Libertarian Quotes - Page 21

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  It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.

  George MacDonald

  Power, Men, People

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• All our rights are gradually eroded as government gets bigger.

  John Stossel

  Rights, Erosion, Government

  FaceBook post by John Stossel from Mar 29, 2013

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• I'm furious about the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soap-boxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.

  Anita Loos

  Women, Justice, Diversity

  Quoted in the Observer, 30 Dec1973.

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• If the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds … its policies would most definitely reflect the ‘legitimate concerns’ of children to have ‘adequate’ and ‘equal’ access to ‘free’ french fries, lemonade and videos.

  Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  Funny, Children, Rights

  Hans-Hermann Hoppe (2011). “DemocracyThe God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order”, p.95, Transaction Publishers

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• The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Visionaries, Acid

  Murray Bookchin (1992). “Urbanization without cities: the rise and decline of citizenship”, Black Rose Books Ltd

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• Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

  Robert Nozick

  Strong, Rights, What If

  Robert Nozick (1974). “Anarchy, state, and utopia”

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• The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It's outstandingly different in quality and quantity.

  Antony Flew

  Christian, Religious, Miracle

  Gary R. Habermas, Antony Flew, David J. Baggett (2009). “Did the Resurrection Happen?: A Conversation with Gary Habermas and Antony Flew”, p.85, InterVarsity Press

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• The plundering of the human spirit by the market place is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.

  Murray Bookchin

  Earth, Spirit, Anarchist

  63 Copy quote

• My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions.

  John Ray

  Thinking, People, Reform

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• The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Government, Political, Democracy

  "The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao Tzu to". Book by David Boaz, 1997.

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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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• Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Law Courts, Government, Libertarian Party

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

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• Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

  George Washington

  Freedom, War, Fire

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• It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

  C. S. Lewis

  Libertarian Party, Democracies Have, Government

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.324, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

  Murray Rothbard

  Ignorance, Discipline, People

  "The Speech Pope Francis Should Have Given" by Lawrence W. Reed, fee.org. September 24, 2015.

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• When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war

  Plato

  Peace, War, Tyrants

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• A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

  Plato

  War, Order, Tyrants

  Plato (2012). “The Republic and Other Works”, p.260, Anchor

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• The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren

  Ayn Rand

  Government, Criminals, Cracks

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.334, Hamilton Books

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• To argue against any breach of liberty from the ill use that may be made of it, is to argue against liberty itself, since all is capable of being abused.

  George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton

  Liberty, Use, May

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• Contrary to popular opinion, the Constitution was not - and is not - a grant of rights to the citizenry. Instead, the Constitution is a "barbed-wire entanglement" designed to interfere with, restrict, and impede government officials in the exercise of political power.

  Jacob G. Hornberger

  Exercise, Rights, Government

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• The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

  Albert Gallatin

  Gun, Rights, People

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• Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Gun, Law, Strong Arms

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• The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism.

  Angelina Grimke

  Doctrine, Unqualified, Blind

  Sarah Grimke, Angelina Grimke (2015). “On Slavery and Abolitionism: Essays and Letters”, p.97, Penguin

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• The average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Average, Special

  Baltimore Evening Sun, February 12, 1923.

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• Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Men, Choices, Liberty

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