Great Libertarian Quotes & Sayings

Well, I think I've made 44 films and only like four times I've played real characters I'm just drawn to people who have a pioneer spirit, this extraordinary energy and commitment to their cause. — Liam Neeson

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

Every prayer is an agreement with yourself. The mind is asking the real you, which is life, to guide your decisions for every single choice that you make. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Faith and freedom is great, but it gets nowhere without faith in freedom. — A.E. Samaan

We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every aspect of human life and society. Some people regard this as good and "progressive," others regard it as tyrannical; but either way, it's a fact, a transformation as great as, say, the Industrial Revolution. Absolutely nothing is now beyond the scope of State power. — Joseph Sobran

John Dorschner, one of our staff writers here at Tropic magazine at The Miami Herald, who is a good friend of mine and an excellent journalist, but a raving liberal, wrote a story about a group that periodically pops up saying that they're going to start their own country or start their own planet or go back to their original planet, or whatever. They were going to "create a libertarian society" on a floating platform in the Caribbean somewhere. I know there's never going to be a country on a floating anything, but if they want to talk about it, that's great. — Dave Barry

So they're your favorite lines, then?" I press my lips to her forehead. "My dear baby blue. Both of those quotes are about you." I pause while she looks shocked. "Hey, see I'm a poet too. — Karina Halle

See, I'm a great believer in the power of negative thought. And in an age of affirmation, of self-help and self-love, of the rebirth of wide-eyed idealism and the power of positive thinking - I'm happy to be a champion of skepticism and doubt. That night, I rediscovered my role, my reason, and my rage. — Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

Don't raise me up, I am but a messenger. — Jimi Hendrix

The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State. — Murray Rothbard

One of the great weaknesses of standard libertarian theory is that it tends to push too hard by elevating presumptions into absolutes. — Richard Allen Epstein

Not only does the State do the work badly on a domain not its own, bunglingly, at greater cost, and with less fruit than spontaneous organizations, but, again, through the legal monopoly which it deems its prerogative, or through the overwhelming competition which it exercises, it kills or paralyzes these natural organizations or prevents their birth; and hence so many precious organs, which, absorbed, atropic or abortive, are lost to the great social body. — Hippolyte Taine

MEMO: DON'T FORGET THE SOOTY FOOTPRINTS. MORE
PRACTICE ON THE HO HO HO. — Terry Pratchett

I agree that the two-party system stomps on any kind of competition. A great first step is to open the presidential debates to all qualified candidates, including the Libertarians. If that happens, the Libertarian party will experience unprecedented growth. — Gary Johnson

The libertarian creed ... offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government, and a free-market economy. — Murray Rothbard

I found most of my friends quite content to be used as tax-material, even though the sums of money taken from them were employed against their own beliefs and interests. They had lived so long under the system of using others, and then in their turn being used by them, that they were like hypnotized subjects, and looked on this subjecting and using of each other as a part of the necessary and even Providential order of things. The great machine had taken possession of their souls. — Auberon Herbert

Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International and which were best understood and most strongly held by the libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance. — Rudolf Rocker

I think one of the things that was a huge surprise to everyone with 'Silence of the Lambs' was that that was an Oscar-winning horror movie. It struck such a nerve with audiences that it was a very particular, special experience. — Bryan Fuller

'Tis true that governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys a share of protection should pay out of his estate his proportion of the maintenance of it. — John Locke

The proliferation of bureaucrats and its invariable accompaniment, much heavier tax levies on the productive part of the population, are the recognizable signs, not of a great, but of a decaying society. Historians know that both phenomena were especially marked in the declining eras of the Roman Empire in the West and of its successor state, the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. — William Henry Chamberlin

The problems in every country are the same. Bureaucracy is strangling innovation. Overgrown political sectors are sucking away resources that could otherwise lead to growth. Regulations and taxes are punishing innovation. Public sector services are breaking down and no longer serving people's needs. Laws and prevailing legislation control a world that no longer exists. People who go into politics to change the system end up getting co-opted by it. Workers feel trapped and fear a lack out options outside the status quo. In every case, it comes down to the great evil of our time and all times: government itself. There is no place on earth in which more liberty and less or no government would not be welcome and bring about real progress. — Jeffrey Tucker

No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. — Roger Brooke Taney

Don't you have something better to do right now, like chase after that polar bear dude or find that toilet paper your kind are so fond of?" She loved how his lips turned into a grin. "Only the softest for my sweet cheeks. — Eve Langlais

America was born of revolt, flourished on dissent, became great through experimentation. — Henry Steele Commager

Libertarianism is what you probably already believe: Libertarian values are American values. Libertarianism is America's heritage of liberty, patriotism and honest work to build a future for your family. It's the idea that being free and independent is a great way to live. That each of us is a unique individual, with great potential. That you own yourself, and that you have the right to decide what's best for you. Americans of all races and creeds built a great and prosperous country with these libertarian ideals. Let's use them to build America's future. — David Bergland

It is impossible for us to make any real advance until we take to heart this great truth, that without freedom of choice, without freedom of action, there are not such things as true moral qualities; there can only be submissive wearing of the cords that others have tied round our hands. — Auberon Herbert

Republicans ought to propose conservative answers to the concerns that are uppermost on most voters' minds. The libertarian-populist method seems to be to start with the solutions and then to imagine that voters have the relevant concerns. And while many of the proposed solutions have great potential appeal to conservative voters, few would do much to expand their ranks. — Ramesh Ponnuru

What happened was, my parents after 'Circus Boy' decided to take me out of show business for two years to go back to normal school. It was the smartest thing they ever did. — Micky Dolenz

A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. A free society fertilizes the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow. — Henry Steele Commager