Quotable Quotes
Bill Niskanen
We will oppose contemporary liberals when they fail to distinguish between a virtue and a requirement. We will oppose contemporary conservatives when they fail to distinguish between a sin and a crime.
Harry Browne
A free and prosperous society has no fear of anyone entering it. But a welfare state is scared to death of every poor person who tries to get in and every rich person who tries to get out.
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.
Jeanine Ring
Private intolerance sows the seeds for state coercion... The libertarian spirit should encourage ta culture that respects openness and individualism as a corollary to a politics of liberty.
John Gilmore
Never give a government power you would not want a despot to have. Anything else is wishful thinking.
Karl Hess
The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
Marge Parkhurst
The problem with giving a politician you like too much power is that he may be voted out and replaced by a politician you don't like and he'll still have the power you gave the politician you liked.
Marshall Fritz
I don't own anything that belongs to Caesar [1]
Mary McCarthy
Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
Murray Rothbard
The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence (‘aggress’) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.
Robert Heinlein
Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
Starchild
A black market is the part of a free market that refuses to knuckle under to government oppression.
No doubt you’ve heard the phrase ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’, and are probably familiar with the statist meaning of that phrase – Being ignorant of a law is no excuse for breaking it. But you may not be aware of the libertarian meaning of the phrase – This is an ignorant law and there’s no excuse for it!