Karl Hess Quotes & Sayings

The dinosaurs invented Jesus to test our confidence in science. — Karl Hess

Government programs aim at getting money for poor people. Our hope was that knowledge would in the long run be more useful, provide more money, and eventually strike at the system-causes of poverty. Government believes that poverty is just a lack of money. We felt, and continue to feel, that poverty is actually a lack of skill, and a lack of the self-esteem that comes with being able to take some part of one's life into one's own hands and work with others towards shared-call them social-goals. — Karl Hess

The fundamental question of politics has always been whether there should be politics. — Karl Hess

The most revolutionary thing you can do is get to know your neighbors. — Karl Hess

In a laissez-faire society, there could exist no public institution with the power to forcefully protect people from themselves. From other people (criminals), yes. From one's own self, no. — Karl Hess

A 7-11 parking lot beat down is how life is. — Karl Hess

All who love Liberty are enemies of the state. — Karl Hess

It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life. — Karl Hess

Vietnam should remind conservatives that whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder. — Karl Hess

A Call for Revolution, 1993 Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left - which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right - which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism. The libertarian faith in the mind of man is rejected by religionists who have faith only in the sins of man ... The libertarian insistence that each man is a sovereign land of liberty, with his primary allegiance to himself, is rejected by patriots who sing of freedom but also shout of banners and boundaries. — Karl Hess

To survive, the people in neighborhoods are going to have to secede. — Karl Hess

Liberty, finally, is not a box into which people are to be forced. Liberty is a space in which people may live. It does not tell you how they will live. It says, eternally, only that we can. — Karl Hess

No person is so grand or wise or perfect as to be the master of another person. Teacher, perhaps. Setter of good example, perhaps. Genius, perhaps. But master, no. — Karl Hess

When you put your faith in big government, you end up an apologist for mass murder. — Karl Hess

Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so. — Karl Hess

There is no better way to return the matter of taxation to full public discusssion than to repeal the withholding taxes on wages and salaries. Only when the American people are confronted with the enormous excesses of government in a personal and direct way - by an annual bill for services rendered - will they be able to make an informed judgment about which services they want and which ones they can do without. — Karl Hess

My own interest is the responsibility of people to be responsible for their own lives and, with their neighbors, for their public space and actions. To sing their own songs. To make their own inventions..To build and not just to envy. To light that candle which is so much better than cursing the darkness. To be as much as the human condition can sustain, rather than being only what a system can allow. — Karl Hess

We do not want to lead or be led. We want to be free. — Karl Hess

Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left - which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right-which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism. — Karl Hess

The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate. — Karl Hess

Everybody knows that the federal government promises a lot and delivers damn little, and pays for most of what it does deliver out of the earnings of individuals rather than the profits of great corporations. — Karl Hess

For loving, working, and creative people to throw off the yoke of power it is necessary to abolish power itself, not merely to make the yoke comfortable. Where some have power, others do not, and the two classes persist. A free society is where all have power-power over and responsibility for their own lives, power and reason to respect the lives of others. This is also a society without classes, a society of human beings, not rulers and the ruled. — Karl Hess

We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory. — Karl Hess