Best 728 quotes in «libertarian quotes» category

One of the failings of ideologues is their inability to see that everyone else isn't necessarily an ideologue like them.

One of the great weaknesses of standard libertarian theory is that it tends to push too hard by elevating presumptions into absolutes.

ONLY a government that is AFRAID of its citizens tries to control them.

Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.

Opportunity could be defined in so many ways. There's one way of defining it, equality of opportunity, which is in fact the equality of capability, but the libertarians got there first and they have - like the Americans getting onto the moon, naming every crater after something like an astronaut - they have got there and named "opportunity" in a way that we cannot get ownership of now.

People ask me what I am politically and I've previously offered this equation: I became a conservative by being around liberals. And I became a libertarian after being around conservatives.

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

Perpetual war for perpetual peace.

Peter Kropotkin described Anarchism as the extreme left wing of socialism - a view with which I completely agree. One of my deepest concerns today is that the libertarian socialist core will be eroded by fashionable, post- modernist, spiritualist, mystic individualism.

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

Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Politics is the means by which the will of the few becomes the will of the many.

Politicians, like bombers, seldom see their victims.

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

Poverty is the greatest cause of terrorism.

Rand`s [Paul] a libertarian. He has a view of the world that I don`t share. He said that we shouldn`t have any troops in Iraq. He agreed with Obama that was a disaster. When there was a chance to do something constructive about Syria with a no-fly zone, he said we don`t need one.

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.

Profit is a signal that valuable services are being rendered to people on a voluntary basis.

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

Religions do make claims about the universe--the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

Remember, to them it is us who are the enemy.

Republicans ought to propose conservative answers to the concerns that are uppermost on most voters’ minds. The libertarian-populist method seems to be to start with the solutions and then to imagine that voters have the relevant concerns. And while many of the proposed solutions have great potential appeal to conservative voters, few would do much to expand their ranks.

Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats.

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.

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.

Small government is beautiful

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.

Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized.

Some libertarians succeed by re-inventing the wheel. Most libertarians fail by re-inventing the flat tire.

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

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

The American experiment has come and gone. Whatever freedoms the people still might have as their own, are monitored and registered and taxed at virtually every turn.

The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.

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

The American people are becoming more and more afraid of, and are running away from, their own revolution.

The average family pays more in taxes than it spends on food, clothing, and shelter combined.

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom...

The Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

The broad liberal objective is a balanced and flexible "mixed economy," thus seeking to occupy that middle ground between capitalism and socialism whose viability has so long been denied by both capitalists and socialists.

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

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

The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression.

The debate in the Republican Party needs to be between libertarians and conservatives.

The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity.

The desire to rule is the mother of heresies.

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.