L. Neil Smith Quotes & Sayings

As Al Franken has demonstrated, liberals give lousy talk radio. — L. Neil Smith

The miserable specimens who call themselves ' liberals ' are really conservatives: they're desperately even hysterically defending a welfare-warfare kleptocracy that is now at least four generations old, against growing numbers of us (unlike Republicans , who seem to become more ignorant with every passing year) who have actually managed to learn something from history and are struggling to dismantle said kleptocracy. — L. Neil Smith

Few things are more laughably pitiable than authority once it has been successfully defied. — L. Neil Smith

I do know enough about economics and so do you to understand that the 'stimulus program' of Barack Obama and his ravenous parasitic hordes, supposedly designed to 'repair' America's broken economy, reveals him to be unimaginably stupid, gibberingly insane, or simply the biggest, most barefaced criminal thug ever to occupy the White House. And that's saying a lot. — L. Neil Smith

Try never to speak of your enemies by name. Any publicity is still publicity - and there are those for whom your disapproval constitutes a recommendation. — L. Neil Smith

Any politico who's afraid of his constituents being armed, should be. Leaders of the anti-gun movement (for the most part, politicians who enthusiastically advocate confiscatory taxation and government control of everything) realize that a populace is much easier to herd, loot and dispose of if it has been stripped of its weapons. The naked fraud and transparent fascism of victim disarmament must be eradicated through the repeal of all gun laws at every level of government. — L. Neil Smith

The main problem is that for a boycott to be effective, you must first persuade thousands - maybe even millions of others - to go along, which is a lot of work and usually not successful. — L. Neil Smith

The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right - subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility. — L. Neil Smith

Politicians need human misery ... Government's a disease masquerading as its own cure. — L. Neil Smith

The most dangerous and successful conspiracies take place in public, in plain sight, under the clear, bright light of day
usually with TV cameras focused on them. — L. Neil Smith

Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost. — L. Neil Smith

A lot is said, by foreigners and the left, about America being a violent society. Yet if you subtract the crime statistics for its largest cities places that have been under the strict political control of so-called "progressives", sometimes for many generations what remains, the real America, is the most peaceful, productive, prosperous, and truly progressive civilization in all of human history. — L. Neil Smith

The War on Drugs employs millions - politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military - that probably couldn't find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners. — L. Neil Smith

[N]o one's ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It's just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred. — L. Neil Smith

Taxes are a barbaric remnant of ancient times in which early farmers, tied to the land, no longer able to roam freely, unable to fight back with awkward agricultural tools the way they once could with hunting implements, became victims, first, of itinerant plunderers, then of bandits settling down beside them to become the governments we know today. — L. Neil Smith

Most of us agree that the United Nations is the vanguard of a foreign invasion and must be driven from our shores. Liberalism Progressivism all forms of left wing collectivism , are equally alien to the Founders ' America and must be extirpated, root and branch, laughter and derision being the most effective weapons. Look at the way they have reduced Hillary Clinton to an insignificant greasy spot on the pages of history, turned Albert Gore into an object of merriment, and are accomplishing the same for Barry and Micky Obama. — L. Neil Smith

If conservatives really believed in individual liberty, as they endlessly claim and if they used both halves of their brains then they'd be libertarians . Instead, they sabotage themselves, and their cause, by constantly generating one spurious reason after another to deprive other people of their freedom. — L. Neil Smith

The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists - or ever existed, or ever will exist - is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves." Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. — L. Neil Smith

Socialism is, among other things, the political habitat of low self-esteem, incompetence, self-loathing, and a willingness to steal - or have stolen for you what you are unable or unwilling to work for. Socialism is a philosophy fit only for slugs, leaches, and mosquitoes. — L. Neil Smith

There's nothing noble or selfless about politicians and there never has been. Putting it charitably, Profiles in Courage is a compendium of Democratic mythology, ghostwritten for an ambitious young Massachusetts Senator who never did a thing for himself if he could pay to have it done by others. — L. Neil Smith

Each day, it seemed, another law was passed to impoverish and diminish them, punishing them for whatever success they achieved and rewarding their less competent and industrious neighbors. — L. Neil Smith

The function of government is to provide you with service; the function of the media is to supply the Vaseline. — L. Neil Smith

It is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profitable - effort to prevent the annihilation of the human race. — L. Neil Smith

Human rights are an aspect of natural law, a consequence of the way the universe works, as solid and as real as photons or the concept of pi. The idea of self- ownership is the equivalent of Pythagoras' theorem, of evolution by natural selection, of general relativity, and of quantum theory. Before humankind discovered any of these, it suffered, to varying degrees, in misery and ignorance. — L. Neil Smith

To politicians, solved problems represent a dire threat of unemployment and poverty. That's why no problem ever tackled by the government has ever been solved. What they want is lots of problems they can promise to solve, so that we'll keep electing them or letting them keep their jobs in a bureaucracy metastasizing like cancer. — L. Neil Smith

...occasionally I like carrying raw steel to remind myself of an important lesson.
The blade's an extension of the hand, the agent--no pun intended--of my will. Most people understand this immediately of edged weapons...
The trick--and few are subtle or sophisticated enough to master it--is to see that this is equally true... by implication, of all machines. — L. Neil Smith

I'm tired of being considered property. — L. Neil Smith

And yet, what is bravery but the capacity to reject our fears, ignore and supress them, then go on to do whatever it is we are afraid to do. — L. Neil Smith

Collective states are constitutionally incapable of reliably producing anything but corpses. — L. Neil Smith

Forget 'redeeming social value,' dirty pictures are fun . When I die I want my ashes sprinkled over a nudist camp. — L. Neil Smith

Today, human civilization is drowning in a sea of lies. — L. Neil Smith

My current novel, Pallas , is all about that culture war - in fact it's been called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Sagebrush Rebellion - and yet what I hear all too often from libertarians is that they don't read fiction. — L. Neil Smith

The fact is that surveys which media people openly admit to show that fewer than twelve percent of their customers believe they're doing a good job, while the average profit margin in television is in the neighborhood of eighty percent. — L. Neil Smith

The only hope we have is the Internet. We must strive to keep it free. — L. Neil Smith

There's a big difference between keeping the peace, which is something folks do pretty well themselves, and enforcing the law, which is another thing altogether. — L. Neil Smith

Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220 pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110 pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. Is that evil? Is that wrong? — L. Neil Smith

Of all the groups that sometimes claim to own your life, family is the hardest to defend your individual sovereignty from. — L. Neil Smith

Those who sell their liberty for security are understandable, if pitiable, creatures. Those who sell the liberty of others for wealth, power, or even a moments respite deserve only the end of a rope. — L. Neil Smith

I've heard that phallic symbol argument before, and always from ineffectual people driven to make everyone else as helpless as they are. who's more confused, those who think weapons are sexual organs, or those who want to take everyone's sexual organs away?. — L. Neil Smith

Guns cause crime like flies cause garbage! — L. Neil Smith

For the Second Amendment to do its job, the other side must become much better informed. I watched an action-adventure program last night that asserted that the famous AK-47 the original peoples' rifle (and Authority's greatest mistake) is rare in this country, and that the only ones here were originally smuggled in from the Middle East, or possibly from South America. The idiots who wrote this mess seemed unaware that after legal imports mostly from China were illegally cut off by executive order, they began to be manufactured here. — L. Neil Smith

As a novelist, I have a somewhat higher soapbox to stand on than most people do when it comes to talking back to the merchants of fear. — L. Neil Smith

America didn't have a drug problem before it passed drug laws. — L. Neil Smith

I'm tired of living in a police state. — L. Neil Smith

Repealing drug laws would remove the risks involved with producing and distributing drugs, bringing 'street prices' crashing down (it's estimated that a 'spoon' of heroin would cost about a quarter in the free market), thereby eradicating any incentive that criminals might have to compete with legitimate businesses, and greatly reducing if not eliminating altogether any economic reason to ' push ' drugs on children. — L. Neil Smith

You cannot force me to agree with you. You can force me to act as though I agree with you but then you'll have to watch your back. All the time. — L. Neil Smith

Lincoln emancipated nobody. The man freed not a single slave. — L. Neil Smith

I'll remind you all, however, that for government, existence is a privilege, not a right. — L. Neil Smith

I have a recurring daymare that when the Glorious People's SWAT Teams smash their way in, most of us by which I mean members of the general freedom movement will be caught flatfooted, sitting in our underwear behind our computer monitors, guzzling Jolt and gorging on Cheetos, while arguing with our friends and enemies online about immigration or abortion, two of the issues that the Lefties know they can always rely on to keep that general freedom movement divided and powerless. — L. Neil Smith

I propose a Constitutional Amendment providing that, if any public official, elected or appointed, at any level of government, is caught lying to any member of the public for any reason, the punishment shall be death by public hanging. — L. Neil Smith

The Bill of Rights isn't about us, it's about them . It isn't a list of things we're permitted to do, it's a list of things they aren't allowed even to consider. — L. Neil Smith

Possibly worst of all, from the standpoint of the dedicated enemies of freedom, the Internet is a world that libertarians having been marginalized for three decades by the establishment media have made their own, almost without effort. It's an alternative reality (unlike 'meat-space' we live in) in which exactly like intelligence, bravery, or virtue the human capacity for violence is not additive, and in which it's impossible to initiate force against anybody. — L. Neil Smith

We must oppose programs that would take food from the mouths of younger generations to buy prescription drugs for old people, and we must do it ... for the children. — L. Neil Smith

This planet is 15 million years overdue for an asteroid strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs. — L. Neil Smith

Choose your allies carefully: it's highly unlikely that you'll ever be held morally, legally, or historically accountable for the actions of your enemies. — L. Neil Smith

People in the mass media tend more and more every day to look and act like elected and appointed officials. — L. Neil Smith

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash
for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything - without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you. — L. Neil Smith

Gun Control is mind control. — L. Neil Smith

I'm as radical as libertarians come. — L. Neil Smith

Government is about stealing and nothing else. That's all it's ever been about. That's all it'll ever be about. — L. Neil Smith

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim. — L. Neil Smith

The claim that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked because fundamentalists hate our prosperity and freedom is a ridiculous lie. — L. Neil Smith

[T]ry not to be too angry or disappointed with your fellow Americans. Most of them don't care about politics as much as the majority of my readers, and the education they have received about it from the government's public school system is nothing more than a septic tank full of warmed-over self-serving statist lies and leftist propaganda. — L. Neil Smith

What I want to accomplish artistically amounts to nothing more than fulfilling the promise of the American Revolution. — L. Neil Smith

Poverty is a solved problem - all they have to do is abolish taxes and regulations which cripple those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women and destroy their productive capacity, then stand back and watch the economy boom. — L. Neil Smith

People - pardon me, journalists and politicians - have often accused me of believing that I'm above the law. And yet, who isn't? Everywhere you prod it, even with the shortest stick, the established system isn't simply corrupt, it's unequivocally putrescent. The law is created by demonstrable criminals, enforced by demonstrable, interpreted by demonstrable criminals, all for demonstrably criminal purposes. Of course I'm above the law. And so are you. — L. Neil Smith

[E]lections amount to little more than choosing between the scum that floats to the top of the barrel and the dregs that settle to the bottom. — L. Neil Smith

It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance. — L. Neil Smith

Incidentally, the next time some war-mongering wise-ass tries to tell you that one reason we're in the middle east is to enhance the civil rights and social equality of women, remind them that we very enthusiastically destroyed the most secular country over there, where women could dress as they liked, have good jobs, be literate, and vote. — L. Neil Smith

We're all a bunch of badminton birdies who just got batted from the Republican side of the court to the Democrat side. We'll eventually get batted back again, of course, unless libertarians can manage to do something about it. If your principal concern, like mine, is freedom, there's absolutely no discernable difference between the two 'majors,' and for all practical purposes, they're one big party the Boot On Your Neck party pretending to be two. — L. Neil Smith

Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective economic value, anyway while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process. — L. Neil Smith

The quintessential exercise of free speech in a culture supposedly built on that concept and dedicated to it, the Internet's development is as historically important to humanity perhaps even more so as Gutenberg 's invention of the printing press. — L. Neil Smith

We live in times of wonderful technology and crappy politics. The task before us now is not to let the latter destroy the former. — L. Neil Smith

Socialism , whether it's the 'soft tyranny' of the EuroAmerican management state or the murderously repressive forms taken by Hitler , Stalin , Mao , or Pol Pot, is all about disindividuation , a steady, relentless erasure of the individual differences among us, everything that makes us who we are. 'Everybody in, nobody out!' is the marching mantra of militant collectivized medicine, but it accurately describes all other aspects of collectivism , as well. No alternatives allowed, no choices, no individualism , no individuality , and ultimately, no individuation . — L. Neil Smith

Beloved friends and comrades ... the national Libertarian Party is dead. — L. Neil Smith

A libertarian presidential candidate isn't going to win anyway, so he can afford to say that all taxation is theft, and it isn't the job of a libertarian presidential candidate to cook up new ways to commit theft. — L. Neil Smith

Government can only do two things: It can beat people up and kill them. Or it can threaten to do so. When it seems to be doing something else - for example, handing out money or, say, surplus cheese - what's actually going on is that something has been taken away from one set of individuals by deadly force or the threat of deadly force, a hefty middleman's fee deducted, and whatever is left thrown to peasants delighted to receive stolen goods. — L. Neil Smith

City governments ought to be abolished, if only as a public health measure. — L. Neil Smith

I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution. — L. Neil Smith

The first thing you need to know, in order to establish some perspective and avoid panic, is that the violent government excesses we're seeing today are far from unprecedented. — L. Neil Smith

If I were Osama , and the United States government were actually looking for me, I'd be clean-shaven by now, crewcutted, wearing jeans and a ZZ Top T-shirt, and living in a nice little house in Lincoln, Nebraska. — L. Neil Smith

I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings. — L. Neil Smith

Let's make it clear for the dimmest bulbs among you: the kids at Columbine High didn't die from too many guns, they died from too few. I'm not suggesting that the teachers should have carried guns not as franchised agents of the state. They should have carried guns as ordinary individuals, exercising a sacred right, and in performance of a solemn duty to protect the young lives that were placed very foolishly, as it turned out in their hands. — L. Neil Smith

What happened in America in the 1860s was a war of secession, a war of independence, no different in principle from what happened in America in the 1770s and 1780s. — L. Neil Smith

As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be. — L. Neil Smith

Worse than thieves, murderers, or cannibals, those who offer compromise slow you and sap your vitality while pretending to be your friends. They are not your friends. Compromisers are the enemies of all humanity, the enemies of life itself. Compromisers are the enemies of everything important, sacred, and true. — L. Neil Smith

We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping. — L. Neil Smith

Imagine how a Teddy Kennedy or a Bill Clinton would take the news that one woman in ten, say, has the power to resist his blandishments by deadly force, and you'll get a perfect idea of how a Charles Schumer or a George Bush feels about armed taxpayers. — L. Neil Smith

Wear a gun to someone else's house, you're saying, 'I'll defend this home as if it were my own.' When your guests see you carry a weapon, you're telling them, 'I'll defend you as if you were my own family.' And anyone who objects levels the deadliest insult possible: 'I don't trust you unless you're rendered harmless'! — L. Neil Smith

Just as liberalism is the main force that drives conservatism and maintains its popularity in some quarters, conservatism is the reason liberalism continues to enjoy the traction that it does in our poor civilization. — L. Neil Smith

Never Forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn't allow him to do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians. — L. Neil Smith

Victim disarmament types are sick, sick people, who'd rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand. — L. Neil Smith

Violent crime is a solved problem - all they have to do is repeal the laws that keep those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women from arming themselves, and violent crime evaporates like dry ice on a hot summer day. — L. Neil Smith

One thing about a police state, you can always find the police. — L. Neil Smith

People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. — L. Neil Smith

Government is waging war against the people. — L. Neil Smith

Choose your enemies carefully: you'll probably be known much better and far longer for who they were, than for anything else you ever managed to accomplish. — L. Neil Smith

Despite the Internet 's origin in the late 1960s as a government sponsored means of communication between the Department of Defense, private industry, and academia, it has been at its best and generated the greatest economic, social, and technological benefits since it was 'liberated' by the hordes of 'geeks' who were originally hired to run it by employers who were not themselves conversant with computers, and couldn't tell when their employees were exchanging official traffic or trading dirty jokes and recipes for marijuana brownies. — L. Neil Smith

Money, first and foremost, is a medium of communication, conveying the information we call 'price'. Government control of the money supply is censorship, a violation of the First Amendment. Inflation is a lie. — L. Neil Smith

I'm tired of being lied to by government, by the media, and by every corporation I have anything to do with. — L. Neil Smith