Best 728 quotes in «libertarian quotes» category

The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community.

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism.

The era of big government is over.

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

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

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 freedom to speak is meaningless without the corollary freedom to keep silent.

The Free Market is Mother Nature's way of organizing economic activity.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.

The laissez-faire argument relies on the same tacit appeal to perfection as does communism.

The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

The libertarian must never advocate or prefer a gradual, as opposed to an immediate and rapid, approach to his goal. For by doing so, he undercuts the overriding importance of his own goals and principles. And if he himself values his own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them.

The liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop.

The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets.

The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.

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.

The Libertarian Party is a shameful party

The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.

The more laws and restrictions there are, The poorer people become. The sharper men's weapons, The more trouble in the land.

The media has created this environment that is okay to say almost anything about somebody who is, you know, right of Jane Fonda. You know, if you are slightly conservative or even libertarian points of view, especially if you are persuasive and charismatic and funny and effective, you will get called the most appalling things.

The minimum that most minimalists want leaves in place just the institutions who protect their interests. That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.

The most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the "best" sources.

The myth of the inevitability of economic globalization is based largely on the work of Milton Friedman, and easily the most underreported story of our time is that the current economy proves Friedman flatly wrong.

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren

. . . Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded. . . .

... the next revolution ... will be when those who work refuse to support those who don't.

The plundering of the human spirit by the market place is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.

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[....]

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

The 'private sector' of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and the 'public sector' is, in fact, the coercive sector.

The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.

The principle of laissez-faire may be safely trusted to in some things but in many more it is wholly inapplicable; and to appeal to it on all occasions savors more of the policy of a parrot than of a statesman or a philosopher.

The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance, eternal patience with the vacuous blather occasionally expressed from behind the shield of free speech.

The program of liberalism if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production.

The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.

There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, "Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you.

The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm; it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity.

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

There are libertarian values which say private property is the overarching value, the sanctity thereof, and there are egalitarians who say health care should be shared and so on. That's fair enough.

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

There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

There is nothing new in state interventionism. It is as old and reactionary as societal organization itself. Always, when it permeates the body politic, it kills the nation.

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

There is no moral distinction between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax.

There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse.