Libertarian Quotes and Famous Sayings

James Madison

“You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” —James Madison

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. – John Adams (1814)

 Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. – James Madison

Ben Franklin

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin

George Washington

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. – George Washington

Thomas Jefferson

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. – Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. – Thomas Jefferson

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. – Thomas Jefferson

[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct. – Thomas Jefferson (1799)

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. – Thomas Jefferson

I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. – Thomas Jefferson (1800)

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”-Thomas Jefferson

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. – Thomas Jefferson (1781)

A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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 it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)

“Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.” – Former US President Thomas Jefferson

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.”
— Thomas Jefferson

John Adams

“But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. . . This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.” – John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, 1818

Samuel Adams

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. – Samuel Adams

The Constitution shall never be construed … to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. – Samuel Adams

“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” – Samuel Adams

Thomas Paine

 Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one. – Thomas Paine

Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. – Thomas Paine

Patrick Henry

Give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry

Ron Paul

“It is dissent from government policies which defines the true Patriot” –Ron Paul

“They’ve been taught by too many that this war was necessary when it isn’t.”- Ron Paul

“It is incumbent on a great nation to remain confident, if it wishes to remain free. We need not be ignorant to real threats to our safety, against which we must remain vigilant. We need only to banish to the ash heap of history the notion that we ought to be ruled by our fears and those who use them to enhance their own power.”- Dr. Ron Paul

Ronald Reagan

The Government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. – Ronald Reagan

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. – Ronald Reagan (1986)

Abraham Lincoln

I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights. – Abraham Lincoln

Herbert Hoover

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. – Herbert Hoover

Calvin Coolidge

It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. – Calvin Coolidge

Barry Goldwater

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
Barry Goldwater

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater (1964)

Ayn Rand

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand

The government was set to protect man from criminals – and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. – Ayn Rand

Mark Twain

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. – Mark Twain (1866)

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. – Mark Twain

Reader, 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

Frederic Bastiat

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” –Frederic Bastiat

Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. – Winston Churchill

Murray Rothbard

“An Atlas, whose back is bowed and whose hands are busy holding up the world, has no arms to lift to deal with his own defense. Increase his burdens and you will crush him…This is our present posture…This suggestions I make…would…conserve American lives for American ends.” – Murray Rothbard

The freedom to speak is meaningless without the corollary freedom to keep silent. – Murray Rothbard

Adam Smith

…mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent… –Adam Smith

Ludwig Von Mises

tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

“The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”
– Ludwig Von Mises

“A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.” – Mises

Lew Rockwell

“We like to imagine that in history, truth will prevail through sheer persuasive power. Sadly, this is not the case. Truth needs champions…”- Lew Rockwell

Thomas Sowell

“Each new generation born is, in effect, an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”- Thomas Sowell

Milton Friedman

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. – Milton Friedman

“I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.”
– Milton Friedman

“I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.”
– Milton Friedman

” Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
– Milton Friedman

Henry George

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. – Henry George

“Discovery can give no right of ownership, for whatever is discovered must have been already here to be discovered. If a man makes a wheelbarrow, or a book, or a picture, he has a moral right to that particular wheelbarrow, or book, or picture, but no right to ask that others be prevented from making similar things. Such a prohibition, though given for the purpose of stimulating discovery and invention, really in the long run operates as a check upon them.”   —Henry George, Progress and Poverty

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

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” –H.L. Mencken.

Nietzsche

“Everything the state says is a lie and everything it has, it has stolen.” ~ Nietzsche, from Thus Spake Zarathustra

P.J. O’Rourke

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. – P.J. O’Rourke

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. – 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 (1993)

No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power. – P. J. O’Rourke (1992)

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. – P.J. O’Rourke (1993)

Edmund Burke
The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. – Edmund Burke (1899)

George Bernard Shaw

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw

Lysander Spooner

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. – Lysander Spooner

Leo Tolstoy

In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. – Leo Tolstoy

George Orwell

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell

Voltaire

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. – Voltaire

C.S. Lewis

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis

Eleanor Roosevelt

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government. – Eleanor Roosevelt

James Bovard

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. – James Bovard (1994)

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. – James Bovard

Anonymous

You turned your back on God the moment you pledged your allegiance to the state

Rights are not given or not given; they are recognized or not recognized.

Intaxication- euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with

Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable.

The state in which the rulers are the most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed; and the state in which they are the most eager, the worst.

Assorted

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. ”
-Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -William Pitt

“War is the health of the state.” Randolph Bourne

“Preventative war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false. –Paul Johnson²

“To work for libertarianism — to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual — used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.” –Robert Anton Wilson

“What has made the State a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.” -Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (died in 1843)

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. – Sidney Hook

Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. – Benjamin Disraeli, 1874

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest. – Mahatma Gandhi, in Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. – Charles Peguy

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. – Alexis De Tocqueville

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 (1789)

 The best government is the one that charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone. – Thomas Rudmose-Brown (1996)

First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I’m not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I’m not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I’m not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me. – Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)

There’s never been a good government. – Emma Goldman

We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk. – Millicent Fenwick (1983)

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. – Montesquieu

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. – Henry David Thoreau

Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it. – Cullen Hightower

You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest. – Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1976)

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire. – Joseph Sobran (1995)

Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. – Allan H. Meltzer (1993)

When important issues affecting the life of an individual are decided by somebody else, it makes no difference to the individual whether that somebody else is a king, a dictator, or society at large. – James Taggart (1992)

Here’s your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute – often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is. – Charley Reese (1998)

When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. – Gary Lloyd

Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. – Lord Acton

[On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. – Somerset Maugham

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. – Alexander Tytler

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy

The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. – Frank Zappa

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. – Justice Learned Hand

It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. – Charles A. Beard

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. – Edward R. Murrow

The desire to rule is the mother of heresies. – St. John Chrysostom

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter

It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. – Justice Casey Percell

No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. – Edmund A. Opitz

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. – Edward Langley

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. – Harry Emerson Fosdick

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it– George Santayana

As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government. – Columnist Dave Barry

War is just one more big government program. – Joseph Sobran

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein

The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. – Mark Skousen

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. – John Hay (1872)

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Goethe

Ancient

He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. – the Bible, Luke 22:36.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC – 65AD.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ! (Come and Take them) – Spartans at Thermopylae

Mao periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem.
(“Rather a dangerous liberty than a peaceful servitude.”)

Ironic/Random

I hate quotations.–Ralph Waldo Emerson

These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. – UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29(3).

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change. – Al Gore

“There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Jesse Jackson