Karl Hess Quotes

• Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left - which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right-which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism.

  Karl Hess

  Practice, Individualism, Modern

  L. K. Samuels, Thomas Szasz, Douglas Casey, Brian Clelland, David Friedman (2017). “Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer”, p.34, BookBaby

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• It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.

  Karl Hess

  Military, People, Support

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• We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.

  Karl Hess

  Children, Home, Exercise

  "From Far Right to Far Left". The New York Times Magazine, (p. 305), Decemebr 6, 1970.

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• Whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder.

  Karl Hess

  Peace, War, Apology

  "Why Americans Hate Politics" by E.J. Dionne, Jr., Simon & Schuster, (p. 267), 2004.

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• We do not want to lead or be led. We want to be free.

  Karl Hess

  Historical, Want

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• No person is so grand or wise or perfect as to be the master of another person. Teacher, perhaps. Setter of good example, perhaps. Genius, perhaps. But master, no.

  Karl Hess

  Wise, Teacher, Perfect

  Karl Hess (1975). “Dear America”, William Morrow &Company

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• All who love Liberty are enemies of the state.

  Karl Hess

  Enemy, Liberty, States

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• The most revolutionary thing you can do is get to know your neighbors.

  Karl Hess

  Revolutionary, Neighbor, Knows

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• The Declaration of Independence is so lucid were afraid of it today. It scares the hell out of every modern bureaucrat, because it tells them there comes a time when we must stop taking orders.

  Karl Hess

  Order, Independence, Scare

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• The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.

  Karl Hess

  Revolution, Victim, Cease

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• Liberty, finally, is not a box into which people are to be forced. Liberty is a space in which people may live. It does not tell you how they will live. It says, eternally, only that we can.

  Karl Hess

  Space, People, Liberty

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• When you put your faith in big government, you end up an apologist for mass murder.

  Karl Hess

  Government, Murder, Ends

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• For loving, working, and creative people to throw off the yoke of power it is necessary to abolish power itself, not merely to make the yoke comfortable. Where some have power, others do not, and the two classes persist. A free society is where all have power-power over and responsibility for their own lives, power and reason to respect the lives of others. This is also a society without classes, a society of human beings, not rulers and the ruled.

  Karl Hess

  Responsibility, Class, Two

  Karl Hess (1975). “Dear America”, William Morrow &Company

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• I am in total opposition to any institutional power. I favor a world of neighborhoods in which all social organization is voluntary and the ways of life are established in small, consenting groups. These groups could cooperate with other groups as they saw fit. But all cooperation would be on a voluntary basis. As the French anarchist Proudhon said. “Liberty [is] not the daughter but the Mother of Order.

  Karl Hess

  Daughter, Mother, Order

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• Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.

  Karl Hess

  Men, Division Of Labor, Credit

  "The Death of Politics". Playboy Magazine, March 1969.

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• The dinosaurs invented Jesus to test our confidence in science.

  Karl Hess

  Jesus, Dinosaurs, Tests

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• Government programs aim at getting money for poor people. Our hope was that knowledge would in the long run be more useful, provide more money, and eventually strike at the system-causes of poverty. Government believes that poverty is just a lack of money. We felt, and continue to feel, that poverty is actually a lack of skill, and a lack of the self-esteem that comes with being able to take some part of one's life into one's own hands and work with others towards shared-call them social-goals.

  Karl Hess

  Running, Self Esteem, Believe

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• My own interest is the responsibility of people to be responsible for their own lives and, with their neighbors, for their public space and actions. To sing their own songs. To make their own inventions..To build and not just to envy. To light that candle which is so much better than cursing the darkness. To be as much as the human condition can sustain, rather than being only what a system can allow.

  Karl Hess

  Song, Responsibility, Light

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• The fundamental question of politics has always been whether there should be politics.

  Karl Hess

  Fundamentals, Should

  Foreword by Karl Hess to "The Market for Liberty" by Linda & Morris Tannehill, 1984.

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• They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that it’s all choice and chance.

  Karl Hess

  Spring, Ideas, Choices

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• To survive, the people in neighborhoods are going to have to secede.

  Karl Hess

  People, Neighborhood

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• There is no better way to return the matter of taxation to full public discusssion than to repeal the withholding taxes on wages and salaries. Only when the American people are confronted with the enormous excesses of government in a personal and direct way - by an annual bill for services rendered - will they be able to make an informed judgment about which services they want and which ones they can do without.

  Karl Hess

  Government, People, Modern Life

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• A Call for Revolution, 1993 Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left - which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right - which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism. The libertarian faith in the mind of man is rejected by religionists who have faith only in the sins of man. . . . The libertarian insistence that each man is a sovereign land of liberty, with his primary allegiance to himself, is rejected by patriots who sing of freedom but also shout of banners and boundaries.

  Karl Hess

  Faith, Men, Land

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• Everybody knows that the federal government promises a lot and delivers damn little, and pays for most of what it does deliver out of the earnings of individuals rather than the profits of great corporations.

  Karl Hess

  Government, Promise, Doe

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• In a laissez-faire society, there could exist no public institution with the power to forcefully protect people from themselves. From other people (criminals), yes. From one's own self, no.

  Karl Hess

  Self, People, Criminals

  L. K. Samuels, Thomas Szasz, Douglas Casey, Brian Clelland, David Friedman (2017). “Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer”, p.48, BookBaby

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