Libertarian Quotes

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private liberty.

I think Liberals may tend to be more people oriented, whereas Conservatives are more task oriented. It makes Liberals look softheaded to Conservatives and Conservatives hardhearted to Liberals. I'm a Libertarian for the most part. I guess we're just assholes. Practical, critical thinking assholes who ask evil selfish questions like Why are we being punished for something someone else did or might possibly do?, Who is supposed to pay for this? and What about my children and their future?

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.

Yet basically, libertarians are for freedom and liberty forindividuals, while recognizing that in order to be free we must also beprotected. Your freedom to swing your arms ends at my nose.

I would rather contend with an honest asshole than a duplicitous diplomat.

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.

It’s been easier to convince people to hand over half their income, their children to war, and their freedoms in perpetuity, than to engage them in seriously considering how roads might function in the absence of taxation.

That effort to undermine competitive markets is no better in the market for labor than it is for goods and services.

The opposite of Nazi is neither Republican nor Democrat, conservative or liberal. Totalitarianism's diametric opposite of is Libertarianism.

Recall that the minimum wage was initially conceived as a method to exclude undesirables from the workforce.

Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

And it started out fun. We were chattering enthusiastically, flipping between CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. But as the evening wore on, and the numbers rolled in, it got quieter, and I found myself becoming intensely depressed. Why was I putting myself through this? The issues I’ve devoted my life to have become so marginalized by the coverage that they have no possible relevance to me. I can’t even blame the media — people simply don’t care about alternate-party politics. And why should they? I’m so far in the minority that my activism is a joke, a punchline that stopped being funny years ago. It goes beyond rooting for the underdog. It’s not rooting for the Giants: it’s more like, say, rooting for the Twins. But during the Super Bowl.

The entire Nazi war machine was only possible because of past, present and future violations of the non aggression principle (achievable only through government).

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.

It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.

Workers of the world unite???? How'bout.... Staunch individualists disperse!!!

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

Legalize the right to choose wrong.Legalize individual liberty.

When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'.

The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag was the origin of the Nazi salute and Nazi behavior; and the swastika, although an ancient symbol, was also used to represent crossed 'S' letters for 'socialism' under the National Socialist German Workers Party.

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

The more laws and restrictions there are,The poorer people become....The more rules and regulations,The more thieves and robbers.

...a more open and honest appraisal of the true nature of Silicon Valley and its opportunities as well as the many problems.

So a while back I spent a night in jail. Now, as for exactly what landed me there, I’d be so delighted to never have to go into any of the details regarding that. Besides, other people’s theories are so much more exotic and exciting than the reality. I've heard everything from 'attempted terrorism' to 'indecent public condescension.

The libertarian philosophy doesn't explain the best way to grow a vegetable garden!" Why do some people talk as if there should be one concept or principle which is all you'll ever need to know in order to handle everything in life? Right now the PRIMARY threat to humanity--by a factor of a zillion--is the belief in "authority." And the solution--the ONLY solution--is for people to escape that superstition. Questions like, "But how do we care for the poor?" are 100% logically IRRELEVANT to proving that statism is immoral and destructive. "But gee, if I stop sawing off my toes with this steak knife, how will I balance my checkbook?" Why the hell do people imagine that anarchists have some obligation to explain how every aspect of everyone's life will work, just because they say, "Having a ruling class is immoral and irrational"? When someone tells you to stop advocating evil crap (e.g., statism), they don't suddenly acquire an obligation to explain the whole universe to you, or to guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to anyone ever again.

It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles.

The law is an opinion with a gun.

People are naturally born as Libertarians till governments and oppressive societies force them to adopt their ideologies and their ways.

There is a very dangerous myth that #Hitler was solely fueled by racism. His desire to engineer society was pervasive. Racism alone cannot explain what happened in The Holocaust without also addressing Hitler's statist policies.

We know how the people of Argentina ruined their country. We know how the people of Venezuela ruined their country. Few Americans know much about the history of Argentina or Venezuela. But if they wish to know how the people of the USA are ruining their own country, all they have to do is look around themselves, including, in most cases, looking in the mirror.

He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.

The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response. To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.

Dr. Rex Curry, the professor and attorney from Florida, has debated and largely proven the unavoidable evidence that Hitler's National Socialism was significantly influenced by Bellamy's 'nationalistic' form of 'socialism.' Curry is famous for making the claim that Hitler adopted the 'stiff-arm salute' from Francis and Edward Bellamy.

As regards the social apparatus of repression and coercion, the government, there cannot be any question of freedom. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. It is the recourse to violence or threat of violence in order to make all people obey the orders of the government, whether they like it or not. As far as the government’s jurisdiction extends, there is coercion, not freedom. Government is a necessary institution, the means to make the social system of cooperation work smoothly without being disturbed by violent acts on the part of gangsters whether of domestic or of foreign origin. Government is not, as some people like to say, a necessary evil; it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. But it is the opposite of liberty. It is beating, imprisoning, hanging. Whatever a government does it is ultimately supported by the actions of armed constables.

Government should never be able to do anything you can't do. If you can't steal from your neighbor, you can't send the government to steal for you.

History has been stolen from us and replaced with guilt inducing lies.

I became a Libertarian as a result of researching WWII and the Holocaust. Individual liberty is sacred.

It's illegal to forcefully take money from people unless you're the government. It's illegal to take someone's liberty, unless you're the government. It's illegal to kill someone, unless you're the government. Private organizations can do everything that government can do except for legally break the law.

In the natural sciences, some checks exist on the prolonged acceptance of nutty ideas, which do not hold up well under experimental and observational tests and cannot readily be shown to give rise to useful working technologies. But in economics and the other social studies, nutty ideas may hang around for centuries. Today, leading presidential candidates and tens of millions of voters in the USA embrace ideas that might have been drawn from a 17th-century book on the theory and practice of mercantilism, and multitudes of politicians and ordinary people espouse notions that Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and others exploded more than two centuries ago. In these realms, nearly everyone simply believes whatever he feels good about believing.

See, I’m a great believer in the power of negative thought. And in an age of affirmation, of self-help and self-love, of the rebirth of wide-eyed idealism and the power of positive thinking — I’m happy to be a champion of skepticism and doubt. That night, I rediscovered my role, my reason, and my rage.

We tried to change Vietnam. Instead, Vietnam changed us.

Deep pockets and empty hearts rule the world. We unleash them at our peril.

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same.

Sadly enough, individual liberty remains the ideal of revolutionary thinkers even in the 21st Century.

It’s herding kittens. If kittens had a lot of guns and an overdose of neo-Libertarian property theory.

The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.

American Progressives have declared war on the sanctity and autonomy of the individual.

Some say it's wrong to profit from the misfortune of others. I ask my students whether they'd support a law against doing so. But I caution them with some examples. An orthopedist profits from your misfortune of having broken your leg skiing. When there's news of a pending ice storm, I doubt whether it saddens the hearts of those in the collision repair business. I also tell my students that I profit from their misfortune—their ignorance of economic theory.

When people start talking about Right and Left, they stop talking about right and wrong.

When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.

Irony: Taking a 170-year-old envy-based "philosophy," which has led to the murder of several hundred million human beings and the oppression of billions more, and calling it "progressive".

To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself.

Communism is what happens when Socialists realize that they want complete control over every aspect of human life.

I think, therefore I am an individual... not a drone in a collective. I think, therefore I am... Libertarian.

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.

As I explain in 'What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist', to be an anarchist simply means you oppose aggression, and you realize the state necessarily commits aggression. If you are not an anarchist, it means you either condone aggression, or think the state does not necessarily commit aggression. As you say you are not an anarchist, can you please tell us which one describes you? Are you in favor of aggression (like socialists and criminals are)? Or, do you think the state does not commit aggression (like children brainwashed by government schools think)?

When people encounter the free market and they recoil or react negatively to it, they're merely confessing that voluntaryism, trade and negotiation are foreign and threatening to them, which tells you everything about how tragically they were raised.