Libertarian Quotes - Page 35

• Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Integrity, Men

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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• Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?

  Peg Bracken

  Memorable, Cutting, Two

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• Don't tax you, don't tax me;
  Tax the companies across the sea.

  Dan Rostenkowski

  Sea, Taxes, Company

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• Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Running, Army, People

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• Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee.

  F. Lee Bailey

  Government, Usa, Rights

  "Newsweek" Magazine, April 17, 1967.

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• Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

  Milton Friedman

  Power, Liberty, Good Intentions

  Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.201, University of Chicago Press

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• The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Faith, Freedom, Acceptance

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects”

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• Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.

  Christina Rossetti

  Inspirational, Work, Women

  Christina Georgina Rossetti, Maria Keaton (2004). “Prose Works of Christina Rossetti”, Thoemmes Pr

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• Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage.

  Walter E. Williams

  Believe, Thinking, Government

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• Patriotism means loving our country, not the government.

  Mike Cloud

  Country, Mean, Government

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• The state is a force incarnate. Worse, it is the silly parading of force. It never seeks to prevail by persuasion. Whenever it thrusts its finger into anything it does so in the most unfriendly way. Its essence is command and compulsion.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Silly, Essence, Liberty

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• What is so bad about big government? My indictment of big government is that it is bad because it attacks liberty, prosperity, progress, harmony, and morality. Thanks to big government, we have significantly less of all of those good things than we would if we had been able to keep government right-sized. Big government is cancerous. Like a cancer, it hurts the body and tends to spread, doing more and more harm as it grows. It is time for some radical surgery.

  George Leef

  Hurt, Cancer, Government

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• The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Liberty, May, Neighbor

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• I am unable to accept the idea that I should be an obedient subject of a gang of corrupt, unprincipled thugs who pontificate about freedom while enslaving the population.

  John Pugsley

  Thug, Ideas, Liberty

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• We should distinguish at this point between "government" and "state" ... A government is the consensual organization by which we adjudicate disputes, defend our rights, and provide for certain common needs ... A state on the other hand, is a coercive organization asserting or enjoying a monopoly over the use of physical force in some geographic area and exercising power over its subjects.

  David Boaz

  Exercise, Rights, Government

  David Boaz (1997). “Libertarianism: A Primer”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• Americans have the mistaken viewpoint that Lady Liberty is only a peacetime luxury who is ill-equipped to fight the nasties. Therefore, they reason, we need an equally nasty Big Brother. Americans have forgotten that Lady Liberty is one ferocious mother when protecting her children.

  Mary Ruwart

  Mother, Brother, Children

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• The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of "freedom".

  Joseph Sobran

  Government, Liberty, Criminals

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• Public Schools too often fail because they are shielded from the very force that improves performance and sparks innovation in nearly every other human enterprise - competition.

  Bob Lutz

  School, Competition, Innovation

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• The public school system: "Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority."

  Walter Karp

  Crush, Creativity, School

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• Painful as it may be to hear it, there's nothing special about the people of this country that sets them apart from the other people of the world. It is the Bill of Rights, and only the Bill of Rights, that keeps us from becoming the world's biggest banana republic. The moment we forget that, the American Dream is over.

  Alexander Beresford Hope

  Dream, Country, Rights

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• The American experiment has come and gone. Whatever freedoms the people still might have as their own, are monitored and registered and taxed at virtually every turn.

  Jeff Baxter

  People, Liberty, Gone

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• A personal note to the Founding Fathers: We're sorry. We blew it. You made it possible for us to live free and we blew it. We've given up nearly every personal liberty in the name of a false sense of security sold to the masses by the same type of maniacal government about which you warned us and against which you fought so bravely. We now have to ask permission to take a leak on an airline flight. We never deserved you.

  Philip D. Murphy

  Sorry, Father, Government

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• It is a reality attested by all history that if a republic assumes imperial functions it will not remain a republic.

  Felix Morley

  Reality, Liberty, Republic

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• I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Atmosphere, Storm, Littles

  Thomas Jefferson (1984). “Jefferson: Writings”, p.1135, Library of America

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• Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insincerity and mendacity.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Honesty, States, Source

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