Libertarian Quotes - Page 17

• The good governor should have a broken leg and keep at home.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Home, Should Have, Broken

  Miguel de Cervantes, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (2006). “Don Quixote: Easyread Large Edition”, p.578, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Sound, Prosperity, Trouble

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• If you don't risk anything you risk everything

  Mark Zuckerberg

  Motivational, Strong Women, Hippie

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• Going to war accelerated the move from indirect to direct rule. Almost any state that makes war finds that it cannot pay for the effort from its accumulated reserves and current revenues. Almost all war-making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat - including men - from reluctant citizens who have other uses for their resources.

  Charles Tilly

  War, Moving, Mean

  Charles Tilly, Arthur L. Stinchcombe (1997). “Roads from Past to Future”, p.149, Rowman & Littlefield

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• The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters. And that's beginning to happen. More than six decades of hard work for American liberty beginning with the Old Right opposition to the Roosevelt Revolution and continuing with the Mises Institute, is beginning to bear fruit.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  Hard Work, Law, Forever

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• When politicians say "I'm in politics," it may or may not be possible to trust them, but when they say, "I'm in public service," you know you should flee.

  Albert J. Nock

  Liberty, May, Politician

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• An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Law, Liberty

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE AMERICAN CRISIS – Revolutionary Work Which Inspired the American People to Fight for Their Independence: Including “The Life of Thomas Paine” – Extensive Biography of the Author”, p.557, e-artnow

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• Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Freedom, Exercise, Rights

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• Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Liberty, Slavery

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• Political leaders in capitalist countries who cheer the collapse of socialism in other countries continue to favor socialist solutions in their own. They know the words, but they have not learned the tune.

  Milton Friedman

  Country, Cheer, Leader

  Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman (1990). “Free to Choose: A Personal Statement”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Freedom, Lying, Government

  Douglas MacArthur (1965). “Duty, Honor, Country: A Pictorial Autobiography”

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• For those looking for security, be forewarned that there's nothing more insecure than a political promise.

  Harry Browne

  Insecure, Political, Promise

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• Free men do not ask permission to bear arms

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Arms, Bears

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• To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.

  Richard Henry Lee

  Fear, Government, Political

  Richard Henry Lee (1825). “Memoir of the Life of Richard H. Lee, and His Correspondence with the Most Distinguished Men in America and Europe”

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• The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.

  Milton Friedman

  Letting Go, Weed, Loss

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• With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

  James Madison

  Character, Government, Liberty

  James Madison's letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831.

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

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Liberty, Degrees

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

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• Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live - not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences.

  Irving Kristol

  Country, Nice, People

  Irving Kristol (1995). “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

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• The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Liberty, Inches

  Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.126, Cambridge University Press

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• As you may have heard, the U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? Think about it - it was written by very smart people, it's served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we're not using it anymore.

  Jay Leno

  Smart, Thinking, Two

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• 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

  Sex, Race, Liberty

  Gloria Steinem (1986). “Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions”, New Amer Library

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• To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Sex, Party, Brain

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• The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.

  William E. Simon

  Government, Liberty, Minorities

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• Make us your slaves, but feed us.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Slave

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (1981). “Grand Inquisitor”, p.8, A&C Black

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• Can you think of a single area of government in which George Bush hasn't already made things worse than Bill Clinton did?

  Harry Browne

  Thinking, Government, Liberty

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