Libertarian Quotes

The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.

~ Eric Hoffer

As mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

~ President George Washington

It is be­cause freedom means the renun­ciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.

~ Friedrich A. Hayek

Poverty can be brought about by law, it cannot be forbidden by law.

~ Isabel Paterson

The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.

~ Isabel Paterson

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. &It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion.

~ Aristotle

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

~ Albert Camus

Ever wonder why the media never refers to 18 or 19 year old American soldiers as armed teens?

~ Stefan Molyneux

My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul....I was wrong to follow the meanness of Conservatism. I should have been trying to help people instead of taking advantage of them. I don't hate anyone anymore. For the first time in my life I don't hate somebody. I have nothing but good feelings toward people. I've found Jesus Christ – It's that simple. He's made a difference. (Reagan's campaign manager death-bed confession in Feb. 1991 article for Life Magazine )

~ Lee Atwater

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

~ Aristotle

In his 1907 retirement address, Joseph Pulitzer urged his successors to always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

~ Joseph Pulitzer

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

~ Leonard Bernstein

Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

Private property is redundant. Public property is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn't private it's stolen.

~ Gustave De Molinari

You cannot have an agency that defends your property, which also has the right to violate your property rights at will. That's like hiring a bodyguard that you pay to beat you up randomly.

~ Stefan Molyneux

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.

~ Albert Jay Nock

Tyranny is the wolf cast by the shadows of sheep.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Statism is an unnatural disaster.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Rights are something made up by governments to make you feel like you're buying something with your taxes.

~ Stefan Molyneux

History is the same story with different costumes.

~ Stefan Molyneux

To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.

~ Henry Hazlitt

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.

~ Thomas Sowell

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

If any of the socialist chiefs had tried to earn his living by selling hot dogs, he would have learned something about the sovereignty of the consumers.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

No one wants their stuff stolen. No one wants their physical person harmed. If you understand the implications of those two truths, you can come to see the egregious moral and practical problems of a state-managed society.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

~ Frédéric Bastiat

The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism - which foretells a coming change.As soon as skepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith.

~ Stefan Molyneux

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.

~ J.s.b. Morse

Making universal prosperity a right is the surest way to universal poverty.

~ J.s.b. Morse

If you require force to promote your ideal, there is something wrong with your ideal.

~ J.s.b. Morse

When enough people realize that they are slaves but don't have to be, revolutions happen.

~ J.s.b. Morse

Everything is temporary. Well, except government programs.

~ Brooke Bida

The sense that just about anything goes with the collection of public revenues and the making of public expenditure has contributed mightily to the current malaise.

~ Richard A. Epstein

The pillars of classical liberalism call for flat taxes, with revenues put to limited uses; strong property rights; and free markets.

~ Richard A. Epstein

The desire to avoid short-term hardships leads to major dislocations in [housing] markets.

~ Richard A. Epstein

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

~ Richard A. Epstein

Securing, not prohibiting, the orderly transfer of wealth from A to B, based on wealth differentials, is the raison d'être of the [New Deal programs]. The contrast between the modern progressive and classical liberal agendas could not be more explicit.

~ Richard A. Epstein

It is impossible for us to make any real advance until we take to heart this great truth, that without freedom of choice, without freedom of action, there are not such things as true moral qualities; there can only be submissive wearing of the cords that others have tied round our hands.

~ Auberon Herbert

What is a price? It is a proposed point of agreement between a buyer and seller. The proposal is the key. It is not a marching order. Past prices represent deals done in history. Current prices represent possible deals in the future. Prices embed vast information about perceived realities: resource availability, consumer demand, cultural biases and habits, speculations about the future. The price is also an amazing tool. It provides an objective basis for accounting and the assessment of profit and loss. Without prices, real prices rooted in real market experience, we’d been lost.

~ Jeffrey Tucker