Libertarian Quotes - Page 16

• For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.

  Gore Vidal

  Average, Freedom Of Speech, Liberty

  Gore Vidal (2011). “Burr: A Novel”, p.598, Vintage

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• He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Law, Liberty, Vices

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• The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.

  Milton Friedman

  Letting Go, Weed, Loss

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• The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Liberty, Inches

  Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.126, Cambridge University Press

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• The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.

  William E. Simon

  Government, Liberty, Minorities

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• Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live - not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences.

  Irving Kristol

  Country, Nice, People

  Irving Kristol (1995). “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

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• Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

  James Madison

  Inspirational, War, Army

  "Political Observations" by James Madison, founders.archives.gov. April 20, 1795.

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• Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?"

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Race, Ignorant

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Thomas Paine: Collected Writings: Common Sense / The American Crisis / Rights of: (Library of America #76)”, p.595, Library of America

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• There is no limit to the ingenuity of man if it is properly and vigorously applied under conditions of peace and justice.

  Winston Churchill

  Men, Justice, Liberty

  Sir Winston Churchill (1954). “Sir Winston Churchill: a self-portrait”

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• They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  War, Liberty, Vietnam

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• A traffic jam is a collision between free enterprise and socialism. Free enterprise produces automobiles faster than socialism can build roads and road capacity.

  Andrew Joseph Galambos

  Liberty, Jam, Socialism

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• Let me tell you how it will be. There's one for you, nineteen for me. Cause I'm the taxman.

  George Harrison

  Liberty, Nineteen, Politics

  Song: Taxman

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• We're told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We're told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it's hard to reach the drive-through window at McDonald's from a speeding train. And we're told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine?

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Horse, Cancer, Mcdonalds

  "Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut" by P. J. O'Rourke, (1st edition ed.), New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996.

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• Look not to the politicians; look to yourselves.

  Richard Cobden

  Liberty, Looks, Politician

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• Adam Smith's key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange can take place unless both parties do benefit.

  Milton Friedman

  Party, Keys, Long

  Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman (1990). “Free to Choose: A Personal Statement”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he does't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you.

  Milton Friedman

  Men, Liberty, Doe

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• To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.

  Richard Henry Lee

  Fear, Government, Political

  Richard Henry Lee (1825). “Memoir of the Life of Richard H. Lee, and His Correspondence with the Most Distinguished Men in America and Europe”

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• Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.

  Walter Lippmann

  Insecure, Successful, Men

  1955 The Public Philosophy, ch.2, sect.4.

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• It is no more the function of government to impose a moral code than to impose a religious code. And for the same reason.

  Robert Morrison MacIver

  Religious, Government, Liberty

  Robert Morrison MacIver (1965). “The Web of Government”

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• The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Liberty, Degrees

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.39, Penguin

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• The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.

  Murray Rothbard

  Liberty, States, Leap

  Murray N. Rothbard (2015). “The Ethics of Liberty”, p.187, NYU Press

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• This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Independent, Men, Liberty

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.168, VM eBooks

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• The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave.

  Ludwig von Mises

  People, Liberty, Coercion

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• The rights of the individual should be the primary object of all governments.

  Mercy Otis Warren

  Rights, Government, Liberty

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• The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity.

  Thomas Sowell

  Competition, Desire, Liberty

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.225, Basic Books

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