Quotes

The monopoly of government is no better than any other. One does not govern well and, especially not cheaply, when one has no competition to fear, when the ruled are deprived of the right of freely choosing their rulers. Grant a grocer the exclusive right to supply a neighborhood, prevent the inhabitants of this neighborhood from buying any goods from other grocers in the vicinity, or even from supplying their own groceries, and you will see what detestable rubbish the privileged grocer will end up selling and at what prices! You will see how he will grow rich at the expense of the unfortunate consumers, what royal pomp tle will display for the greater glory of the neighborhood. Well! What is true for the lowliest services is no less true for the loftiest. The monopoly of government is worth no more than that of a grocer’s shop. The production of security inevitably becomes costly and bad when it is organized as a monopoly. It is in the monopoly of security that lies the principal cause of wars which have laid waste humanity. — Gustave de Molinari

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. — Abraham Lincoln

‘[T]he good’ is not determined by counting numbers and is not achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. — Ayn Rand

… Using the system to change the system by working within the system. To me, that sounds like a myth that came out of the system, like bears spreading rumors about staying still when you encounter bears (it’s easier for them to eat you that way). — Brett Veinotte

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. — F.A. Hayek

A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police. — Ludwig von Mises

A government is not legitimate merely because it exists. — Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

A government that is ruthless about what it does to other people is also ruthless in what it does to our own people. — Howard Zinn

A leash is only a rope with a noose on both ends. — Ayn Rand

A limited government is a contradiction in terms. — Robert LeFavre

A man’s admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him. — Alexis de Tocqueville

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

A moment or an eternity — did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. — Ayn Rand

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. — Edward Abbey

A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare. — Justice H. Walter Croskey, in a 2008 California appeals court ruling making homeschooling illegal in California

A program whose basic thesis is, not that the system of free enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that is has not yet been tried. — Franklin Roosevelt

A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom. — F.A. Hayek

A standing army is a standing menace to liberty. — Voltairine de Cleyre

A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. — John Locke

A state is a territorial monopolist of compulsion — an agency which may engage in continual, institutionalized property rights violations and the exploitation — in the form of expropriation, taxation, and regulation of private property owners. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state. — Isabel Paterson

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. — Thomas Paine

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. — Ayn Rand

Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State … Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual. — Benito Mussolini

All government either starts out as or ends up as a crime syndicate. — G. Edward Griffin

All government, of course, is against liberty. — H.L. Mencken

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. — Ron Paul

All men’s impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern. — Frédéric Bastiat

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. — Voltaire

All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts. — Ludwig von Mises

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. — Edmund Burke

America’s abundance was created not 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. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance — and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way. — Ayn Rand

An anarchist is anyone who believes in less government than you do. — Robert LeFevre

An anarchist is anyone who doesn’t need a cop to tell him what to do. — Ammon Hennacy

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. — Ayn Rand

An unjust law is no law at all. — St. Augustine

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. — Edward Abbey

Anarchism is simply the revolutionary idea that no one is better qualified to run your life than you are. — Unknown

Anarchy is not chaos, but order without control. — David Layson

Anarchy is the glue that holds society together. — Colin Ward

And if I am at fault for holding grand, immaculate goals for what is possible in this world, that is how I would rather spend my short time on Earth. — Justin Oliver

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I.’ — Ayn Rand

And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties — liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? — Frédéric Bastiat

Any excuse will serve a tyrant. — Aesop

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. — Benjamin Franklin

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today. — Ayn Rand

Anyone who insists on imposing a positive obligation on peaceful people is just a bully. In fact, what took place was not a discussion at all. It was more a hostage negotiation — between hostage negotiator and hostage taker. — Justin Oliver

As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives, and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power. — Libertarian Party platform preamble

As long as people think there is some external cause or source of their own liberty, of their own credibility, of their own courage, of their own integrity, they won’t do the hard work. If you think there is a magic pill that will make you thin, you will never do the hard work of dieting. — Stefan Molyneux

As long as you comply, the gun stays in the fucking holster. — Wes Bertrand

Away, then, with quacks and organizers! A way with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!

And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty …. — Frédéric Bastiat

Borders are just the places armies got tired. — Unknown

Both force and money are impotent against ideas. — Ludwig von Mises

But how is … legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. 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

But whether the constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist. — Lysander Spooner

Civilization does not mean electric lights. It does not mean producing atomic bombs, either. Civilization means not killing people. — Nichidatsu Fujii

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. — Ayn Rand

Collectivism is a doctrine of war, intolerance, and persecution. If any of the collectivist creeds should succeed in its endeavors, all people but the great dictator would be deprived of their essential human quality. They would become mere soulless pawns in the hands of a monster. — Ludwig von Mises

Compassion comes from the heart, not the government. — Edward Britton

Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. — Ayn Rand

Contemplating the risk and reward of negating the peaceful will of another human being for the sake of the collective is moral cannibalism, giving man the same status as a sacrificial animal. Insofar as force is applied, the only tool available for human beings to progress and flourish — his reasoning mind — is lost. — Justin Oliver

Cowardice asks the question, Is it safe? Expediency asks the question, Is it politic? Vanity asks the question, Is it popular? But conscience asks the question, Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him that it is right. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Democracy is not a system of liberty, but a form of tyranny: the tyranny of the majority. — Robert Garmong

Democracy is the pathetic belief in the wisdom of collective ignorance. — H. L. Mencken

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. — Henry David Thoreau

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience & through rebellion. — Oscar Wilde

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

Down with the state and its coercive mechanisms of destruction and plunder! May we the free people of planet Earth embrace our inner being. Throw off the chains of despotism, and simply choose to live freely! — John Bush

Each child belongs to the state. — William H. Seawell, professor of education at the University of Virginia

Each has freedom to do all that he wills provided that he infringes not the equal freedom of any other.” — Herbert Spencer

End the Fed! — Ron Paul

Every government is by definition a kleptocracy, i.e. the governing steal the property of the governed. — Nebojsa Malic

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket. — Eric Hoffer

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. — Ayn Rand

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself. — John Locke

Every reactionary lacks intellectual independence. — Ludwig von Mises

Every sort of chauvinism is mistaken. — Ludwig von Mises

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone. — Frédéric Bastiat

Everything about [the state] is false; it bites with stolen teeth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Everything done by the state is ultimately done by means of aggression, which is to say violence or the threat of violence against the innocent. The total state is really nothing but the continued extension of these statist means throughout every nook and cranny of economic and social life. — Lew Rockwell

Everything that happens in the social world in our time is the result of ideas. Good things and bad things. What is needed is to fight bad ideas. We must oppose the confiscation of property, the control of prices, inflation, and all those evils from which we suffer. — Ludwig von Mises

Evil requires the sanction of the victim. — Ayn Rand

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power. — Benito Mussolini

Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive. — Ron Paul

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. — Ghandi

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors — between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it. — Ayn Rand

For, in all honesty, can it be in any way except in folly that you approach a tyrant, withdrawing further from your liberty and, so to speak, embracing with both hands your servitude? — Etienne de la Boetie

Force always attracts men of low morality. — Albert Einstein

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. — Ayn Rand

Force cannot solve problems. It can delay the inevitable, like another hit of heroin delays an addiction withdraw. — Justin Oliver

Force is thought control. — Justin Oliver

Free men, defined as those who understand these distinctions, are the only ones who can rescue the indifferent and the docile from a growing serfdom. The burden is on them and them alone. — Leonard E. Read

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom. — F.A. Hayek

Freedom is the mother, not the daughter, of order. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

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

Give somebody an inch and they will think they’re a ruler. — Unknown

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. — Voltaire

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best. — Voltaire

Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure. — Robert LeFevre

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us. — Leo Tolstoy

Government is essentially the negation of liberty. — Ludwig von Mises

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. — George Washington

Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty. — Ludwig von Mises

Government meddling with money has not only brought untold tyranny into the world; it has also brought chaos and not order. It has fragmented the peaceful, productive world market and shattered it into a thousand pieces, with trade and investment hobbled and hampered by myriad restrictions, controls, artificial rates, currency breakdowns, etc. … Coercion, in money as in other matters, brings, not order, but conflict and chaos. — Murray Rothbard

Government will not fail to employ education to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions. — William Godwin

Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change … [T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition. — H.L. Mencken

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers. — Voltaire

Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice — William Lloyd Garrison

Habits of thought persist through the centuries; and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine. — Charlotte P. Gilman

He is arguably the most unpleasant character in fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. — Richard Dawkins, on the god of The Bible

He [Thomas Hobbes] was writing during the English civil war, and his message seemed believable. But, of course, the conflicts in his time were not the result of natural society, but rather over the control of leviathan itself. So his theory of causation was skewed by circumstance, akin to watching a shipwreck and concluding that the natural and universal state of man is drowning. — Lew Rockwell

Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens. — Britney Spears

Honor is self-esteem made visible in action. — Ayn Rand

How many things that are good for you, that you will benefit from, need to be imposed on you … with force? — Brett Veinotte

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words! — Samuel Adams

Human beings rise above the status of sacrificial animals, so I have never, nor would I ever, concern myself with the risks and rewards of negating the peaceful will of others. — Justin Oliver

Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong. — F.A. Hayek

Hypocrisy is not the hobgoblin of enslavable minds so much as it is the hallmark of their would-be slavemasters. — Rick Gaber

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. — Robert A. Heinlein

I am not a number. I am a free man! — Patrick McGuinn, as the character No. 6 in the TV series The Prisoner.

I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. — Ayn Rand

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom. — Voltaire

I am. I think. I will. — Ayn Rand

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

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

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. — H. L. Mencken

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else. That is the alpha and omega of my argument. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I challenge you to enter into the great struggle of history, and make sure that your days on this earth count for something truly important. It is this struggle that defines our contribution to this world. Freedom is the greatest gift that you can give yourself, and give all of humanity. — Lew Rockwell

I don’t agree with the idea that a libertarian is someone who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. It is a mistake to define libertarians in terms of conservatives or liberals. Conservative politicians are as fiscally imprudent as liberals, and liberal politicians are as contemptuous of individual rights as conservatives. Libertarians stand for individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times. Conservatives and liberals each sometimes take positions similar to libertarians, but — unlike libertarians — there is no consistent principle running through all their political positions. — Harry Browne

I don’t know. I’m just here to take your money. — Unknown Massachusetts DMV agent

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

I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—’That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which the will have. — Henry David Thoreau

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I know who is going to win every election, the government. — Ernie Hancock

I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of the progress. — Ghandi

I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. — Ayn Rand

I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own. — Billie Holiday

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. — Gandhi

I pledge allegiance to liberty and justice for all, and pledge perpetual opposition to the Republic of the United States, and to the control and tyranny for which it stands. — Larken Rose

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I quietly declare war with the State. — Henry David Thoreau

I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence. — Ayn Rand

I respect the rule of the law of gravity, for example. Natural laws enforce themselves. Legislation cannot enforce itself. It is written, interpreted, and enforced by individuals. The rule of law of legislation and the constitution are still the rule of men. — Justin Oliver

I strongly feel that the chief task of the economic theorist or political philosopher should be to operate on public opinion to make politically possible what today may be politically impossible. — F.A. Hayek

I suggest therefore that this [sustainable development] be sold not through a democratic process …. That would take too long and require far too much of the funds to educate the cannon fodder, unfortunately, which populates the Earth. We have to take almost an elitist program, [so] that we can see beyond our swollen bellies, and look to the future in time frames and in results which are not easily understood, or which can be, with intellectual honesty, be reduced down to some kind of simplistic definition. — David Lang, at the 1992 UNCED Earth Summit

I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. — Ayn Rand

I want to rebut the idea that your property is yours and we have to leave it all alone. That’s not true; that’s not true. It never has been true. — Bill Lanford, mayor of Haltom City, Texas

I will tell you. The most urgent necessity is not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education. — Frédéric Bastiat

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. — Thomas Jefferson

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! — Karl Hess, for Sen. Barry Goldwater

I wouldn’t call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed-down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either. — Edward Zehr

I’ll believe U.S. troops are fighting for our freedom when they surround Washington instead of Baghdad. — Wes Alexander

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. — George Orwell

If men were angels, I say in reply to Madison, I might not object to government. Men, however, aren’t angels. Power tends to corrupt us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Some men are bad; all men are fallible.

For precisely that reason, vesting the exercise of power in a monopoly institution, however representative or seemingly well-intentioned the people composing that institution might be, is a recipe for disaster. Such an arrangement is bound to compound error and exacerbate injury on the one hand, while on the other it fails to give full scope to the individual’s potential for innovation and advancement. — Thomas Knapp

If one assumes that there exists above and beyond the individual’s actions an imperishable entity aiming at its own ends, different from those of mortal men, one has already constructed the concept of a superhuman being. Then one cannot evade the question whose ends take precedence whenever an antagonism arises, those of the state or society or those of the individual. — Ludwig von Mises

If the cost principle of value cannot be realized otherwise than by compulsion, then it had better not be realized. — Benjamin Tucker

If the role of the state is to ferret out evil thoughts and bad ideas, it must necessarily become totalitarian. If the goal of the state is that all citizens must come to hold the same values as the great leader, whether economic, moral, or cultural, the state must necessarily become totalitarian. If the people are led to believe that scarce resources are best channeled in a direction that producers and consumers would not choose on their own, the result must necessarily be central planning. — Lew Rockwell

If the state granted itself a clothing monopoly, you would probably say libertarians just want to run around naked. — Ryan Faulk

If there be any such principle as justice, it is, of necessity, a natural principle; and, as such, it is a matter of science, to be learned and applied like any other science. And to talk of either adding to, or taking from, it, by legislation, is just as false, absurd, and ridiculous as it would be to talk of adding to, or taking from, mathematics, chemistry, or any other science, by legislation. — Lysander Spooner

If there is a State, then there is domination, and in turn, there is slavery. — Mikhail Bakunin

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. — Frederick Douglas

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal. — Emma Goldman

If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force. — Auberon Herbert

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion. — F.A. Hayek

If you can’t trust men to govern themselves, how can you trust them to govern others? — Unknown

If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear. — James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination

If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. — Erica Jong

If you think voting is gonna set you free, you haven’t been paying attention! — Ernest Hancock

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. — George Orwell

If you want to light the fires of liberty, be patient for these combustive ideas to soak in. — Justin Oliver

If you want to win an argument, appeal to natural rights or economic theory. If you want to win a convert, appeal to self-interest. No one will pay much attention to you until you show how your proposals will change his life for the better. — Harry Browne

If [government] laws are our means of protection, then why are those with grossest history of abuses not governed by them? The state conclude that stealing is both morally necessary and emphatically evil. The state is hypocrisy, for it allows a tiny minority to steal but punishes the masses for the same behavior. — Justin Oliver

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. — Leon Trotsky

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. — George Orwell

In all the revolutions, there have always been but two parties opposing each other; that of the people who wish to live by their own labor, and that of those who would live by the labor of others. … Patricians and plebeians, slaves and freemen, guelphs and ghibellines, red roses and white roses, cavaliers and roundheads, liberals and serviles, are only varieties of the same species. — Adolphe Blanqui

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. — Ayn Rand

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. — Voltaire

In my opinion, [The Road to Serdom] is a grand book. … Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement. — John Maynard Keynes

In place of laws, we will put contracts [i.e. free agreements]. No more laws voted by a majority, nor even unanimously; each citizen, each town, each industrial union, makes its own laws. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

In practice, the justification for the state is the subjugation of the politically weak to the politically connected, from what Samuel Edward Konkin III called the economic class to the political class. It is blunt force. — Justin Oliver

In short, democracy is gang warfare for cowards. — Larken Rose

In short, when the point is reached, through big favors or little ones, that large profits or small are obtained under a tyrant, there are found almost as many people to whom tyranny seems advantageous as those to whom liberty would seem desirable. — Etienne de la Boetie

In spite of the arguments of fear, it is always wrong to steal and legal justification does not make right that which is morally wrong. — Robert LeFevre

In the confrontation between the State and freedom, there can be no middle ground, no safe haven, no neutral corner, nook, or cranny. — Karl Hess

In the ideal State, therefore, there is no political power because there is no State. But the ideal is never fully realized in life. Hence the classical statement of Thoreau that Government is best which governs the least. — Ghandi

In the Libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves uses force — actions like murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping and fraud. — Charles Murray

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. — Ayn Rand

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

It is because there are evil, incompetent people in the world that we must never give government the power to enforce morality, economic equality, or any other social goal. The coercive power of government is always a beacon to those who want to dominate others — summoning the worst dregs of society to Washington to use that power to impose their will upon others. — Harry Browne

It is collectivism that is the unrealistic expression of utopian belief systems. In its worst form — the state — collectivism is the institutionalized exertion of violence to compel living beings to behave contrary to their natural self-interest inclinations. So strong are the motivations for individual preferences that the state must resort to attacks upon the very nature of life to satisfy the ambitions of those who see others as nothing more than resources to be exploited for such ends. — Butler Shaffer

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. — Voltaire

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth. — John Locke

It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to resist and to restrain the violence of the state. — Noam Chomsky

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. — Albert Camus

It is the Mob of mobs, Gang of gangs, Conspiracy of conspiracies. It has murdered more people in a few recent years than all the deaths in history before that time; it has stolen in a few recent years more than all the wealth produced in history to that time; it has deluded – for its survival – more minds in a few recent years than all the irrationality of history to that time. Our Enemy, The State. — Samuel Edward Konkin III

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. — Emma Goldman

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

It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion — whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government — at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty. — Frédéric Bastiat

It would appear the more liberty we lose, the less people are able to imagine how liberty might work. — Lew Rockwell

It would scarcely be too much to claim that the main merit of the individualism which [Adam Smith] and his contemporaries advocated is that is a system under which bad men can do least harm. It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid. — F.A. Hayek

It would scarcely be too much to claim that the main merit of the individualism which [Adam Smith] and his contemporaries advocated is that is a system under which bad men can do least harm. It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid. — F.A. Hayek

It’s just a goddamned piece of paper! — George W. Bush, on the US constitution

It’s just as well that our aggression creates poverty instead of wealth. Otherwise, we’d be eternally at war with each other! — Mary Ruwart

Jesus would never use government surrogates to force the people to ‘help others.’ — Philip Freneau

Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men. — F.A. Hayek

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy. — Frédéric Bastiat

Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense. — Ron Paul

Let them march all they want, so long as they continue to pay their taxes. — Al Haig, in response to anti-war demonstrators

Libertarianism is a philosophy. The basic premise of libertarianism is that each individual should be free to do as he or she pleases so long as he or she does not harm others. In the libertarian view, societies and governments infringe on individual liberties whenever they tax wealth, create penalties for victimless crimes, or otherwise attempt to control or regulate individual conduct which harms or benefits no one except the individual who engages in it. — U.S. Internal Revenue Service, during the process of granting the Advocates for Self-Government status as a non-profit educational organization.

Libertarianism is self-government. It combines the best of both worlds: The left leg of self-government is tolerance of others; the right leg is responsible economic behavior. The combination of both legs leads to social harmony and material abundance. — Marshall Fritz

Libertarianism is what your mom taught you: behave yourself and don’t hit your sister. — Kenneth Bisson

Libertarianism is, as the name implies, the belief in liberty. Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property, and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life — as long as he simply respects the same right of others to do the same. — Sharon Harris

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. — Harry Emerson Fosdick

Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power. — Ludwig von Mises

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. — Lord Acton

Liberty is the only thing you can’t have unless you give it to others. — William Allen White

Liberty is the solution of all social and economic questions. — Joseph Labadie

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. — George Bernard Shaw

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. — F.A. Hayek

Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world. — Earl Warren

Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost. — Josiah Warren

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

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. — Frédéric Bastiat

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. — Frédéric Bastiat

Man is free at the instant he wants to be. — Voltaire

Man must have the right of choice, even to choose wrong, if he shall ever learn to choose right. — Josiah C. Wedgwood

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

Maybe we’re stuck with it. But do we have to worship it? — Joseph Sobran

Mister, there’s nothing I’ve got to do except die. — Ayn Rand

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason. — Ayn Rand

Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. — Ayn Rand

More than anything, it just goes to show how ineffective government is at protecting liberties and how silly the idea of a constitution is if the very organization it is meant to restrain is given a monopoly on interpreting it and discretion when enforcing it. — Justin Oliver

Natural law is rooted in the fixed nature of human beings. It is universal, constant, discoverable, and tangible. — Justin Oliver

No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or if police can be bought off by drug traffickers.

No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery.

That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there, and now is the time for that style of governance to end. — Barack Obama, speaking in Ghana

No longer is the idea of a state-planned society seen as frightening. What scares people more today is the prospect of a society without a plan, which is to say a society of freedom. — Lew Rockwell

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. — Thomas Jefferson

No man or body of men preaching anarchistic doctrines should be allowed at large any more than if preaching the murder of some specified private individual. Anarchistic speeches, writings, and meetings are essentially seditious and treasonable. — President Theodore Roosevelt, addressing Congress in 1901

No matter how noble the original intentions, the seductions of power can turn any movement from one seeking equal rights to one that would deny them to others. — Tammy Bruce

No revolution, no matter how justified, and no movement, no matter how popular, has ever succeeded without a political philosophy to guide it, to set its direction and goal. — Ayn Rand

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it. — Malcolm X

Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier. — Ludwig von Mises

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. — Goethe

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now is the time to showcase the dignity of our volitional nature and exemplify the heroic nature of our accomplishments. I don’t think either is possible with a whip in your hand. — Justin Oliver

Now I’m not saying that being right is easy, for if it were easy then it would have already been done. — Justin Oliver

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But 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 limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual. — Thomas Jefferson

Once the basic concept of liberty is understood, society and the individual can exist in harmony, each reinforcing the other while allowing for innovation and growth; hence, promoting the advancement of mankind through a free market of ideas. This is the essence of liberty. — Katy Hamilton

Once the principle of government- judicial monopoly and the power to tax- is incorrectly admitted as just, any notion of restraining government power and safeguarding individual liberty and property is illusory. Rather, under monopolistic auspices the price of justice and protection will continually rise and the quality of justice and protection fall. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Once you understand that the state is a collective fantasy, you understand that you don’t overthrow the state not by force of arms, but through knowledge, through wisdom, through courage. … How do you combat an illusion? You don’t shoot it! You can’t shoot it because it doesn’t exist. — Stefan Molyneux

One of the principal functions of government is to remain in power. Governments do not relinquish their authority unless compelled to do so. Many of the actions of politicians and civil servants can be explained by the need to maintain and enhance their power. …

Governments tend, therefore, to foster widespread ideological commitment to the nation through patriotic ceremonies, propaganda, and civic education; they employ armed forces and intelligence-gathering organizations for national defense; they maintain police and prison systems to ensure domestic order; and they undertake the administration of supervisory and regulatory functions to carry out national goals by establishing various bureaucracies to handle each complex function. — Scholastic, publisher of children’s literature

Only ideas can overcome ideas. — Ludwig von Mises

Our constitutions purport to be established by ‘the people,’ and, in theory, ‘all the people’ consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of ‘the people’ exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given. — Lysander Spooner

Party on, Wayne. — Mike Myers

Peace is the natural state of man, war the temporary repeal of reason and virtue. — Hans F. Sennholz

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. — Clara McDermott

Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent. — Ayn Rand

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. — Abraham Lincoln

Please remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, and this manure which you so arbitrarily dispose of, are men! They are your equals! — Frédéric Bastiat

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. — Milton Friedman

Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money – only for wanting to keep your own money. — Joseph Sobran

Politics must be the battle of the principles … the principle of liberty against the principle of force. — Auberon Herbert

Power may come out of the barrel of a gun, but it requires people willing to hold and aim guns to exercise power. — Unknown

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. — Lord Acton

Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own. — e.e. cummings

Probably no other belief is now so much a threat to liberty in the United States and in much of the rest of the world as the one that democracy, by itself alone, guarantees liberty. — Floyd Harper

Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property. — Frédéric Bastiat

Public education really is just welfare for the middleclass. — Mark Edge

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. — Ayn Rand

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking … — Ayn Rand

Religion can never reform mankind, because religion is slavery. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. — Ayn Rand

Remember, the Enemy we are fighting is ten thousand years old. It lurks somewhere inside nearly every person on Earth. It controls half the wealth and all the weapons of mass murder. It speaks over all the airwaves and nearly all the presses.

It is Evil. It is huge. It is the State. Can a rag-tag band of rebels such as we hope to prevail against such an overwhelming terror?

Yes, for the State is massive, yet fragile, for it is built on a foundation of lies. These lies are only now being consistently exposed. Help wield the Sword of Truth and the Shield of Valor. Renew your dedication to freedom, anarchy, and the agora. — Samuel Edward Konkin III

Rulers claim a right to rise above and control the individual, his labor, his trade, his time, and his property, against his own judgment and inclination, while security of person and property cannot consist in anything less than having the supreme government of himself and all his own interests; therefore, security cannot exist under any government whatever. — Josiah Warren

See, I told you so. — Rush Limbaugh

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms. — Ron Paul

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms. — Ron Paul

Show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. — Ayn Rand

Simply put, freedom is the absence of government coercion. — Ron Paul

So long as there is government, there shall be no peace and no justice. — John Simpson

So you can take a market and beat it, tax it, regulate it, subsidize it, flood it with fake money, punish its performers and reward its losers, hobble its capital sector, strangle consumers, nationalize stuff at will, and erect every barrier to trade and cooperation, and STILL call it a market. When the scheme fails, it’s the free market that failed, so clearly we need the totalitarian state to sweep into action. — Jeffrey Tucker

Some people say that Libertarians want anarchy. But anarchy is what we have now. Our cities aren’t safe, our schools are centers of violence, the politicians have turned the rule of law into a chaotic web of millions of regulations and mandates. Libertarians want to restore order by removing, wherever possible, the destabilizing influence of government. — Harry Browne

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: ‘I, the state, am the people.’ — Friedrich Nietzsche

Statism is the pretext, an excuse for controlling others. So long as the notion prevails that one person’s benefit is another person’s loss that pretext will exist. — Justin Oliver

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death. — Adolf Hitler

That forcible government is a moral wrong in itself is enough reason to abolish it, even if market solutions were not an improvement. — Brad Edmonds

That Socialism would be immediately practicable if an omnipotent and omniscient Deity were personally to descend to take in hand the government of human affairs is incontestable. — Ludwig von Mises

The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: ‘to live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.’

This entire maxim is really expressed in the single words, to live honestly; since to live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due. — Lysander Spooner

The birthright of man … is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact, and the continued existence of that compact. — Mary Wollstonecraft

The businessman’s tool is values; the bureaucrat’s tool is fear. — Ayn Rand

The character of a society can never rise above that of the individuals that comprise it, and if society wishes for peace, then all people must disengage from exercising coercive authority over others. — Matt Pritchard

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself. — Hilaire Belloc

THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution …. — The Preamble to the Bill of Rights

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. — F.A. Hayek

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. — Lord Acton

The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism. — Ludwig von Mises

The end of the state is at hand. We need only channel our passion such that we are striking at the root of evil instead of hacking at its branches. With every person who we help to become more self-confident the state becomes weaker and we become stronger. — Alex Ryan

The essence of the state is its legal monopoly of force. But force is subhuman; in words I quote incessantly, Simone Weil defined it as ‘that which turns a person into a thing — either corpse or slave.’ It may sometimes be a necessary evil, in self-defense or defense of the innocent, but nobody can have by right what the state claims: an exclusive privilege of using it. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. — Ayn Rand

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. — John Hay

The existence of evil can never justify the existence of the State. If there is no evil, the State is unnecessary. If evil exists, the State is far too dangerous to be allowed to exist — Stefan Molyneux

The failure of modern culture lies not in its principle of individualism, not in the idea that moral virtue is the same as the pursuit of self-interest, not in the deterrioration of the meaning of self-interest; not in the fact that people are too much concerned with their self-interest, but that they are not concerned enough with the interest of their real self, not in the fact that they are too selfish, but that they do not love themselves. — Erich Fromm

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values — interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. — Benito Mussolini

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds. — Isaiah Berlin

The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property. — Ludwig von Mises

The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property. — Ludwig von Mises

The foundation stone of my system is the availability of free credit. If I am mistaken in this, Socialism is a vain dream. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The freedom of individuals to choose, without intrusive state regulation, is the prerequisite of morality. A coerced ‘choice’ does not reflect virtue, only compliance. In other words, you cannot force a person to be moral; you can only make them conform. True morality requires freedom and cannot exist without it. — Wendy McElroy

The goal of both the left and right is that we make our political choices based on these fears. It doesn’t matter so much which package of fear you choose; what matters is that you support a state that purports to keep your nightmare from becoming a reality. — Lew Rockwell

The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive — a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith. The purpose of man’s life is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. — Ayn Rand

The government can’t provide lasting solutions because it has no solutions, only force. Force cannot inspire or innovate; it stagnates — Justin Oliver

The government is a priesthood of psychopaths and maniacs bent on torturing people. — Alex Jones

The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State. — Murray Rothbard

The greater the obstacle, the more the glory in overcoming it. — Moliere

The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good. — F.A. Hayek

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

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. — Robert Heinlein

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution. — Ludwig von Mises

The law is justice — simple and clear, precise and bounded. Every eye can see it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and unchangeable. Justice is neither more than this nor less than this. If you exceed this proper limit — if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic — you will then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself? — Frédéric Bastiat

The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. — Ayn Rand

The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another. — Ludwig von Mises

The measure of the state’s success is that the word ‘anarchy’ frightens people, while the word ‘state’ does not. — Joseph Sobran

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals. — Ayn Rand

The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another. — Ayn Rand

The moral precept to adopt … is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged. — Ayn Rand

The more laws the more offenders. — Thomas Fuller

The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual. — F.A. Hayek

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation. — Emma Goldman

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, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. — H. L. Mencken

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. — Ron Paul

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. — Ron Paul

The need of all living things to occupy space and ingest energy from their external world offers an adequate explanation, and justification, for their assertion of exclusive interests in property. — Butler Shaffer

The need of society for labor is never satisfied. — Ludwig von Mises

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this — that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. — Lysander Spooner

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

The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. — John Locke

The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. — Unknown

The person who used political power to force others to conform to his ideas seems inevitably to become corrupted by the power he holds. In due course he comes to believe that power and wisdom are the same thing and, since he has power, he must also have wisdom. At this point he begins to lose his ability to distinguish between what is morally right and what is politically expedient. — Ben Moreell

The philosophy of natural law defends the rational dignity of the human individual and his right and duty to criticize by word and deed any existent institution or social structure in terms of those universal moral principles which can be apprehended by the individual intellect alone. — Lord Acton

The plans differ; the planners are all alike. — Frédéric Bastiat

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist. — Winston Churchill

The power to tax involves the power to destroy. — John Marshall, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court

The principle is not that a human being cannot be justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States. — London Spectator editorial, on Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation

The principle of the republican government is virtue, and the means required to establish virtue is terror. — Maximilien Robespierre

The problem with politics isn’t the money; it’s the power. — Harry Browne

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. — Ayn Rand

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. — Ayn Rand

The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers. — Ludwig von Mises

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ and ‘Thou shalt not lie’ in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment. — George Carlin

The science of mine and thine — the science of justice — is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person.

It is the science of peace; and the only science of peace; since it is the science which alone can tell us on what conditions mankind can live in peace, or ought to live in peace, with each other. — Lysander Spooner

The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage. — Thucydides

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. — Marie Beyle

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. — Ayn Rand

The social revolution is seriously compromised if it comes through a political revolution. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. — Ayn Rand

The State applies itself to loading everybody’s brain with prejudices, and everybody’s heart with sentiments favorable to the spirit of disorder, war, and hatred; so that, when a doctrine of order, peace, and comity presents itself, it is in vain that it has clearness and truth on its side; it cannot gain admittance. — Frédéric Bastiat

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. — Frédéric Bastiat

The State is the negation of Humanity. It is this in two ways: the opposite of human freedom and human justice (internally), as well as the forcible disruption of the common solidarity of mankind (externally). — Mikhail Bakunin

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. — John Locke

The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. Hence I prefer the doctrine of trusteeship. — Ghandi

The State’s behavior is violence, and it calls its violence ‘law’; that of the individual, ‘crime.’ — Max Stirner

The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business. It is an outcome of government meddling with business. — Ludwig von Mises

The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. — Plato

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

The truth is that the cause of wars … rest solely in the existence of the state, which is a form of privilege. … Whatever the form it may assume, the State is nothing but organised oppression for the advantage of a privileged minority. — Emma Goldman

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. — H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. — H.L. Mencken

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice. — Johann von Schiller

The voting myth states that to have political influence, you must delegate it away. — Justin Oliver

The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times. — Joseph Paul Goebbels, reichsminister of propaganda in Nazi Germany

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by governments. — Ludwig von Mises

Theft is theft whether it be carried out by one thief or by 100 million thieves acting in concert. And it is impossible to found a good society on the institutionalization of theft. — Robert Higgs

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. — Henry David Thoreau

There are in the market economy no conflicts between the interests of the buyers and sellers. — Ludwig von Mises

There are no violent gangs fighting over aspirin territories. There are no violent gangs fighting over whisky territories or computer territories or anything else that’s legal. There are only criminal gangs fighting over territories covering drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other victimless crimes. Making a non-violent activity a crime creates a black market, which attracts criminals and gangs, which turns what was once a relatively harmless activity affecting a small group of people into a widespread epidemic of drug use and gang warfare. — Harry Browne

There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns. — Ayn Rand

There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns. — Ayn Rand

There can be no such thing as ‘limited government,’ because there is no way to control an entity that in principle enjoys a monopoly of power — Joseph Sobran

There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob. — Ayn Rand

There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience. — Lord Hartley William Shawcross

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness. — The Dalai Lama

There is only one evil thought: the refusal to think. — Ayn Rand

There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

‘Free! Body and soul free!’ she kept whispering. — Kate Chopin

There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions. — Milton Friedman

There’s never been a good government. — Emma Goldman

These socialist writers look upon people in the same manner that the gardener views his trees. Just as the gardener capriciously shapes the trees into pyramids, parasols, cubes, vases, fans, and other forms, just so does the socialist writer whimsically shape human beings into groups, series, centers, sub-centers, honeycombs, labor-corps, and other variations. And just as the gardener needs axes, pruning hooks, saws, and shears to shape his trees, just so does the socialist writer need the force that he can find only in law to shape human beings. For this purpose, he devises tariff laws, tax laws, relief laws, and school laws. — Frédéric Bastiat

They must find it difficult, those who take authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority. — Unknown, from the movie Zeitgeist

They say that politics is the art of compromise. And that’s true. The politicians compromise away our money, our civil liberties, and our property. — Harry Browne

Things do not change; we change. — Henry David Thoreau

This is what the government is, has always been, the creator and defender of privilege; the organization of oppression and revenge. To hope that it can ever become anything else is the vainest of delusions. They tell you that Anarchy, the dream of social order without government, is a wild fancy. The wildest dream that ever entered the heart of man is the dream that mankind can ever help itself through an appeal to law, or to come to any order that will not result in slavery wherein there is any excuse for government. — Voltairine de Cleyre

This must be said: There are too many ‘great’ men in the world — legislators, organizers, do-gooders, leaders of the people, fathers of nations, and so on, and so on. Too many persons place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, and ruling it.

Now someone will say: You yourself are doing this very thing.’ True. But it must be admitted that I act in an entirely different sense; if I have joined the ranks of the reformers, it is solely for the purpose of persuading them to leave people alone. I do not look upon people as Vancauson looked upon his automaton. Rather, just as the physiologist accepts the human body as it is, so do I accept people as they are. I desire only to study and admire. — Frédéric Bastiat

This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:

1. The few plunder the many.
2. Everybody plunders everybody.
3. Nobody plunders anybody.

We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three. — Frédéric Bastiat

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. — Frederick Douglas

Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. — Ludwig von Mises

Those who comfortably acquiesce and say ‘we cannot change things’ shamefully desecrate human dignity and all the gifts of their own hearts and brain. For they renounce without a struggle every use of their ability to overthrow man-made institutions and governments and to replace them with new ones. — Erich Mühsam

Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. — John V. Lindsay

Those who would have good government without its correlative misrule … do not understand the principles of the universe. — Chuang Tzu

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won. — Ayn Rand

Thus substantially all the legislation of the world has had its origin in the desires of one class — of persons to plunder and enslave others, and hold them as property. — Lysander Spooner

Thus the despot subdues his subjects, some of them by means of others, and thus is he protected by those from whom, if they were decent men, he would have to guard himself; just as, in order to split wood, one has to use a wedge of the wood itself. — Etienne de la Boetie

To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must do something. — Charlotte P. Gilman

To be an anarchist only means that you believe that aggression is not justified, and that states necessarily employ aggression. And, therefore, that states, and the aggression they necessarily employ, are unjustified. It’s quite simple, really. It’s an ethical view, so no surprise it confuses utilitarians. — Stephan Kinsella

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

To build a better world, we must have the courage to make a new start. — F.A. Hayek

To change masters is not to be free. — Jose Marti y Perez

To free curiosity; to permit individuals to go charging off in new directions dictated by their own interests; to unleash the sense of inquiry; to open everything to questioning and exploration; to recognize that everything is in process of change — here is an experience I can never forget. — Carl Rogers, on the role of education

To kill for a country is to murder for nothing. — Unknown

To paraphrase Ayn Rand, the smallest government on earth is self-government. Those who deny self-government cannot claim to be defenders of small government. — Justin Oliver

To rob the public, it is necessary to deceive them. To deceive them, it is necessary to persuade them that they are robbed for their own advantage, and to induce them to accept in exchange for their property, imaginary services, and often worse. Hence spring Sophisms in all their varieties. Then, since Force is held in check, Sophistry is no longer only an evil; it is the genius of evil, and requires a check in its turn. This check must be the enlightenment of the public, which must be rendered more subtle than the subtle, as it is already stronger than the strong. — Frédéric Bastiat

To the degree control over property is decentralized among individuals, we can be said to have a free society. Liberty, then, is defined not in terms of how much property you own, but how much authority you exercise over what you do own. — Butler Shaffer

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. — John Locke

True liberty cannot exist apart from the full rights of property, for property is the only crystallized form of free faculties. — Auberon Herbert

Trusting people to be creative and constructive when given more freedom does not imply an overly optimistic belief in the perfectibility of human nature. It is, rather, belief that the inevitable errors and sins of the human condition are far better overcome by individuals working together in an environment of trust and freedom and mutual respect than by individuals working under a multitude of rules, regulations, and restraints imposed upon them by another group of imperfect individuals. — Peter Senge

Typically, political discussions revolve around who to stab and how deep the blade should go. — Justin Oliver

Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend. — William Lloyd Garrison

Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act. — Ludwig von Mises

Vietnam should remind conservatives that whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder. — Karl Hess

Violence does not produce positive overall results. It is less than a zero-sum game. In government, you are either stealing or being stolen from. The power of the state is being used immediately for your benefit, or the power of the state is being used against your benefit. — Justin Oliver

Virtually all the Christian churches and sects have espoused the principles of socialism and interventionism. — Ludwig von Mises

Voting is like a suggestion box on a plantation. — Brett Veinotte

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. — Smedley Butler

War is the health of the State. — Randolph Bourne

Warfare is the quintessential government activity. — Robert Higgs

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. — Ayn Rand

We can bring about a laissez-faire society, but only through the tremendous, invisible power of ideas. Ideas are the motive power of human progress, the force which shapes the world. Ideas are more powerful than armies, because it was ideas which caused the armies to be raised in the first place, and it is ideas which keep them fighting (if this weren’t true, political leaders wouldn’t have to bother with their tremendous propaganda machinery). When an idea gains popular support, all the guns in the world cannot kill it. — Morris and Linda Tannehill

We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality. — Ayn Rand

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain. — Frédéric Bastiat

We don’t need to choose between the ideal and the practical. Since the means used dictate the ends attained, only non-aggression can give us a peaceful and prosperous world. Since aggression results in poverty and strife, it is neither ideal nor practical. Non-aggression will eventually become the norm because thankfully it is both ideal and practical. — Mary Ruwart

We have no demands to present to you, no bargains to strike, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you. — Ayn Rand

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable: that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. — Thomas Jefferson, from his original draft of the Declaration of Independence

We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or governments as morally repugnant. — Ron Paul

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’ — Martin Luther King Jr.

We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become. — Benito Mussolini

We will get rid of the state when we get rid of all the illusions that underpin the moral justifications for the state. That is primarily a personal project, not a political one. — Stefan Molyneux

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. — Hillary Clinton

Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. — Ayn Rand

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free. — F.A. Hayek

What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven. — Friedrich Hölderlin

What he really did was to write an apology for the prevailing policies of governments. — Ludwig von Mises, on John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

What I would suggest is that rather than playing damage control, we should go on the offensive, presenting and practicing consistently the ideas of complete liberty, reason, and objective morality to demonstrate to others the practical benefits of our ideas by working together to thwart the arbitrary controls others seek over us. — Justin Oliver

What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem. — Ayn Rand

What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious. — Cicero

What limited-government activists offer is an uninspiring vision for society, a limited slavery, one in which the best they can hope for is a constant struggle to halt the expansion of the state. — Justin Oliver

When god gives you lemons, you find a new god. — College Humor

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads. — Ron Paul

When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set. — Lin Yutang

Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. — Lord Acton

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

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected. — Ghandi

Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa. — Mikhail Bakunin

Where the State divides and conquers its opposition, Libertarianism unites and liberates. Where the State beclouds, Libertarianism clarifies; where the State conceals, Libertarianism uncovers; where the State pardons, Libertarianism accuses. — Samuel Edward Konkin III

Who plans whom, who directs and dominates whom, who assigns to other people their station in life, and who is to have his due allotted by others? — F.A. Hayek

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism. — Ludwig von Mises

With government, you are either stealing or being stolen from. The power of the state is being used immediately for your benefit, or the power of the state is being used against your benefit. — Justin Oliver

Without a theory the facts are silent. — F.A. Hayek

Workers and consumers are, of course, identical. — Ludwig von Mises

Yet the criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it. — Ludwig von Mises

You believed until now that tyrants exist? Well! You were wrong, there are only slaves: where no one obeys, no one can command. — Anselme Bellegarrigue

You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can be free only if I am free. — Clarence Darrow

You can use violence to overthrow a violent institution, as long as you accept the fact that there will be another violent institution replacing the first. The solution isn’t to violently attack the state, but rather deny its power over us and live as if it did not exist. Without our support, one day it won’t. — Dustin Archer

You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. — Malcolm X

You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. — Malcom X

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. — Gandhi

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. — Richard Buckminster Fuller

You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live. — Ayn Rand

You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother. — Harry J. Anslinger, former assistant prohibition commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition

You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let’s just get rid of all the drug laws. — Ron Paul

[An anarchist] does not wish to abolish government int the sense of collective decisions: what he does wish to abolish is the system by which a decision is enforced upon those who opposed it. — Betrand Russell

[A]narchism [is] the total opposition to any institutionalized power, a state of completely voluntary social organization in which people would establish their ways of life in small, consenting groups, and cooperate with others as they see fit. — Karl Hess

[E]very policeman know that though governments may change, the police remains — Leon Trotsky

[I]f a man has never consented or agreed to support a government, he breaks no faith in refusing to support it. And if he makes war on it, he does so as an open enemy, and not as a traitor. — Lysander Spooner

[L]iberty, or the absence of coercion, or the leaving of people to think, speak, and act as they please, is in itself a good thing. It is the object of a favorable presumption. The burden of proving it inexpedient always lies and wholly lies on those who wish to abridge it by coercion. — William Godwin

[T]he individual is the true reality in 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. Man, the individual, has always been and, necessarily is the sole source and motive power of evolution and progress. Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against “society,” that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship. — Emma Goldman

[T]he interests of the State and those of the individual differ fundamentally and are antagonistic. The State and the political and economic institutions it supports can exist only by fashioning the individual to their particular purpose; training him to respect “law and order;” teaching him obedience, submission and unquestioning faith in the wisdom and justice of government; above all, loyal service and complete self-sacrifice when the State commands it, as in war. — Emma Goldman

[T]o wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors. — Voltaire

[W]e must understand that outside the sphere of parliamentarism, as sterile as it is absorbing, there is another field incomparably vaster, in which our destiny is worked out; that beyond these political phantoms, whose forms capture our imagination, there are the phenomena of social economy, which, by their harmony or discord, produce all the good and ill of society. … Know well that there is nothing more counter-revolutionary than the Government. Whatever liberalism it pretends, whatever name it assumes, the Revolution repudiates it: its fate is to be absorbed in the industrial organization. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon