Valtiosta pitäisi voida erota samalla tavalla kuin kirkosta.
― Mikko Ellilä
Kaikki vapaaehtoisesti punakaartiin liittyneet rikkoivat ihmisoikeuksia kannattamalla kommunismia, joten heidän tappamisensa oli oikein. Kaikki punavangit olisi pitänyt teloittaa lukuunottamatta vasten tahtoaan punakaartiin pakotettuja.
― Mikko Ellilä
To be a liberal is to have realized that a special privilege conceded to a small group to the disadvantage of others cannot, in the long run, be preserved without a fight (civil war): but that, on the other hand, one cannot bestow privileges on the majority, since these then cancel one another out in their value for those whom they are supposed to specially favor, and the only net result is a reduction in the productivity of social labor.
― Ludwig von Mises
No further evidence of excessive speed was going to be found either on the person of the offender or in the passenger compartment of the car.
― Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the majority in Knowles v. Iowa.
[…] he won’t believe us, since you can’t make his favorite omelet without breaking heads.
― An anonymous anarcho‐capitalist on a collectivist
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
― Thomas Jefferson
We have to move away. Environmental activists don’t use logic or reason.
― Stanley, in South Park
If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns.
― Edward Abbey
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
― Edward Abbey
Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.
― Edward Abbey
Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.
― Edward Abbey
Every class is unfit to govern.
― Lord Acton
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
― Lord Acton
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
― Lord Acton
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.
― John Adams
The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.
― Samuel Adams
Both Oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms.
― Aristotle
A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
― Walter Bagehot
The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at them.
― Walter Bagehot
Man is only truly free only among equally free men.
― Mikhail Bakunin
Where the State begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.
― Mikhail Bakunin
Politics, from the Greek
poly, meaning many, andticks, small, annoying bloodsuckers.― Dave Barry
By virtue of exchange, one man’s prosperity is beneficial to all others.
― Frédéric Bastiat
Each of us has a natural right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.
― Frédéric Bastiat
If goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
― Frédéric Bastiat
Law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.
― Frédéric Bastiat
No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice…
― Frédéric Bastiat
The plans differ, the planners are all alike…
― Frédéric Bastiat
For every new mouth to feed, there are two hands to produce.
― Peter Bauer
A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.
― William Blum
War is the health of the state.
― Randolph Bourne
America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.
― James Bovard
An economy breathes through its tax loopholes.
― Barry Bracewell‐Milnes
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
― Edmund Burke
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
― Edmund Burke
The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion.
― Edmund Burke
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients.
― Edmund Burke
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
― Samuel Butler
It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
― G.K. Chesterton
The only defensible war is a war of defense.
― G.K. Chesterton
The best argument against democracy is a five‐minute conversation with the average voter.
― Winston Churchill
There is no such thing as a good tax.
― Winston Churchill
I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.
― Marcus Cicero
Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.
― Marcus Cicero
More law, less justice.
― Marcus Cicero
A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you.
― Ramsey Clark
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
― Charles de Gaulle
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
― William Douglas
Self‐defence is Nature’s eldest law.
― John Dryden
The most may err as grossly as the few.
― John Dryden
War is the trade of kings.
― John Dryden
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
― Albert Einstein
War is delightful to those who have not experienced it.
― Erasmus
That government is best which governs not at all.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is freedom anything but the right to live as we wish? Nothing else!
― Epictetus
When the fox administers justice, the chickens will always be found guilty.
― Cat Farmer
I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS.
― Malcolm Forbes
It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.
― Benjamin Franklin
No nation was ever ruined by trade.
― Benjamin Franklin
Never has there been a good war or a bad peace.
― Benjamin Franklin
Ask not what your government can do for you. Ask what your government is doing to you.
― David Friedman
A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
― Milton Friedman
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom.
― Milton Friedman
Inflation is taxation without legislation.
― Milton Friedman
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
― Milton Friedman
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
― Milton Friedman
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
― R. Buckminster Fuller
Coercion cannot but result in chaos in the end.
― Mahatma Gandhi
One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman.
― Mahatma Gandhi
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
― Johann von Goethe
A government big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
― Barry Goldwater
The more the state plans, the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.
― F.A. Hayek
A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy.
― F.A. Hayek
Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality.
― Henry Hazlitt
Beware of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss.
― Robert Heinlein
Love your country, but never trust your government.
― Robert Heinlein
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
― Robert A. Heinlein
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.
― Patrick Henry
If this be treason, then let us make the most of it.
― Patrick Henry
No man has ever ruled other men for their own good.
― George D. Herron
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
― Karl Hess
Talk is chea
― ‐except when Congress does it."‐‐Cullen Hightower
What luck for rulers that men do not think.
― Adolf Hitler
If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.
― Jacob Hornberger
No nation was ever drunk when wine was cheap.
― Thomas Jefferson
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
― Thomas Jefferson
That government is best which governs least, because the people govern themselves.
― Thomas Jefferson
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
― Thomas Jefferson
Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to rap, we should soon want bread.
― Thomas Jefferson
I’d rather have my country die for me.
― James Joyce
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
― Edward Langley
The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be.
― Lao‐Tse
To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms.
― Richard Henry Lee
Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.
― Robert LeFevre
Reason teaches all mankind that no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, or possessions.
― John Locke
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
― James Russell Lowell
Politicians say they’re beefing up our economy. Most don’t know beef from pork.
― Harold Lowman
When government offers you something for free, run.
― Steve Kalafer
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.
― Nikita Khrushchev
All men having power ought to be mistrusted.
― James Madison
The power to tax is the power to destroy.
― John Marshall
To change masters is not to be free.
― Jose Marti y Perez
Democracy is the road to Socialism.
― Karl Marx
Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
― Mary McCarthy
Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
― H.L. Mencken
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
― H.L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
― H.L. Mencken
Genius can only breathe free in an atmosphere of freedom.
― J.S. Mill
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
― Edward R. Murrow
SolveandProblemsare not in the constitution.― Doug Newman
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.
― Frederich Nietzsche
The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.
― Robert Nozick
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
― George Orwell
Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
― P.J. O’Rourke
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.
― P.J. O’Rourke
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.
― Thomas Paine
If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.
― William Penn
You may not take an interest in politics, but politics takes an interest in you.
― Pericles
Nothing succeeds like a failed government program.
― William H. Peterson
Whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.
― Pierre Proudhon
The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.
― Ayn Rand
Government cannot create wealth, only confiscate it.
― Ronald Reagan
There’s always someone telling you not to do something. The main thing is just to ignore them.
― Tim Robbins
I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
― Will Rogers
I might have gone to West Point, but I was too proud to speak to a Congressman.
― Will Rogers
The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.
― Will Rogers
There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
― Will Rogers
Things run in this country in spite of the government, not because of it.
― Will Rogers
When I was a kid, I was told anyone could be become president. Now I’m starting to believe it.
― Will Rogers
It is easy to be conspicuously
compassionateif others are being forced to pay the cost.― Murray Rothbard
The state provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property.
― Murray Rothbard
Man is born free, but he is placed in chains.
― Jean‐Jacques Rousseau
Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.
― R.J. Rummel
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
― Bertrand Russell
The proper role of government: to die.
― Jeremy Sapienza
A sword never kills anyone; it is a tool in the killer’s hands.
― Seneca
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
― Seneca
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
― George Bernard Shaw
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
― George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
― George Bernard Shaw
The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society.
― Mark Skousen
The best argument for anarchism is the 20th century.
― Joseph Sobran
War is just one more big government program.
― Joseph Sobran
All socialism involves slavery.
― Herbert Spencer
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.
― Max Stirner
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
― Tacitus
Marxists get up early in the morning to further their cause. We must get up even earlier.
― Margaret Thatcher
They have the usual socialist disease: they have run out of other people’s money.
― Margaret Thatcher
If people behaved like governments, you’d call the cops.
― Kelvin Throop
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
― Leo Tolstoy
Aggression is simply another name for government.
― Benjamin Tucker
No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
― Gideon Tucker
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
― Mark Twain
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
― Mark Twain
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.
― Mark Twain
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
― Voltaire
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed.
― Albert Einstein
Liberty is not the means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
― Lord Acton
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
― Lord Acton
Everything secret degenerates; nothing is safe that does not bear discussion and publicity.
― Lord Acton
Thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find—nothing.
― Aesop
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
― Aristotle
We can do noble acts without ruling the earth and sea.
― Aristotle
All persons ought to endeavour to follow what is right, and not what is established.
― Aristotle
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
― Isaac Asimov
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
― Francis Bacon
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
― Honore de Balzac
See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.
― Dave Barry
The State is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
― Frédéric Bastiat
The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.
― Frédéric Bastiat
When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
― Frédéric Bastiat
People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.
― Frédéric Bastiat
The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts.
― Frédéric Bastiat
The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.
― Frédéric Bastiat
The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.
― Isaiah Berlin
Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience.
― Isaiah Berlin
Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.
― Isaiah Berlin
But to manipulate men, to propel them towards goals which you‐the‐social‐reformers see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.
― Isaiah Berlin
When you say that you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
― Otto von Bismarck
To recognize knowledge as ignorance is noble; but to regard ignorance as knowledge is evil.
― Buddha
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
― Winston Churchill
Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
― Winston Churchill
A good deed in the wrong place is like an evil deed.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.
― Democritus
Nothing is so easy as to deceive oneself; for what we wish, we readily believe.
― Demosthenes
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
― Albert Einstein
The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.
― Albert Einstein
Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.
― Euripides
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do day after tomorrow just as well.
― Benjamin Franklin
[…] a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles […] is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and keep a government free.
― Benjamin Franklin
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
― Benjamin Franklin
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
― Milton Friedman
A society that puts equality […] ahead of freedom will end up with neither.
― Milton Friedman
Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.
― Milton Friedman
If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
― Milton Friedman
Inflation has been irresistibly attractive to sovereigns because it is a hidden tax that at first appears painless or even pleasant… It is truly taxation without representation.
― Milton Friedman
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go the hell in his own way.
― Robert Frost
When you praise someone you call yourself his equal.
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be […] controlled in everything.
― F.A. Hayek
Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts.
― F.A. Hayek
All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.
― F.A. Hayek
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.
― F.A. Hayek
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.
― F.A. Hayek
[…] whenever it is necessary that one of several conflicting opinions should prevail and when one would have to be made to prevail by force if need be, it is less wasteful to determine which has the stronger support by counting numbers than by fighting. Democracy is the only method of peaceful change that man has yet been discovered.
― F.A. Hayek
What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.
― F.A. Hayek
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
― F.A. Hayek
A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.
― F.A. Hayek
[…] if we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
― F.A. Hayek
Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.
― F.A. Hayek
The
private sectorof the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector […] thepublic sectoris, in fact, the coercive sector.― Henry Hazlitt
What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.
― George Henry
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
― Aldous Huxley
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance
― Thomas Jefferson
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
― Thomas Jefferson
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
― Thomas Jefferson
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
― Thomas Jefferson
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
― Thomas Jefferson
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.
― Thomas Jefferson
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
― Thomas Jefferson
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
― Thomas Jefferson
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
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
― Thomas Jefferson
The government is our servant, not our master.
― Thomas Jefferson
We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
― Thomas Jefferson
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.
― Thomas Jefferson
Most bad government results from too much government.
― Thomas Jefferson
I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.
― Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
― Thomas Jefferson
Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
― Immanuel Kant
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
― Abraham Lincoln
I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
― Abraham Lincoln
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
― Abraham Lincoln
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
― John Locke
Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.
― John Locke
The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.
― John Locke
The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone.
― H.L. Mencken
If all mankind were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
― John Stuart Mill
There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.
― John Milton
Freedom enables a man not only to do the good things but also to do the wrong things. But no moral value can be ascribed to an action, however good, that has been performed under the pressure of an omnipotent government.
― Ludwig von Mises
The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society.
― Ludwig von Mises
The philosophy called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.
― Ludwig von Mises
He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines and plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists.
― Ludwig von Mises
Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions.
― Ludwig von Mises
Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow…
― Ludwig von Mises
Business is a means—the only means—to increase the quantity of goods available for preserving life and rendering it more agreeable.
― Ludwig von Mises
State interference in economic life, which calls itself
economic policyhas done nothing but destroy economic life.― Ludwig von Mises
Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d’etre to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man’s innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.
― Ludwig von Mises
The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.
― Ludwig von Mises
All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out.
― Ludwig von Mises
What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you.
― Ludwig von Mises
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
― Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu
Commerce is the cure for the most destructive prejudices.
― Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu
Peace is a natural effect of trade.
― Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu
There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more.
― Robert Nozick
Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).
― Robert Nozick
From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.
― Robert Nozick
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
― P.J. O’Rourke
Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at it’s worst, an intolerable one.
― Thomas Paine
When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.
― Thomas Paine
[…] when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
― Thomas Paine
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
― Thomas Paine
Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.
― Thomas Paine
I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence
democracy,and the other,tyranny.― Karl Popper
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
― Karl Popper
Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
― Karl Popper
The three stages of government: If it works, tax it. If it still works, regulate it. If it stops working, subsidize it.
― Ronald Reagan
We will never have a true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
― Will Rogers
Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.
― Will Rogers
The more power a government has […] the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects.
― R.J. Rummel
The more freedom, the less violence. Conversely, the more power at the center, the more violence. In short: power kills.
― R.J. Rummel
All cruelty springs from weakness.
― Seneca
The world’s problem is not too many people, but lack of political and economic freedom.
― Julian Simon
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
― Adam Smith
Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them.
― Adam Smith
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
― Adam Smith
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self‐love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.
― Adam Smith
Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only.
― Adam Smith
If a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered.
― Adam Smith
No benevolent man ever lost altogether the fruits of his benevolence.
― Adam Smith
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
― Thomas Sowell
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
― Thomas Sowell
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
― Thomas Sowell
If you have ever seen a four‐year‐old trying to lord it over a two‐year‐old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is—and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.
― Thomas Sowell
Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.
― Baruch Spinoza
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, as much as for the right.
― Henry David Thoreau
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Always do right. This will surprise some people and astonish the rest.
― Mark Twain
My body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm […] it is I who suffers, not the state.
― Mark Twain
Common sense is not so common.
― Voltaire
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
― George Washington
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
― Oscar Wilde
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
― Oscar Wilde
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
― Oscar Wilde
To be a persecuted genius, you not only have to be persecuted; you also have to be right.
― Isaac Asimov, paraphrased
Only sheep need a shepherd.
― Atheism Wasteland, slogan
Mielestäni valtion ei pitäisi säädellä kirkon jäsenmaksuja sen enempää kuin urheiluseurojen tai ompelukerhojenkaan jäsenmaksuja.
Tämä ei tosin ole valtava ongelma, koska järkevät ihmiset eivät missään tapauksessa kuulu kirkkoon. Voisin pitää kirkollisveroa eräänlaisena tyhmyysverona, joka sopii hyvin sosiodarwinismin periaatteisiin.
― Mikko Ellilä
No nation was ever ruined by trade.
― Benjamin Franklin
Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They’re designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators.
― Noam Chomsky
Because of the oil‐and‐water relationship governments have cultivated between ethics and political economy, speaking in plain terms—spelling it out as it is—as become foreign to the public. So here goes: When government sports a
surplus,this implies that the political pickpockets have stolen more funds than they can possibly dream of spending. The property is not theirs to keep! Conversely, whendeficitsare reported, this means that the kleptomaniacs have not been able to steal sufficient funds to cover their profligacy.― Deficit disorders, by Ilana Mercer
We are reduced to the alternative of choosing unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.
― Continental Congress on the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms in 1775
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said,
A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created.
This is true,He replied.
He will need laws,said the Demon slyly.
What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?
Oh, no!Satan replied,I ask only that he be allowed to make his own.It was so granted.
― Ambrose Bierce, in
The Devil’s Dictionary
I don’t care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.
― Boss Tweed
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent… the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
― Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States, United States Supreme Court, 1928
Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
― H. L. Mencken
Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and willultimately lose its wealth as well.
― W. Somerset Maugham, paraphrased
Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put to the test, usually find it to be an
inconvenience. We have opted instead for an authoritarian system *disguised* as a Democracy. We pay through the nose for an enormous joke‐of‐a‐government, let it push us around, and then wonder how all those assholes got in there.― Frank Zappa
A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.
― Bertrand de Jouvenel
A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.
― Everett Dirksen
An old woman is riding a crowded bus and has to stand with her heavy packages. Finally, someone in front of her gives up a seat and so she grabs it.
Thank God,she says.A man in the seat behind her says
Excuse me comrade, but this is an atheist society. You should sayThank Stalin,notThank God.
Of course you are right,the old woman says.Thank Stalin.She is silent for a moment, then says:Comrade, I have just had a terrible thought: What shall we say when Stalin dies?The man behind her replies
In that case I think we can sayThank God.
All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self‐justifying—a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.
― Edward Abbey
All Governments, including the worst on earth and the most tyrannical on earth, are free Governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.
― Lysander Spooner
[…] the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self‐protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully excersized over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because,in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reason for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil in someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
― John Stuart Mill, in
On Liberty
What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so that we wouldn’t have a fat, insensitive government running our country. Nice try anyway, George.
― D.J. on KSFO/KYA
We’re Americans—with a capital
A! And do you know what that means? Do you? It means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world.― Rousing speech by Bill Murray in STRIPES
Unlimited campaign spending eats at the heart of the democratic process.
― Barry Goldwater
To steal from one person is theft. To steal from many is taxation.
― Daiell’s Law, a take‐off on Felson’s Law
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.
― Daniel Webster
A pessimist asked God for relief.
Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness,said God.
No,replied the petitioner,I wish you to create something that would justify them.
The world is all created,said God,but you have overlooked something—the mortality of the optimist.― Ambrose Bierce, in
The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
― Edward Abbey
A good government is one
which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned.― Thomas Jefferson, in his inaugural address
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
― George Bernard Shaw
A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
― Benjamin Franklin
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
― Barry Goldwater
A little girl in a school in USSR was asked to use
communistin a sentence. She said,My cat just had a litter of kittens and they are all communists.A month later the same little girl was asked to use the word
capitalistin a sentence. She said,My cat had a litter of kittens and now they are capitalists.The teacher was shocked and ask what had happened to the kittens. The little girl responded,
Well they have opened their eyes now!
All I know is that I am not a Marxist.
― Karl Marx; Attr. in Engels, letter to C. Schmidt, 5 Aug 1890
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
― Professor Bernardo de la Paz, in
The Moon is a Harsh Mistressby Robert Heinlien
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
You can make it illegal, but you can’t make it unpopular.
Anarchy—it’s not the law, it’s just a good idea.
No matter who you vote for, the government gets elected.
Any twelve people who can’t get themselves out of jury duty are not my peers.
The Bill of Rights goes too far—it should have stopped at
Congress shall make no law.
I am interested in politics so that someday I will not have to be interested in politics.
If you could print all the money you wanted, and steal all the money you wanted, couldn’t you manage to stay out of debt?
Support free trade—Smuggle!
Taxation is theft; Conscription is slavery; War is murder.
When buying and selling are controlled by legistation, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see it with representation.
Government: A necessary evil, to be expressly limited, constantly patrolled and periodically reviewed.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers… Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted faggots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
― Clarence S. Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial
The net effect of Clarence Darrow’s great speech yesterday seemed to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan.
― H. L. Mencken
When I meet a government which says to me,
Your money or your life,why should I be in haste to give it my money?― H.D. Thoreau
Under a government which imprisons injustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
― H.D. Thoreau
How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I say that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
― H.D. Thoreau
I cannot convince myself that there is anyone so wise, so universally comprehensive in his judgment, that he can be trusted with the power to tell others:
You shall not express yourself thus, you shall not describe your own experiences; or depict the fantasies which your mind has created; or laugh at what others set up as respectable; or question old beliefs; or contradict the dogmas of the church, of our society, our economic systems, and our political orthodoxy.― Jake Zeitlin
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as the right
― H.D. Thoreau
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! It is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.
― George Washington
Mayor:
At any rate, you have a bad habit of taking your own course. And that, in a well‐ordered community is almost as bad. The individual must subordinate himself to society, or more precisely, to the authorities whose business it is to watch over the welfare of society.Dr. Stockmann:
Maybe. But what the devil has that to do with me?― Henry Ibsen, in
An Enemy of the People
First, the kidporn thing. I am sick and tired of hearing this specious blackwash. Are American citizens really so neurotically uptight about deviant sexual behavior that we will allow our entire information infrastructure to be dictated by the existence of pedophiles? Are pedophiles that precious and important to us? Do the NSA and the FBI really believe that they can hide the structure of a telephone switch under a layer of camouflage called child pornography? Are we supposed to flinch so violently at the specter of child abuse that we somehow miss the fact that you’ve installed a Sony Walkman jack in our phones?
― Bruce Sterling, closing speech, CFP ’94, on the Clipper Chip.
What does he expect from the computer community? Normality? Sorry pal, we’re fresh out! Who is it, exactly, that the NSA considers a level‐headed sober sort, someone to sit down with and talk to seriously? Jobs? Wozniak? Gates? Sculley? Perot—I hope to God it’s not Perot. Bob Allen—okay, maybe Bob Allen, that brownshoe guy from AT&T. Bob Allen seems to think that Clipper is a swell idea, at least he’s somehow willing to merchandise it. But Christ, Bob Allen just gave eight zillion dollars to a guy whose idea of a good time is Microsoft Windows for Spaceships!
When is the NSA going to realize that Kapor and his people and Rotenberg and his people and the rest of the people here are as good as people get in this milieu? Yes they are weird people, and yes they have weird friends (and I’m one of them), but there isn’t any normality left for anybody in this society, and when it comes to computers, when the going got weird the weird turned pro! The status quo is *over!* Wake up to it! Get used to it!
― Bruce Sterling, closing speech, CFP ’94, on the ’90s
But even the Four Horsemen of Kidporn, Dope Dealers, Mafia and Terrorists don’t worry me as much as totalitarian governments. It’s been a long century, and we’ve had enough of them.
― Bruce Sterling, closing speech, CFP ’94
You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.
― John Kenneth Galbraith
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
― George Orwell, in
1984
The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.
― George Orwell, in
1984
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.
― H.D. Thoreau
Whenever
Aattempts by law to impose his moral standards uponB,Ais most likely a scoundrel.― H.L. Mencken
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
― Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
Jos potentiaalinen valtion tai kunnan työntekijä elää esimerkiksi opintorahalla tai työttömyysavustuksella, hän tulee yhteiskunnalle halvemmaksi kuin ottaessaan jonkin julkissektorin viran tai toimen vastaan.
― Unknown
Poliitikot eivät koskaan syytä sinua ahneudesta kun haluat muiden rahoja, ainoastaan silloin kun haluat pitää omasi.
― Joseph Sobran
Ei ole olemassa mitään niin pahaa, etteivät poliitikot voisi pahentaa sitä.
― Thomas Sowell
Oikeus ei ole mitä joku sinulle antaa, vaan jotain jota sinulta ei voi riistää.
―Ramsey Clark
Ihmiset eivät arvosta oikeuksia, vaan etuoikeuksia.
― HL Mencken
The difference between liberalism and socialism is that liberals will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can’t tolerate a liberal community.
― David D. Boaz
Viro on aina tiennyt, ketkä ovat sen naapurit—ketkä ovat sen hyvät naapurit ja ketkä ovat sen…naapurit.
― Henrik Hololei
It seem to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
― F.A.Hayek
Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things. Yet the common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers and periodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are perpetually falling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the word utilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they habitually express by it the rejection, or the neglect, of pleasure in some of its forms; of beauty, of ornament, or of amusement. Nor is the term thus ignorantly misapplied solely in disparagement, but occasionally in compliment; as though it implied superiority to frivolity and the mere pleasures of the moment. And this perverted use is the only one in which the word is popularly known, and the one from which the new generation are acquiring their sole notion of its meaning. Those who introduced the word, but who had for many years discontinued it as a distinctive appellation, may well feel themselves called upon to resume it, if by doing so they can hope to contribute anything towards rescuing it from this utter degradation.
― John Stuart Mill
Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value. We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice. The members of a society who in all respects are made to do the good thing have no title to praise.
― F.A.Hayek
No‐one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a workable general law i.e. he must accord to others the same right as he enjoys himself.
― Immanuel Kant
We’re lucky we don’t get all the government we pay for.
― Will Rogers
Thus no member of the commonwealth can have a hereditary privilege as against his fellow‐subjects; and no‐one can hand down to his descendants the privileges attached to the rank he occupies in the commonwealth, ’nor act as if he were qualified as a ruler by birth and forcibly prevent others from reaching the higher levels of the hierarchy (which are superior and inferior, but never imperans and subiectus) through their own merit. He may hand down everything else, so long as it is material and not pertaining to his person, for it may be acquired and disposed of as property and may over a series of generations create considerable inequalities in wealth among the members of the commonwealth (the employee and the employer, the landowner and the agricultural servants, etc.). But he may not prevent his sub‐ordinates from raising themselves to his own level if they are able and entitled to do so by their talent, industry and good fortune.
― Immanuel Kant
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self‐protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty