Libertarian Quotes - Page 9

• Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peace, Honesty, War

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1801

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• Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

  Aeschylus

  Feet, Knees, Progressive

  Aeschylus (1984). “The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides”, p.135, Penguin

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• Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Law, Tyrants

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.224, Cambridge University Press

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• Political correctness is tyranny with manners.

  Charlton Heston

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  "Appreciation: Charlton Heston" by Richard Corliss, content.time.com. April 6, 2008.

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• Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from.

  Thomas Sowell

  Baby, Years, Liberty

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• If you feel driven to feed the poor, get your checkbook out and keep your tyrannical mouth shut about it.

  Lewis Goldberg

  Liberty, Mouths, Economics

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• Government failure is always used as an excuse for government expansion. Government thrives on crisis and incompetence.

  Jim Babka

  Government, Liberty, Expansion

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• The most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the "best" sources.

  Walter Karp

  Powerful, Liberty, Gains

  Walter Karp (1992). “Buried alive: essays on our endangered republic”, Franklin Square Pr

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• Gun bans disarm victims, putting them at the mercy of murderers or terrorists who think nothing of breaking the gun laws.

  Michael Badnarik

  Gun, Thinking, Law

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• There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.

  Elinor Ostrom

  Believe, People, Incentives

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• If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?

  Frederic Bastiat

  Believe, Race, People

  "The Law". Book by Frederic Bastiat, 1850.

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• If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

  Winston Churchill

  Respect, Not Giving Up, Law

  "Churchill By Himself".

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• It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

  Henry Ford

  Money, Morning, Believe

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• You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Inspirational, Light, Government

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• An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Motivational, Respect, Kings

  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 16 Apr. 1963

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• The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

  Milton Friedman

  Party, Believe, Simple

  Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman (1990). “Free to Choose: A Personal Statement”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?

  Walter E. Williams

  Freedom, Justice, Society

  "All it takes is guts". Book by Walter E. Williams, 1987.

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• They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?

  Paul Harvey

  Gun, Liberty, Cuba

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• It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Fall, Errors, Government

  American Communications Ass'n v. Douds (1950)

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• Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.

  John F. Kennedy

  Freedom, Sacrifice, Gun

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• There's never been a good government.

  Emma Goldman

  Government, Liberty, Libertarianism

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• Everything government touches turns to crap.

  Ringo Starr

  Libertarian Party, Government, Liberty

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• The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Gun, Rights, People

  "The Federalist Papers". Book by Alexander Hamilton, essay No. 69, 1787 - 1788.

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• Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

  James Madison

  Fear, War, Enemy

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

  Alfred Adler

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Courage

  In Phyllis Bottome Alfred Adler (1939) p. 76

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