Great Libertarian Quotes - Page 3

• There's no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom.

  Barry Goldwater

  Country, Liberty, Defense

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• The proliferation of bureaucrats and its invariable accompaniment, much heavier tax levies on the productive part of the population, are the recognizable signs, not of a great, but of a decaying society. Historians know that both phenomena were especially marked in the declining eras of the Roman Empire in the West and of its successor state, the Eastern or Byzantine Empire.

  William Henry Chamberlin

  Liberty, Population, Byzantine

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• The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.

  Murray Rothbard

  Liberty, Libertarian, States

  Murray N. Rothbard (2015). “The Ethics of Liberty”, p.187, NYU Press

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• No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.

  Roger Brooke Taney

  Men, Liberty, Doctrine

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• In our government-controlled schools we are taught that Lincoln was our greatest president because his war ended slavery and saved the Union. As usual, the other side of the story - the side that reflects poorly on the government - somehow gets lost.

  Richard J. Maybury

  War, School, Government

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• I mean, I've always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else's hair.

  Clint Eastwood

  Mean, Hair, Want

  "Dirty Harry comes clean". Interview with Jeff Dawson, www.theguardian.com. June 5, 2008.

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• We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every aspect of human life and society. Some people regard this as good and "progressive," others regard it as tyrannical; but either way, it's a fact, a transformation as great as, say, the Industrial Revolution. Absolutely nothing is now beyond the scope of State power.

  Joseph Sobran

  People, Liberty, Facts

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• Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.

  Adam Smith

  Hands, Invisible Hand, Liberty

  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 2 (1776) See Adam Smith 1

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• Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Inspirational, Humor, Government

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• I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

  Will Rogers

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  In Saturday Review 25 Aug. 1962

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• The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Peace, Freedom, War

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

  Ronald Reagan

  Freedom, Military, Moving

  Remarks to state chairs of National White House Conference on Small Business, 15 Aug. 1986

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• The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

  Herbert Spencer

  Silly, Humor, Men

  'Essays' (1891) vol. 3 'State Tamperings with Money and Banks'

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• One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.

  Thomas Reed

  Libertarian Party, Evil, Liberty

  "Will It Be As Always?" by Henryk A. Kowalczyk, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 5, 2015.

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• Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more.

  Allan H. Meltzer

  Government, Libertarian, Communism

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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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• I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Government, Political

  Letter to Archibald Stewart, 23 Dec. 1791

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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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• No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

  James Madison

  Freedom, War, Democracies Have

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

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• 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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• Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Inspirational, Funny, Money

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.24, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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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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• The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Yield

  Thomas Jefferson (2015). “Selected letters of Thomas Jefferson”, p.5, Lulu.com

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• War is just one more big government program.

  Joseph Sobran

  War, Government, Liberty

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• When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

  William O. Douglas

  Exercise, Rights, Hands

  "Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 27, 1953.

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