constitution
The Pessimist complains about the wind. The Optimist expects it to change. The Realist adjusts the sails. – William A Ward
Political systems are invariably grounded in the ambitions of elitist men and women who regard their interests as superior to "ordinary" people. – Butler Shaffer in The Democracy Illusion 7/8/13
We can see after 200+ years that the American model failed. It is not limited. It is totalitarian. And getting worse. – Wendy McElroy 7/19/13
The real story of Detroit [...] can be summed up in seven words. Private enterprise built it, government destroyed it. – Peter Schiff in Detroit Broke City 8/2/13
Drug prohibition is the golden goose of terrorism. – Judge Jim Gray in the video The Six Groups That Benefit From Drug Prohibition 3/10/10
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. – Buckminster Fuller, late American inventor and futurist
When a politician says the debate is over, you can be sure of two things; the debate is raging; and he's losing it. – George Will
Those who do not move, do not notice their chains. – Rosa Luxemburg
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. – Aristotle
If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist. – Joseph Sobran
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. – H.L. Mencken
Fear is the foundation of most governments. – John Adams
Limit all politicians to two terms: One in office. One in prison. – Anonymous
Politics is the ability to fortell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year, and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen. – Winston Churchill
It is the measure of the state's success that the word 'anarchy' frightens people and the word 'state' does not. – Joseph Sobran
Libertarianism is a radical ideology and therefore doesn't enjoy popular support. Politics is a popularity contest. If your candidate doesn't support the views of the majority of voters then they're not going to get elected. – Christopher Burg in You Can't Vote Your Way To Libertarianism, 11/20/15
The people of a nation whose government engages in imperialism and interventionism will experience terrorist retaliation at the hands of people who are victimized by imperialism and interventionism. They will also end up losing their own freedom at the hands of their own government, which will adopt totalitarian measures to protect the people for terrorist retaliation. – Jacob G Hornberger in Terrorism Comes with Imperialism and Interventionism, 12/02/15
History shows that every president will be worse than the one before. – Kent McManigal in Hold on to your butts..., 12/22/15
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. – Frank Herbert, in Dune
And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task. For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight. – Socrates
That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other... Anything different - that's what they're gonna talk about - race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank! – George Carlin, Comedian
Government as we know it is coercive, corrupt, wasteful, bullying, incompetent, divisive, invasive, and destructive. It is a monopoly funded by theft and debt. It is ruled by unelected bureaucrats. It is ruled by rigged elections. And it is an arrogant liar, telling us we can't live without it. – George F. Smith, in Vote Outside the Voting Booth 4/04/16
Corruption is government's nature. And no reform on earth will ever prevent it, any more than we can reform the wetness from water. – Becky Akers, in Another Day, Another Leak. Oh, What Fun! 4/04/16
The difference between a Libertarian and an anarchist is one election cycle. – Unknown
Insider trading laws are a direct assault on free markets, free enterprise, private property and all the rest of it. – Murray Rothbard, speech at the 1989 Michigan LP Convention
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen. – Friedrich Nietzsche
If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1902)
Demonize your enemies and then anything you do is justified. – Unknown
In the many centuries since the Chinese invented paper, there have been some 3,400 fiat paper currencies. All of them became worthless. There are no exceptions. The record is perfect failure: 100 per cent. The dollar will eventually become totally worthless, too. It may be a tossup whether the euro will get there first. – Edmund Contoski, in Fast Approaching Crisis 9/13/16
Government officials need you to be afraid. They depend on your fear of crime, including terrorism (and, apparently clowns) to make you believe you need them. This fear causes you to give away your liberty and dignity for the illusion of security they promise. – Kent McManigal in Government feeds on your fears 10/11/16
[V]iolent interference in other people's lives is immoral – whether it's done by a thief in a dark alley, or by a majority vote on election day. Any system which permits peoples to vote to coerce upon others is immoral – and so is participation in such a system. – David L Veksler in 5 Reasons Why I'm Boycotting the Vote 10/12/16
To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. – Voltaire
For too long now, the American people have allowed themselves to be persuaded that the government's job is to take care of us: to feed us, clothe us, house us, educate us, raise our children, heal our infirmities, manage our finances, protect us from our enemies, guard us against all dangers (real and imaginary), and provide for our every need. Where Americans go wrong is in failing to recognize that there's always a catch to such devil's bargains purportedly carried out for the good of all society. – John W. Whitehead in Has the American Dream Become the American Nightmare? 1/26/17
[L]egislators cannot increase the economic well-being of people by enacting [minimum wage] laws. If they could, then there would be no more poverty in the world. All that governments would have to do is enact laws mandating employers to pay employees $1,000 an hour and – voila! – no one would be poor and everyone would be rich. – Jacob G. Hornberger in Growing Opposition to Minimum Wage Hikes 3/1/17
Instead of "Thank you for your service", it should be "Thank you for your killing." – Jacob Hornberger 6/16/17
The core beliefs in socialism are that the government should take care of people and that people cannot be trusted with freedom. Both liberals and conservatives embrace these core socialist beliefs, even if they can't bring themselves to acknowledge that they are, in fact, socialists. – Jacob G. Hornberger in None Dare Call it Socialism 7/11/17
The decline from democracy to tyranny is both a natural and inevitable one. – Jeff Thomas in The Sandcastle 9/13/17
My method to overcome a difficulty is to go round it. – George Pólya in How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
He writes a, he says b, he means c; but it should be d. – George Pólya in How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
If someone is willing to commit murder, he is unlikely to be deterred by any gun-control regulations or laws. – Laurence M. Vance in Gun Control and the Second Amendment 03/21/17
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. – Frank Herbert
That’s what happens under socialism. Over time, it brings economic equality through equalized poverty. – Jacob G. Hornberger in Marx and American Leftists Are Wrong About Inequality 5/7/18
[T]he transformation of the United States from a republic, whose glory was liberty and whose rule of law was king, to an empire, whose glory is global dominion and whose president is law. – Bruce Fein in American Empire Demands a Caesar 06/25/18
Don't hurt people and don't take their stuff – that's libertarianism in a nutshell. – Matt Kibbe in What Does It Mean To Be a Libertarian? 11/13/18
Politics is “do unto others before they do unto you.” – Kent McManigal in Politics doesn't improve your life 12/14/18
While government allocation of resources is a zero-sum game -- one person’s win is another’s loss -- market allocation is not. Market allocation is a positive-sum game where everybody wins. – Walter E. Williams in How to Create Conflict 06/12/19
Only a few prefer liberty -- the majority seek nothing more than fair masters. – Gaius Sallustius Crispus
A courtyard common to all will be swept by none. – Chinese Proverb
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits, is in deciding to protect us from ourselves. – Ronald Reagan in The New York Times 04/13/80
People are unequal in abilities and circumstances, and because of this, attempts to make them equal by force will inevitably violate their rights to live in freedom. If people have rights, unequal outcomes will result and trying to impose equality will violate their rights. It is as simple as that. – David Gordon, in Why Marx Was Against Individual Rights 12/28/19
When this is over [corona virus hysteria], the greatest harm to society will have been the public’s unquestioning acceptance of the unchecked authority of governments to force private behavior and disrupt economies. – Thomas Massie, Kentucky congressman, in a Facebook post ~03/25/20
[T]he American public is no longer independent and free, but is beholding to the state as guardian of the flock. – Gary D. Barnett in The Biggest Fraud in History is Happening Right Before Our Eyes 04/01/20
All human action requires that question: “At what cost?” – Allan Stevo in It Takes True Cowardice To Close The Church Doors, Especially During A Corona Pandemic 04/01/20
All government is corrupt, all government is tyrannical, no government represents anything but itself, and all government seeks power over others. – Gary Barnett
But government, as we know it, is the real enemy. It produces nothing except distortions of social life, through war, taxation, regulation, and the general redistribution of wealth and resources. – Joseph Sobran
The historical evidence appears to indicate that, rather than protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of their citizens, governments must be considered the greatest threat to human security. – Hans-Hermann Hoppe
All government is authoritarian; and the more democratic a government is the more authoritative it is; for with the people behind it, it can push authority further than any Tsar or foreign despot dare do. – George Bernard Shaw
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. – John Adams
The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. – Ludwig Von Mises in “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, 1985
Only the State can inflict such catastrophes as taxation, war, inflation, and economic crises. – George F. Smith in Vote Here 08/25/20
Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. – Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 4
[...] it’s still a false dichotomy to say that we have to vote for one or the other. We can vote for a third party, we can write someone in, or we can join the largest political group in the country: non-voters. Not voting is a vote: it’s a vote of no confidence. – Kollin Fields in The False Dichotomy of Voting 11/2/20
There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide. – Ayn Rand in “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.466, Penguin (1988).
Lockdowns, isolation, masks, economic destruction, digitized monetary restructuring, deadly vaccines, gene-controlling technology, transhuman experimentation, total surveillance, and a totalitarian police state are what the masters you have chosen want for all Americans. – Gary D. Barnett in Covid-19 Is a Hoax Leading to the Centralization of Control: “The Great Reset” Is the Real Pandemic 11/24/20
The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress. – Murray Rothbard
Poverty in a society is overcome by productivity, and in no other way. There is no political alchemy which can transmute diminished production into increased consumption. – John Chamberlain
Every government intervention [in the marketplace] creates unintended consequences, which lead to calls for further government interventions. – Ludwig von Mises
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual. – Anonymous in What I Sent to my CEO 8/13/21
When you mix politics and science, you get politics. – John M. Barry historian, author of The Great Influenza 08/26/21
[F]ear is the most powerful tool that governments have to control the people. That’s what governments are all about. They thrive on fear. Fear is the health of the State. – Doug Casey in The Next "Crisis" the Global Elite Have Planned 09/16/21
You can't obey your way out of tyranny. – Arizona Dara, in Fighting Vaccine Mandates (video at ~55:18), 09/22/21
We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.
We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. – Dolly Parton
[M]aking decisions by majority rule gives power not to the people, but to professionals who know how to manipulate political procedures to their advantage. – P.D. Straffin in “Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Implications” (1994)
I have never voted in my life… I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it’s certain they will win. – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Voting for masters to rule over you is the epitome of consensual enslavement. – Gary D. Barnett in Another Dictatorial Election 11/08/22
Has voting improved this country, made it more free, stopped tyranny and war, or saved it from brutal rule? Of course not! Just the opposite has occurred. – Gary D. Barnett in Another Dictatorial Election 11/08/22
The very idea of any ‘choosing’ of a ruler, one to control not only your life, but the life of others, runs completely contrary to any aspect of freedom or right. The entire process is antagonistic to liberty and free choice, and is the embodiment of voluntary servitude. – Gary D. Barnett in Another Dictatorial Election 11/08/22
[T]here is little if any difference in a democracy, a republic, or a socialist, fascist, or communist state; as all are bent on achieving the exact same outcome [...] more and more power and control, which can then only conclude with a system of totalitarian domination. – Gary D. Barnett in Another Dictatorial Election 11/08/22
When government exists, real freedom does not, and the concept of government is that of governing, not serving. – Gary D. Barnett in Another Dictatorial Election 11/08/22
[T]hose who vote to choose masters to rule over them, condone and legitimize slavery at the hands of the state. – Gary D. Barnett in Another Dictatorial Election 11/08/22
If no one voted, no one would be elected, and that is a better way forward. – Gary D. Barnett in Another Dictatorial Election 11/08/22
Liberties aren’t given, they are taken. – Aldous Huxley
Our efficient totalitarian state has gained complete control by convincing the masses to love their servitude and beg for more rules, restrictions, and reduction of liberties in the name of safety and security. – Jim Quinn in We Are Trapped in a Truman Show Directed by Psychopaths 12/03/22
If an idea is considered sacrosanct, with anyone questioning it condemned as an unbeliever, then we do not have science. We have religion. So yes, in my opinion, vaccines, and vaccination, have become a religious belief. No evidence needed. – Dr. Malcolm Kendrick in COVID19 vaccination 10/25/22
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. – Milton Friedman
If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government. – President Dwight D. Eisenhower