Liberty Quotes - Page 27

• If a donkey bray at you, don't bray at him.

  George Herbert

  Libertarian, Donkey, Ifs

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• The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.

  H. L. Mencken

  Gun, Rights, Hands

  "On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe". Book by H L. Mencken, 1956.

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• Blind belief can be comforting, but it can easily cripple reason and productivity, and stop intellectual progress.

  James Randi

  Blind Belief, Comforting, Intellectual

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• There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion.

  Frank Chodorov

  Libertarian, Cases, Taxes

  Frank Chodorov (1947). “Taxation is Robbery ...”

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• You can't say you love your country and hate your government.

  William J. Clinton

  Country, Hate, Love You

  "The Clinton presidency - in quotes". news.bbc.co.uk. January 15, 2001.

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• Any president that lies to the American people should have to resign.

  William J. Clinton

  Lying, Should Have, People

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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, Doe, Care

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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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• Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

  John Marshall

  Differences, Democracies Have, Order

  John Marshall (1836). “The life of George Washington: commander in chief of the American forces, during the war which established the independence of his country, and first president of the United States”, p.447

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

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Degrees, Libertarian

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

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• It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright.

  Murray Rothbard

  Law, Justice, Libertarian

  Murray Newton Rothbard (1978). “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto”, p.127, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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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, Libertarian

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

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• Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Patriotism, Civil Rights, Right To Bear Arms

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.66, Courier Corporation

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• Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty.

  Aristotle

  Revenge, Men, Evil

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

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• The reason welfare is bad is not because it costs too much, nor because it "undermines the work ethic," but because it is intrinsically at odds with the way human beings come to live satisfying lives.

  Charles A. Murray

  Odds, Work Ethic, Cost

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• A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

  Granville Hicks

  Men, Thinking, Libertarian

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• An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal.

  Emile Faguet

  Anarchist

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• As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends. Liberty in the wild and freakish hands of fanatics has once more, as frequently in the past, proved the effective helpmate of autocracy and the twin-brother of tyranny.

  Otto Hermann Kahn

  Brother, Freedom, Past

  Otto Hermann Kahn (1918). “Frenzied Liberty: The Myth of "a Rich Man's War"”

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• We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls.

  Wayne LaPierre

  Brother, Wall, America

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• I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people.

  John Anderson

  Believe, Government, Should Have

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• Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities.

  Mike Cloud

  Responsibility, Government, Doe

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• It must never be unpatriotic to support your country against your government. It must always be unpatriotic to support your government against your country.

  Steven T. Byington

  Country, Government, Support

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• Those who attack the rationale of the game, and not the players, are its most formidable adversaries.

  James J. Martin

  Player, Games, Libertarian

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• If even one new drug of the stature of penicillin or digitalis has been unjustifiably banished to a company's back shelf because of exceedingly stringent regulatory requirements, that event will have harmed more people than all the toxicity that has occurred in the history of modern drug development.

  William Wardell

  People, Drug, Events

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