Libertarian Quotes & Sayings

Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible 'anarchy', why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person? — Murray N. Rothbard

The problem I have with socialist utopias is there's some kind of committees trying to soften outcomes for people. I think that imposes models of outcomes for other people's lives. So in a spiritual sense there's some bit of libertarian in me. But the critical thing for me is moderation. And if you let that go far you do end up with a winner-take-all society that ultimately crushes everybody even worse. — Jaron Lanier

It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association. — Noam Chomsky

Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual. — Auberon Herbert

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools. — William Penn

Right isn't always legal. — J.S.B. Morse

Libertarian principles are very simple, but you can't violate any of them and still call yourself Libertarian. — John McAfee

Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control. — Hugh Jackman

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand. — Michel De Montaigne

But that's kind of an easy stance to be if you're a humor columnist, because you're tending to make fun of the government and the powerful. I'm sort of a soft-core libertarian in that my compass is generally pointing away from 'Let's let the government do this' Does it matter to me that it's Democrats who think we need more elaborate programs that involve shifting money from one group to another group or it's Republicans saying we need to take a harder look at what kinds of things people are watching on cable TV? Neither one of those things strikes me as a good idea. — Dave Barry

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. — Eric Hoffer

I brag on the Democratic Party. We're libertarian on social issues, it's live and let live. Fiscally, we're conservative and responsible, and were environmentally conscious. — Mark Udall

You look back in time to when there was slavery and you think 'how did people even remotely believe that this was a good idea?'.
It's incomprehensible for us to think of what the mindset was 100 or 200 years ago. I hope to make the present as incomprehensible to the future as the past is to us. — Stefan Molyneux

Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The opposite of Nazi is neither Republican nor Democrat, conservative or liberal. Totalitarianism's diametric opposite of is Libertarianism. — 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

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion. — Ludwig Von Mises

I've always considered myself a Libertarian. While I was running for governor of New Mexico, the Republicans were totally inclusive of me; the party was open-armed, but they never thought I'd win. I delivered in a really big way; I exceeded their expectations and think I'm still highly regarded by the GOP in New Mexico. — Gary Johnson

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. — Martin Niemoller

I was once a statist, and then I researched The Holocaust. I am now a Libertarian. — A.E. Samaan

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state. — Isabel Paterson

In other words, "free markets" ideology, with its libertarian idealism, has in fact produced Mussolini-style corporatism. And until we learn to call the resulting looting by its proper name, it is certain to continue. — Yves Smith

I'm not an ultra-libertarian who thinks there shouldn't be insider-trading laws at all. — Gary Weiss

All Socialism is Democratic Socialism. Socialist nations take away civil liberties by referendum. — A.E. Samaan

It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest. — William O. Douglas

One noted software libertarian, Richard Stallman, even refused to protect his account with a password. — Kevin D. Mitnick

Golden sees parental uninterest in collective solutions as part of a larger "decline in the social contract" ... "As a scholar, I'm very disturbed that we have more [media] articles about toxins in the home than the fact that we don't have universal prenatal care, she says. "We've moved from collective concern about infant and child welfare into this very privatized focus on "my child" and this intensive child-rearing. — Emily Matchar

I believe in taxation and health care that is outside the usual libertarian mandate, because I don't want people to have to suffer. It's as simple as that. — Neil Peart

Make us your slaves, but feed us. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Here's something I still can't get over. Amazes and thrills me every time. I'm sitting here and want a certain book. So I search, click, and then I have the book. Every time, my heart does a little leap of joy. What a beautiful world the market is making. — Jeffrey Tucker

Western civilization is based upon the libertarian principle, and all its achievements are the results of the action of free men. — Ludwig Von Mises

In fact, the libertarian would reason that the fact that human nature is a mixture of both good and evil provides its own particular argument in his favor. For if man is such a mixture, then the best societal framework is surely one in which evil is discouraged and the good encouraged. The libertarian maintains that the existence of the State apparatus provides a ready, swift channel for the exercise of evil, since the rulers of the State are thereby legitimated and can wield compulsion in ways that no one else is permitted to do. — Murray Rothbard

A libertarian is somebody who believes, of course, in personal liberty. And liberty is a personal thing; it is not collective. You don't gain liberty because you belong to a group. So we don't talk about women's rights or gay rights or anything else. Everybody has an absolute equal right as an individual, and it comes to them naturally. — Ron Paul

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this
that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. — Lysander Spooner

Set men up to rule their fellow-men, to treat them as mere soulless material with which they may deal as they please, and the consequence is that you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion, trickery and violence, a mere scrambling ground for the strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous. — Auberon Herbert

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. — Stephen Schneider

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

Ever wonder why the media never refers to 18 or 19 year old American soldiers as "armed teens"? — Stefan Molyneux

Anarchists are extreme libertarian socialists , "libertarian" meaning the demand for freedom from prohibition, and "socialist" meaning the demand for social equality ... Complete freedom implies equality, since if there are rich and poor, the poor cannot be permitted to take liberties with riches. Complete equality implies freedom, since those who suffer restrictions cannot be the equals of those who impose them. — Donald Rooum

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

Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status. — Isabel Paterson

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. — Ludwig Von Mises

The right to "liberty" and "pursuit" of happiness is incompatible with a government that makes choices for you. — A.E. Samaan

A recent book by University of Chicago professor of philosophy and law Brian Leiter outlines what I believe will become the theoretical consensus that does away with religious liberty in spirit if not in letter. "There is no principled reason," he writes, "for legal or constitutional regimes to single out religion for protection." . . . Evoking the principle of fairness, Leiter argues that everybody's conscience should be accorded the same legal protections. Thus he proposes to replace religious liberty with a plenary "liberty of conscience."

Leiter's argument is libertarian. He wants to get the government out of the business of deciding whose conscience is worth protecting. This mentality seems to expand freedom, but that's an illusion. In practice it will lead to diminished freedom, as is always the case with any thoroughgoing libertarianism. — R. R. Reno

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

The most important fact about American liberty is that it has never been a single idea, but a set of different and even contrary traditions in creative tension with one another. This diversity of libertarian ideas has created a culture of freedom which is more open and expansive than any unitary tradition alone could possibly be. — David Hackett Fischer

It's freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences and/or ridicule. — A.E. Samaan

I can spend your money better than you can. — William J. Clinton

Liberty is not something a government gives you. It is a right that no government can legally take away. — A.E. Samaan

I think my degrees in Theology and Psychology qualified me for nothing, but probably prepared me for everything. — Brooke Bida

The market economy is delivering miracles by the minute and yet we hardly notice or care; worse, we denounce the realization of this dream of all of history, this coming of heaven on earth and call it decadent and dangerous. — Jeffrey Tucker

Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good. — Abraham Lincoln

I do not deny the allegation, I deny the allegator. — Jesse Jackson

The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force. — Milton Friedman

Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews. — Hajo Meyer

Certainly the emphasis I place in this chapter on coordination of behavior and cooperation to mutual benefit is something that ought to be very congenial to people in the libertarian tradition. — Robert Nozick

The 'Libertarian' thing was a mistake on my part for saying it, but I am. — Joseph J. Lhota

To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself. — Auberon Herbert

Some people object to libertarian ideas because there are too many irresponsible people in the world - people who will cause trouble if the government doesn't restrain them. — Harry Browne

Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners. — Berkeley Breathed

When there is money in your hand and not in your heart, it will not harm you even if it is a lot; and when it is in your heart, it will harm you even if there is none in your hands. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

I come to the table from a conservative or libertarian point of view, and I admit that. I'm a commentator. I'm not a journalist or anything else. — Glenn Beck

Capitalism is not a form of government. Capitalism is a symptom of freedom. It is the result of individual rights, which include property rights. — A.E. Samaan

The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government. — Joseph Sobran

My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions. — John Ray

Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men. — Auberon Herbert

My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. — Michael Shermer

I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering ... I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside ... what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society. — Michael Foot

Yet basically, libertarians are for freedom and liberty for
individuals, while recognizing that in order to be free we must also be
protected. Your freedom to swing your arms ends at my nose. — Michael Shermer

Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions. — Milton Friedman

I am really interested in who owns ideas of religion. What if I say I'm a libertarian, socialist, Occupy-supporting, anti-war, Christian? Is that a controversial idea? I don't see anything really in the original semiotics of Christianity, in the specific parable of the radical socialist Jew from Galilee who becomes the hero figure in the Homeric-word-of-mouth-gossip-novel that becomes the Bible that should make that a paradox. — Robert Montgomery

All of us inevitably spend our lives evolving from an initial to a final stage of dependence. If we are fortunate enough to achieve power and relative independence along the way, it is a transient and passing glory. — Willard Gaylin

History is the same story with different costumes. — Stefan Molyneux

Time is the only thing you can't buy. — Nicole Lapin

I'm not for pretending that bad stuff doesn't exist, and a passion for justice and truth is a libertarian trait. But the idea of liberty should also reveal new forms of beauty in the world, astonishing evidence of order without dictate, lovely examples of innovation without planning, and other magical things. Surely these deserve some attention too. — Jeffrey Tucker

Libertarian action must recognize this dependence as a weak point and must attempt through reflection and action to transform it into independence. However, not even the best-intentioned leadership can bestow independence as a gift. The liberation of the oppressed is a liberation of women and men, not things. Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others. Liberation, a human phenomenon, cannot be achieved by semihumans. Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them. — Paulo Freire

What I would like to vote for is a candidate that is socially liberal, a fiscal conservative, broadly libertarian with a small 'l' but sensible and pragmatic and with a chance of winning. That's more or less the empty set. — Tyler Cowen

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. — Abraham Lincoln

The genuine values in America arose from rational thought and breaking with tradition, not from blind allegiance to dirt and cloth. — Stefan Molyneux

Let us look and see, then, how they manage their concerns - they for whose cause we are to labour, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic. — Max Stirner

I say one evil empire down ... one to go. — Michael Moore

The Libertarian Party is a very mainstream party. It's a mainstream philosophy. It's of returning power from Washington to parents, to schools, to businesses in their communities. — Bob Barr

In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right. — Bryan Caplan

To call oneself a libertarian marxist today is not to look backwards but to be committed to the future. The libertarian marxist is not an academic but a militant. He is well aware that it is up to him to change the world - no more, no less. History throws him on the brink. Everywhere the hour of the socialist revolution has sounded. Revolution - like landing on the moon - has entered the realm of the immediate and possible. Precise definition of the forms of a socialist society is no longer a utopian scheme. The only utopians are those who close their eyes to these realities. — Daniel Guerin

Democracy is a suggestion box for slaves. — Stefan Molyneux

Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State's inhabitants, or subjects. — Murray N. Rothbard

Everyone's goals are the same with very small differences. I mean, the goal of a socialist and the goal of a libertarian are exactly the same. The goals are happiness and security and freedom, and you balance those. — Penn Jillette

There's no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom. — Barry Goldwater

Politics is the means by which the will of the few becomes the will of the many. — Howard W. Koch

If I want my people to be free, Americans have to be free. — Russell Means

Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money. — Thomas Hobbes

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. — Ayn Rand

Libertarian paternalism is a relatively weak, soft, and nonintrusive type of paternalism because choices are not blocked, fenced off, or significantly burdened. If people want to smoke cigarettes, to eat a lot of candy, to choose an unsuitable health care plan, or to fail to save for retirement, libertarian paternalists will not force them to do otherwise - or even make things hard for them. — Anonymous

The libertarian sees the State as a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called "taxation" and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around. Therefore, any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible. Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty. — Murray Rothbard

The libertarian must never advocate or prefer a gradual, as opposed to an immediate and rapid, approach to his goal. For by doing so, he undercuts the overriding importance of his own goals and principles. And if he himself values his own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them. — Murray Rothbard

There is a lot of talk about "rigged games" as of late. Big government is the most insipid of all "rigged games". There is no choice available to the public allowing it to avoid a big over-arching government. You can always chose not do business with a big corporation. Corporations that are distasteful can be avoided. A big, powerful, government bent on intrusion cannot be avoided. — A.E. Samaan

It's herding kittens. If kittens had a lot of guns and an overdose of neo-Libertarian property theory. — James S.A. Corey

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid. — Penn Jillette

No state, no government exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men. — Rose Wilder Lane

A Libertarian society of unfettered individualism spreads its benefits to virtually everyone - not just those who have the resources to seize political power. — Harry Browne