L. Neil Smith Quotes

Quotes about:

• We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping.

  L. Neil Smith

  Believe, Government, Hands

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• Gun control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.

  L. Neil Smith

  Gun, Found Dead, Panty Hose

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• Never Forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn't allow him to do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.

  L. Neil Smith

  Gun, Muggers, Never Forget

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• We're most likely to lose our rights when we allow ourselves to be persuaded to deprive others of theirs.

  L. Neil Smith

  Rights, Loses

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• Violent crime is a solved problem - all they have to do is repeal the laws that keep those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women from arming themselves, and violent crime evaporates like dry ice on a hot summer day.

  L. Neil Smith

  Summer, Men, Intelligent

  "Merchants of Fear". Speech to the Boulder County Libertarian Party, February 20, 1994.

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• We're all a bunch of badminton birdies who just got batted from the Republican side of the court to the Democrat side. We'll eventually get batted back again, of course, unless libertarians can manage to do something about it. If your principal concern, like mine, is freedom, there's absolutely no discernable difference between the two 'majors,' and for all practical purposes, they're one big party - the Boot On Your Neck party - pretending to be two.

  L. Neil Smith

  Party, Two, Differences

  "Catching Up with L. Neil Smith". Interview with Ari Armstrong, www.freecolorado.com. December 07, 2006.

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• If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything - without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

  L. Neil Smith

  Children, Men, Average

  "Why Did it Have to be ... Guns?". www.lneilsmith.org.

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• Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bears arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason,then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

  L. Neil Smith

  Gun, People, Second Amendment

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• The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists - or ever existed, or ever will exist - is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves." Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce.

  L. Neil Smith

  Government, Class, Important

  "Rule By Thieves: One Week in the American Kleptocracy" by John W. Whitehead, www.counterpunch.org. March 17, 2017.

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• The Bill of Rights isn't about us, it's about them . It isn't a list of things we're permitted to do, it's a list of things they aren't allowed even to consider.

  L. Neil Smith

  Rights, Bills, Lists

  "To Hell With Public Schools". The Libertarian Enterprise Article, www.ncc-1776.org. May 13, 2012.

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• People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.

  L. Neil Smith

  Men, Animal, Gun

  L. Neil Smith (2001). “The Probability Broach”, p.121, Macmillan

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• Taxes are a barbaric remnant of ancient times in which early farmers, tied to the land, no longer able to roam freely, unable to fight back with awkward agricultural tools the way they once could with hunting implements, became victims, first, of itinerant plunderers, then of bandits settling down beside them to become the governments we know today.

  L. Neil Smith

  Fighting, Hunting, Government

  "The Unnecessary Depression". The Libertarian Enterprise, www.ncc-1776.org. February 01, 2009.

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• The function of government is to provide you with service; the function of the media is to supply the Vaseline.

  L. Neil Smith

  Government, Media, Vaseline

  L. Neil Smith (2001). “The American Zone”, p.21, Macmillan

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• The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of mental illness more than it does a philosophy. Socialists get bees in their bonnets. And because they chronically lack any critical faculty to examine and evaluate their ideas, and because they are pathologically unwilling to consider the opinions of others, and most of all, because socialism is a mindset that regards the individual and his rights as insignificant, compared to whatever the socialist believes the group needs, terrible, terrible things happen when socialists acquire power.

  L. Neil Smith

  Philosophy, Believe, Rights

  "Cambodian Road Trip". The Libertarian Enterprise, www.ncc-1776.org. March 15, 2009.

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• Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220 pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110 pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. Is that evil? Is that wrong?

  L. Neil Smith

  Thug, Two, Iron

  L. Neil Smith (2001). “The Probability Broach”, p.121, Macmillan

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• Government can only do two things: It can beat people up and kill them. Or it can threaten to do so. When it seems to be doing something else - for example, handing out money or, say, surplus cheese - what's actually going on is that something has been taken away from one set of individuals by deadly force or the threat of deadly force, a hefty middleman's fee deducted, and whatever is left thrown to peasants delighted to receive stolen goods.

  L. Neil Smith

  Taken, Government, Two

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• I propose a Constitutional Amendment providing that, if any public official, elected or appointed, at any level of government, is caught lying to any member of the public for any reason, the punishment shall be death by public hanging.

  L. Neil Smith

  Lying, Government, Sea

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• Choose your allies carefully: it's highly unlikely that you'll ever be held morally, legally, or historically accountable for the actions of your enemies.

  L. Neil Smith

  Enemy, Allies, Action

  L. Neil Smith (2001). “The American Zone”, p.57, Macmillan

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• To politicians, solved problems represent a dire threat - of unemployment and poverty. That's why no problem ever tackled by the government has ever been solved. What they want is lots of problems they can promise to solve, so that we'll keep electing them - or letting them keep their jobs in a bureaucracy metastasizing like cancer.

  L. Neil Smith

  Jobs, Cancer, Government

  "Of Pharaohs and Firearms". Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership Website, jpfo.org. 2012.

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• Those who sell their liberty for security are understandable, if pitiable, creatures. Those who sell the liberty of others for wealth, power, or even a moments respite deserve only the end of a rope.

  L. Neil Smith

  Liberty, Rope, Wealth

  L. Neil Smith (2001). “The American Zone”, p.141, Macmillan

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• Wear a gun to someone else's house, you're saying, 'I'll defend this home as if it were my own.' When your guests see you carry a weapon, you're telling them, 'I'll defend you as if you were my own family.' And anyone who objects levels the deadliest insult possible: 'I don't trust you unless you're rendered harmless'!

  L. Neil Smith

  Home, Gun, House

  L. Neil Smith (2001). “The Probability Broach”, p.121, Macmillan

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• [N]o one's ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It's just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred.

  L. Neil Smith

  Differences, Giving, Democracy

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• You cannot force me to agree with you. You can force me to act as though I agree with you but then you'll have to watch your back. All the time.

  L. Neil Smith

  Watches, Force, Agree

  "Tactical Reflections" by L. Neil Smith, www.lneilsmith.org.

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• [E]lections amount to little more than choosing between the scum that floats to the top of the barrel and the dregs that settle to the bottom.

  L. Neil Smith

  Scum, Littles, Settling

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• A lot is said, by foreigners and the left, about America being a violent society. Yet if you subtract the crime statistics for its largest cities places that have been under the strict political control of so-called "progressives", sometimes for many generations what remains, the real America, is the most peaceful, productive, prosperous, and truly progressive civilization in all of human history.

  L. Neil Smith

  Real, Civilization, Cities

  "In Praise of Social Benefactors". The Libertarian Enterprise, www.ncc-1776.org. August 18, 2013.

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