Liberty Quotes - Page 22

• No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).

  Frederic Bastiat

  Order, Justice, Principles

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.19, Cosimo, Inc.

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• What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Society, Would Be, Able

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich August von Hayek, 1960.

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• No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Equality, Men, Rights

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.278

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• None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Together, Civil Rights, Chance

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• When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame.

  Jack Kemp

  Government, Libertarian, Blame

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• Let me tell you how it will be. There's one for you, nineteen for me. Cause I'm the taxman.

  George Harrison

  Nineteen, Politics, Libertarian

  Song: Taxman

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• People never believe in volcanoes until the lava actually overtakes them.

  George Santayana

  Believe, Volcanoes, People

  George Santayana (2002). “The Works of George Santayana: The letters of George Santayana. 1921-1927. Vol. 5. Book 3”, p.138, MIT Press

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• Liberty, then, is the SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL.

  Josiah Warren

  Individual, Sovereignty, Individual Liberty

  "Equitable commerce: a new development of principles as substitutes for laws and governments, for the harmonious adjustment and regulation of the pecuniary, intellectual, and moral intercourse of mankind, proposed as elements of new society".

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• If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

  Philip Wylie

  Freedom, Mean, Ifs

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• Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.

  Lord Acton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Religious

  "Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices". Book by Thomas Stephen Szasz, 2004.

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• If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

  Samuel Adams

  Giving Up, Mistake, Men

  John White, Cecil Calvert Baltimore (2d Baron), Charles Hudson, Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1904). “The planting of colonies in New England”

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• What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Government, Law, Organization

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• It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Government, Evil

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.10, Cosimo, Inc.

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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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• Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.

  Edward Abbey

  Government, Roles, Ridiculous

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.22, RosettaBooks

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• Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness... We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.

  John Dickinson

  Kings, Taken, Rights

  John Dickinson (2009). “The Writings of John Dickinson”, p.262, Applewood Books

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• People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Security And Freedom, People, Trade

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• Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Humor, Government, People

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• Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

  Thurgood Marshall

  Men, Giving, Freedom Of Speech

  Thurgood Marshall, Mark V. Tushnet (2001). “Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and Reminiscences”, p.11, Chicago Review Press

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• The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Grace, Superstitions

  Letter to Roger C.Weightman, 24 June 1826.

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• The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Freedom, People

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 2: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.268

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• Democracy is the road to socialism.

  Karl Marx

  Historical, Democracy, Libertarian

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• Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

  Guy de Maupassant

  War, Patriotic, Eggs

  Guy de Maupassant (1926*). “The Novels and Tales of Guy de Maupassant”

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• The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Believe, Fall, Government

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• Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Auctions, Politics, Election

  "Prejudices: First Series". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1919.

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