Libertarianism Quotes - Page 24

• No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that's just why it remains on the ideological fringe - because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.

  Ross Douthat

  Simple, Difficult Questions, Doubt

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• A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

  Isabel Paterson

  Education, Historical, Liberty

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “God of the Machine”, p.258, Transaction Publishers

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• Few things are more commonly misunderstood than the nature and meaning of theocracy. It is commonly assumed to be a dictatorial rule by self-appointed men who claim to rule for God. In reality, theocracy in Biblical law is the closest thing to a radical libertarianism that can be had.

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Biblical, Reality, Men

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• Libertarianism and communism are equally crazy in opposite ways. Libertarians believe that it is possible to privatize everything without anarchy, while communists believe that it is possible to socialize everything without tyranny.

  Michael Lind

  Crazy, Believe, Opposites

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• In the future, people will blame the Eighties for all societal ills in the same way that people have previously blamed the Sixties. The various Thatcherite Big Bangs - monetarism, deregulation, libertarianism - have been working their way through the culture ever since.

  Peter York

  People, Culture, Deregulation

  "This Much I Know". Interview with Stuart Husband, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2007.

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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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• The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Real, Party, Issues

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.78, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.

  Orson Welles

  Jobs, Police, Liberty

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• It ain't so much what a man doesn't know that causes him so many problems, but what he knows that ain't so.

  Will Rogers

  Men, Liberty, Libertarian

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• In the United States we have, in effect, two governments ... We have the duly constituted Government ... Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution.

  Wright Patman

  Independent, Government, Two

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• Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence, and his personal life are private.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Men, Liberty, Libertarian

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1968). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1967”, p.313, Best Books on

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• The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

  Henry Clay

  Country, Art, Hatred

  Speech in the Senate, 14 March 1834

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• Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of ‘68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath.

  Terry Eagleton

  Hangover, Uprising, Levels

  The Guardian, October 27, 1992.

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• One difference between libertarianism and socialism is that a socialist society can't tolerate groups of people practicing freedom, but a libertarian society can comfortably allow people to choose voluntary socialism. If a group of people - even a very large group - wanted to purchase land and own it in common, they would be free to do so. The libertarian legal order would require only that no one be coerced into joining or giving up his property.

  David Boaz

  Giving Up, Order, Land

  "The Coming Libertarian Age". Cato Policy Report, January/February 1997.

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• While the feds ... leave Social Security off their books, the government's obligation to make benefit payments to current and near-term Social Security recipients is certainly no less real than its obligation to pay interest on its Treasury bonds.

  Laurence Kotlikoff

  Real, Book, Government

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• An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.

  Adlai Stevenson I

  Editors, Liberty, Libertarian

  "he Fine Art of Political Wit". Book by Leon Harris, 1964.

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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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• Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.

  Walter Lippmann

  Insecure, Successful, Men

  1955 The Public Philosophy, ch.2, sect.4.

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• The proper direction of man's thought is not toward the creation of new laws for government, but toward the acceptance of every person's moral dignity.

  Edmund Yates

  Acceptance, Men, Law

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• Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not belong - in effect, legalized theft.

  Walter E. Williams

  Government, Giving, Liberty

  "All it takes is guts". Book by Walter E. Williams, 1987.

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• Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to please one's fellow man ... that's what competition is all about: "outpleasing" your competitors to win over the consumers.

  Walter E. Williams

  Successful, Winning, Men

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• The angels and the devils are definitely within us, not within the machines we use.

  Michael Dertouzos

  Angel, Liberty, Devil

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• It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Liberty, World, Libertarian

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• Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an "independent" agency operated by selfless public servants striving to "fine-tune" the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat.

  Thomas DiLorenzo

  Cat, Independent, Reality

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• The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide.

  Rudolph Rummel

  War, Government, Desire

  "Death by Government". Book by Rudolph Rummel, pp. 1-2, 1994.

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