Libertarianism Quotes - Page 9

• Collectivism doesn't work because it's based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person's "fair share" of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Liberty, Libertarian, Wealth

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• The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Lying, People, Liberty

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• War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.

  Joseph Sobran

  Hate, War, Optimism

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• Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.

  Thomas Paine

  Happiness, America, Liberty

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The American Crisis”, p.15

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• America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.

  John Quincy Adams

  War, Ambition, Color

  Speech on Independence Day at the United States House of Representatives, teachingamericanhistory.org. July 04, 1821.

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• I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.

  Thomas Jefferson

  War, Europe, Government

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 4: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.375

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• I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

  Sidney Hook

  Judging, Society, Liberty

  Sidney Hook (1987). “Out of step: an unquiet life in the 20th century”, Harpercollins

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• The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

  Joseph Sobran

  Government, Libertarian Party, Liberty

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• The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.

  Milton Friedman

  Teenager, Book, Social Unrest

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• The more laws and restrictions there are,
  The poorer people become.
  The sharper men's weapons,
  The more trouble in the land.

  Laozi

  Law, People, Liberty

  "Tao te ching".

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• 

  The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.

  Milton Friedman

  Liberty, Essentials, Libertarian

  Milton Friedman, William Richard Allen (1983). “Bright promises, dismal performance: an economist's protest”, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.

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• Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.

  Oscar Ameringer

  Life, Witty, Art

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• He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action are not impeded, whose desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into that which he would avoid.

  Epictetus

  Fall, Wish, Desire

  Epictetus (2009). “The Enchiridion, or Handbook: With A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus”, p.172, The Floating Press

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• It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.

  William O. Douglas

  Liberty, Citizens, Libertarian

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• The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Liberty, Libertarian

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1978). “The old régime and the French Revolution”, Peter Smith Pub Inc

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• Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Liberty, Libertarian, Individualism

  "Authority and Religious Liberty". Address before the Holy Name Society, Washington, D.C., archive.org. September 21, 1924.

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• Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Indulge In, Luxury, Enlightenment

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• The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people.

  William J. Clinton

  Rights, Government, People

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• Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Freedom, Liberty, Libertarian

  Cicero, Marcus Tullius Cicero (2006). “De Officiis Or on Duties on Obligations”, p.145, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

  John F. Kennedy

  Future, Men, Diversity

  Kennedy, John F. (1963). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962”, p.265, Best Books on

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• War is the Health of the State.

  Randolph Bourne

  War, Liberty, Libertarian

  Randolph Silliman Bourne (1992). “The Radical Will: Selected Writings, 1911-1918”, p.382, Univ of California Press

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• War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Mean, Independent

  Carl von Clausewitz (2008). “On War”, p.7, Princeton University Press

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• In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Pride, Order, Opposites

  "The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy".

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• When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Truth, Knowledge

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.216

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  The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.

  Samuel Adams

  Gun, Strong Arms, People

  Debates of the Massachusetts Convention, 1788.

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