Quotes

From Libertarian FAQ

Table of contents

1 On Liberty 2 On Freedom of Speech 3 On Individualism 4 On Economics 5 On Government 6 On Taxes 7 On Gun Control 8 On Democracy

On Liberty

• "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." - Abraham Lincoln

• "Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others." - William Allen White

• "We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed." – Thomas Jefferson

• "Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine

• "You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief. But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound." - Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

• "I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free." - Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957)

• "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - Henry Louis Mencken

• "You should never have your best trousers on when you turn out to fight for freedom and truth." - Henrik Ibsen, 1882

• "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

• "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

• "A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson

• "When liberty destroys order, the hunger for order will destroy liberty." - Will Durant

• "You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences." - Sheldon Kopp

• "Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong." - Anon.

• "Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own." - Henry Grady Weaver, author of a classic book on freedom, The Mainspring of Human Progress

• "What is at the summit of courage, I think, is freedom. The freedom that comes with the knowledge that no earthly power can break you, that an unbroken spirit is the only thing you cannot live without, that in the end it is the courage of conviction that moves things, that makes all change possible." - Paula Giddings

• "Imagine a lion in a cage, and into that cage flies a butterfly. If the lion was free it would pay no heed to such a creature. But the lion is not free. And so the butterfly slowly drives it insane." - Anon.

• "Just living is not enough... One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower." - Hans Christian Andersen

• "There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect." - Martin Luther King Jr.

• "I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too many have suffered for the love of freedom. I owe it to their widows, to their orphans, to their mothers and their fathers, who have grieved and wept for them ..... Not only have I suffered during these long lonely wasted years. I am no less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell the birthright of the people to be free ....... Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated." - Nelson Mandela

• "Relationships of all kinds are like sand held in your hand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers. You may hold onto some of it, but most will be spilled. A relationship is like that. Held loosely, with respect and freedom for the other person, it is likely to remain intact. But hold too tightly, too possessively, and the relationship slips away and is lost." - Kaleel Jamison

• From Star Trek The Next Generation:

Riker: ”Trust always has the risk of betrayal”

Data: “Then why not live without trust?”

Riker: “Without trust there’s no friendship”

Data: “Then you put yourself at risk?”

Riker: “Every single time!”

Data: “Hmm, it seems I am very fortunate I do not share your human emotions …”

• "No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. (-) Though it take a thousand years, we will be free." - J. Michael Straczynski in Babylon 5

• "The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." - Anon.

• "There can be no friendship when there is no freedom. Friendship loves the free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures." - William Penn

• "There is such a thing as perfection … and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth … Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside." - Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

On Freedom of Speech

• "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire (1694-1778)

• "I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. (-) Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors." - Henry Louis Mencken

• "A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad." - Albert Camus

• "Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant." - Henry Louis Mencken

• "As long as men are free to ask what they must; free to say what they think; free to think what they will; freedom can never be lost and science can never regress." - J. Robert Oppenheimer

On Individualism

• "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." - Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

• "A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases." - Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)

• "I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to." - Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)

• "I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence. But it comes from within. It is there all the time." - Anna Freud (1895-1982)

• "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

• "Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward." - Patricia Sampson

• "At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important." - M.C. Escher

• "The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead." - Igor I. Sikorsky

• "If I can affect a positive change by use of my abilities, I gladly embrace the opportunity. I feel that if you don't use the gifts you've been given, your time on earth has been wasted." - Stephanie Kramer (Dee Dee McCall in Hunter)

• From the tv series Kung Fu, Sun and Cloud Shadow episode (1973):

Master Po: "In the pond there are some lotuses that stand above the water, and though their roots feed, they are themselves untouched by it. Some others have risen only to the water's level. And others, still under water."

Young Caine: "Shall I seek to measure these differences, Master, that I may treat them differently, each according to his growth?"

Master Po: "Examine the flower. Is not the flower, in each position, yet a flower?"

Young Caine: "Shall I then treat each man the same?"

Master Po: "As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all."

Young Caine: "Yet, the flower beneath the water knows not the sun. Other men, not knowing me, will find me hard to understand."

Master Po: "Accept the ways of others. Respect first your own."

• "The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your daily victory or defeat." - Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

• "I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way." - Robert Frost (1874-1963)

• "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” … You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

• "I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good." - Oprah Winfrey (1954-to date)

• "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking." - Steve Jobs to students at Stanford University, whom he reminded that he himself dropped out of university after only six months of lectures.

• "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." - Voltaire (1694-1778)

• "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our mind." – Bob Marley

• "New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common." - John Locke (1632-1704)

• "The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." - Henry Louis Mencken

On Economics

• "The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another." - Milton Friedman

• "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages." - Adam Smith (1723-1790) in The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter II

• "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it." - Adam Smith (1723-1790) in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I Section I Chapter I

• "It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy...What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage." - Adam Smith (1723-1790) in The Wealth of Nations, Book IV Chapter II

• "By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?" - Adam Smith (1723-1790) in The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II

• "You don’t pick black actors or black directors because they are black. You pick them because they are good. If you lend somebody 50 million dollars you want you’re money back. You don’t care if they are oppressed. You just want you’re money back." - Denzel Washington (afro-american actor)

• "The elementary truth is that the Great Depression was produced by government mismanagement [of money]. It was not produced by the failure of private enterprise." - Milton Friedman

• "When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down; when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn’t that exactly what’s been happening with drugs?" - Milton Friedman on Marijuana

• "Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." - Douglas Casey (1992)

• "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 Galambos

• "Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness." - Mark Steyn

On Government

• "The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk"." - Harry Browne

• "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." - Thomas Sowell

• "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton (1834-1902)

• "One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." – Thomas B. Reed (1886)

• "The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." - Marcus Tullius Cicero (55 BC)

• "When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

• "Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." - Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

• "There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people." - Hubert H. Humphrey

• "Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim." - Lord Macaulay

• "When government takes [sic] responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves." - George Pataki

• Edina in court: “Why do you have to regulate every single detail of our lives? I know we have railings to prevent stupid people from running into the street and killing themselves. But we are normal people, we don’t do that. Why don’t you have a stupidity tax and only tax the stupid people?” Judge: “That is not relevant to this case. You are to pay 50,000 pounds in parking fines within 14 days. Next!" (Absolutely Fabulous)

• "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato (B.C. ca. 427-347)

• "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." - Tacitus (A.D. ca. 55-120)

• "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." - Adam Smith (1723-1790) in The Wealth of Nations

• "Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects." - Tolstoy (1828-1910)

• "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

• "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 Johnson

• "When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet." - Lyle Myhur

• "How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four." - Gloria Steinem, American feminist

• "The real issue is control. The Internet is too widespread to be easily dominated by any single government. By creating a seamless global economic zone, anti-sovereign and unregulatable, the Internet calls into question the very idea of a nation-state." - John Perry Barlow

• "Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly." - Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

• "Remember that wanting to keep your own money isn’t greed. And spending other people’s money isn’t compassion." - Young Americans for Liberty (2010)

On Taxes

• "In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

• "The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin." - Mark Twain

• "Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed." - Robert A. Heinlein

• "You don't pay taxes - they take taxes." - Chris Rock

• "A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well." - Anon.

• "Whatever the government gives it must first take away." - John S. Coleman

• "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." - Barry Goldwater

• "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul." – George Bernard Shaw

On Gun Control

• "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson

• "I’ve got a firm policy on gun control. If there’s a gun around I want to be the person controlling it." - Clint Eastwood as bail bonder in ‘Pink Cadillac’ (1989)

• "Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out … People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically "right." Guns ended that, and a social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work." - L. Neil Smith (from The Probability Broach)

On Democracy

• "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the demagogue promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." - Alexander Fraser Tyler in The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic.

• "Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper." - Larry Flynt

• "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." – John Adams (1814)