Libertarian Quotes

On the opening day of law school at Yale, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a...

That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gate...

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to ...

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on th...

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly an...

It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who...

Go into the London Stock Exchange – a more respectable place than many a court – and you will see re...

What is peculiar and novel to our age is that the principal goal of politics in every advanced socie...

Some say it's wrong to profit from the misfortune of others. I ask my students whether they'd suppor...

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the fu...

Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they a...

It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health car...

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the sur...

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the ...

Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men f...

Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state do...

When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you – you know y...

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as ...

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limi...

When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such d...

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another — except brute, physica...

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from...

There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism—and those...

People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting b...

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on...

If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires v...

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they...

Entrepreneurial capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid.

We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our cont...

We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. "I'm this way because my father made me this way....

Money is not an invention of the state. It is not the product of a legislative act. Even the sanctio...

The most dangerous diminutions of freedom come from those who are convinced of their moral rectitude...

Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people you never met, and to take pride in accomplish...

The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it...

Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those peo...

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and ...

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its m...

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they cre...

The profit of the one is the profit of the other.

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

There are two principles between which there can be no compromise—liberty and coercion.

Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does i...

Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an acti...

The law is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish.

The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.

The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, ...

Trade protection accumulates upon a single point the good which it effects, while the evil inflicted...

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son ha...

In the first place, it would efface from everybody’sconscience the distinction between justice and i...

The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. A...

Monopoly is a market, or part of a market, reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more selle...

Liberty should be understood as freedom from the government, specifically, freedom from the initiati...

The man who is not permitted to own is owned.

Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.

Private property is redundant. "Public property" is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If p...

War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security...

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In...

No, the state is anything but the result of a contract! No one with even just an ounce of common sen...

Conflict is not unavoidable. However, it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a ...

A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, ...

In a covenant...among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private p...

There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The s...

Experience cannot beat logic, and interpretations of observational evidence which are not in line wi...

So what? Why should an a priori proof of the libertarian property theory make any difference? Why no...

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

A free and prosperous society has no fear of anyone entering it. But a welfare state is scared to de...

Government programs didn’t arise because the people demanded them or because the free market was una...

Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of soc...

The demoralization that the debase­ment of the currency left in its wake played a major role in brin...

To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like tr...

A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, h...

They who employ force by proxy are as much responsible for that force as though they employed it the...

Not only does the State do the work badly on a domain not its own, bunglingly, at greater cost, and ...

The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.

Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls o...

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach ...

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

I was reading in the paper today that Congress wants to replace the dollar bill with a coin. They’ve...

The essential difference between rich societies and poor societies does not stem from any greater ef...

The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely d...

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, th...

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives... I never meant ...

In his 1907 retirement address, Joseph Pulitzer urged his successors to always oppose privileged cla...

It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exe...

Health care and education are too important NOT to be left to the free market.

The more laws and restrictions there are,The poorer people become....The more rules and regulations,...

My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little hea...

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, a...

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to th...

If any of the socialist chiefs had tried to earn his living by selling hot dogs, he would have learn...

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not w...

Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and t...

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization ...