Libertarian Quotations | Page 3

There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion.

People fear witches, and burn women.

The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone.

Of all the tyrannies on human kind the worst is that which persecutes the mind.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

Laws do not curb the lawless. After all, that's why we call them 'lawless.'

Fascism isn't a libertarian doctrine! It just isn't, never will be and it can't be cast as one.

The Lindsey Graham via foreign policy is going to beat Rand Paul's libertarian view of foreign policy. It will beat Barack Obama's view of foreign policy. It will beat Hillary Clinton's view of foreign policy.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises.

Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.

Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.

War is the Health of the State.

At the day of judgment we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done.

A protective tariff is a typical conspiracy in restraint of trade.

There's always someone telling you not to do something. The main thing is just to ignore them.

Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity; they loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, thus confronting them with the possibility of insignificance.

Look not to the politicians; look to yourselves.

Im a registered independent with a lot of libertarian leanings,

There’s a very comfortable techno-libertarian culture where you think you’re doing the right thing,

In Madison's famous formulation in the Federalist, constitutional restrictions on government assume that we "first enable the government to control the governed." If the public authorities can be outgunned or bribed, the vibrancy of the private sector can be pathological.

I'm a staunch civil libertarian; I really believe that the individual is more important than any societal value.

People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance

Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt

When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

You can't reason people out of beliefs they weren't reasoned into.

Democracy is the suggestion box for slaves.

Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.

Theories of "natural law" and the "law of nations" are another excellent example of discussions destitute of all exactness. [...] "Natural law" is simply that law of which the person using the phrase approves[....]

Science, incidentally, not only ignores the question of indwelling 'essences' by looking instead at measurable relationships, but science also does not agree that knowledge is obtained through Rothbard's Medieval 'investigation by a reason,' i.e., by inventing definitions and then deducing what your definitions implicitly assumed.

My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian.

It became quite clear to me that the Natural Law mystique, in Catholic, libertarian or neo-pagan forms, remains basically a set of rhetorical strategies to hypnotize others into the state which Bernard Shaw called "barbarism" and defined as 'the belief that the laws of one's own tribe are the laws of the universe'.

What I would like to vote for is a candidate that is socially liberal, a fiscal conservative, broadly libertarian with a small l but sensible and pragmatic and with a chance of winning. Thats more or less the empty set.

I don't agree with the libertarians. I want my security first. I'll deal with all the details after that.

I'm a bit of a Libertarian.

All of us inevitably spend our lives evolving from an initial to a final stage of dependence. If we are fortunate enough to achieve power and relative independence along the way, it is a transient and passing glory.

I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one.

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.

Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure.

Gun bans don't disarm criminals, gun bans attract them.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income,

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending

The era of big government is over.

I can spend your money better than you can.

Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.

The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.

It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.

I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

Private property ... is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt.

The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.

It is a free market that makes monopolies impossible.

Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.

Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good.

That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.

A tyranny based on ... deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself.

Capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

My wife and I are both Libertarian; she was a Democrat and I was a Republican, and we both met in the middle somewhere.

I would like to be interpreted as a liberal libertarian, like leave everybody alone and let them do their own thing.

Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen.

You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.

Libertarian: everyone leaves everyone else alone

When words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty.

It is better to die on your feet than be called for offensive pass interference.

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.

Terrorism is a direct response to the crimes our government has committed against foreigners (besides which, the actual terrorists are within our own government)

Elections are futures markets in stolen property.

I am a limited-government libertarian.

I am a libertarian with a small 'l' and a Republican with a capital 'R'. And I am a Republican with a capital 'R' on grounds of expediency, not on principle.

There's nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.

The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.

A society based on the freedom to choose is better than a society based on the principles of socialism, communism and coercion.

Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.

You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

When you think of the good old days, think one word: dentistry.

When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics.

Collectivism doesn't work because it's based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person's "fair share" of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless.

It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.

We are going to tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.

Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun. Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence, and his personal life are private.

'Tis true that governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys a share of protection should pay out of his estate his proportion of the maintenance of it.

Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State.

That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.

The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

It is dissent from government policies which defines the true Patriot

They've been taught by too many that this war was necessary when it isn't.

I'm always looking for an opportunity to bring progressive Democrats together with some conservative libertarian types, because there are places where we can agree.