Free Society Quotes

Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on society's jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime. The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed but instead has to pay taxes to support the incarceration of his own attacker — would be evident nonsense in a world that focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

Countries adopting free-market capitalism have increased output 70-fold, halved work days and doubled lifespans.

~ Stefan Molyneux

No rules for the rulers is tyranny for the subjects. Freedom for politicians is enslavement for citizens.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Actually, in its essence, democracy is a totalitarian ideology, though not as extreme as Nazism, fascism or communism. In principle, no freedom is safe in a democracy, every aspect of the individual's life is potentially subject to government control. At the end of the day, the minority is completely at the mercy of the whims of the majority. Even if a democracy has a constitution limiting the powers of the government, this constitution too can be amended by the majority. The only fundamental right you have in a democracy, besides running for office, is the right to vote for a political party. With that solitary vote you hand over your independence and your freedom to the will of the majority.

~ Frank Karsten

A steady recognition that the evils which prevent the fullness of moral development are precisely the elements which are also the source of the power that gives existence to whatever moral accomplishments we see about us may eventually lead us to a tolerance we grant to the internal-combustion engine: it is noisy and smelly, and occasionally, it refuses to start, but it is what gets us to wherever we get.We must somehow learn to understand and so to tolerate- not destroy- the free society.

~ Michael Polanyi

The American government is premised on the theory that if the individual man is to be free, his ideas, his beliefs, his ideology, his philosophy, must be placed beyond the reach of government.

~ William O. Douglas

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 desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

The dream of true economic, gender and racial equality in a free society, which was cherished (if not achieved) by Leftists of the post-war generation, died under New Labour; but the egalitarianism at its heart was resurrected by a merciless minority as the brain-sucking zombie of Political Correctness.

~ Mark Crutchfield

The pygmies, for example, or the Mindoro of the Philippines, do not want equal rights – they just want to be left alone.

~ Paul Karl Feyerabend