Doug's Individual Freedom and Liberty
Hall of Fame
Bibliography
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2. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_locke.html
3. http://www.working-minds.com/ARquotes.htm
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises
5. http://www.mises.org/quotes.aspx
6. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
8. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/mlkquotes1.html
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_luther_king
10 http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Thomas_Jefferson/
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murry_Rothbard
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16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
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20&RestrictToCategory=henry+david+thoreau
19. http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Sui-Generis/Thoreau/quotes.htm
20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner
21. http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/lysander+spooner
22. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken
23, http://www.io.com/~gibbonsb/mencken.html
24. http://www.io.com/gibbonsb/mencken/megaquotes.html
25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_orwell)
Adam Smith
(Baptized June 5, 1723 O.S. / June 16 N.S. – July 17, 1790)
Royal Society of Edinburgh
Authored: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
which helped to create the modern academic discipline of economics and provided one of the best-known intellectual rationales for free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism.
“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”
“Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties such changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others, as may seem most favourable to the happiness of all.”
“Such is the delicacy of man alone, that no object is produced to his liking. He finds that in everything there is need for improvement.... The whole industry of human life is employed not in procuring the supply of our three humble necessities, food, clothes and lodging, but in procuring the conveniences of it according to the nicety and delicacy of our tastes.”
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.
“The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity and judgement with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.”
“Though the profusion of government must, undoubtedly, have retarded the natural progress of England towards wealth and improvement, it has not be able to stop it.”
“If a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered
Quotes:
Ludwig Heinrich von Mises
(September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973)
An economist and a major influence on the modern libertarian movement. He has been called the "uncontested dean of the Austrian School of economics".
Authored:
- The Theory of Money and Credit
- Nation, State, and Economy
- Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis
- Critique of Interventionism
- Liberalism
- Epistemological Problems of Economics
- Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War
- Bureaucracy
- Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
- Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution
- The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
- The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
“Hunger is the result of the protectionist policy.”
“The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.”
“The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.”
“The masses, the hosts of common men, do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind. But their choice is final and determines the course of events. If they prefer bad doctrines, nothing can prevent disaster.”
“The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.”
“All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”
“The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.”
“Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties.”
“Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a lower standard of living.”
“There was no reason whatever to abandon the principle of free enterprise in the field of banking.”
“Seen from the point of view of the particular group interests of the bureaucrats, every measure that makes the governments payroll swell is progress.”
“The first virtue of an administrator is to abide by the codes and decrees.”
“The bureaucrat is not free to aim at improvement. He is bound to obey rules and regulations established by a superior body. He has no right to embark upon innovations if his superiors do not approve of them. His duty and his virtue is to be obedient.”
“A bureaucrat differs from a nonbureaucrat precisely because he is working in a field in which it is impossible to appraise the result of a man’s effort in terms of money.”
“Profit-seeking business is compelled to employ the most efficient methods of production.”
“History does not provide any example of capital accumulation brought about by a government. As far as governments invested in the construction of roads, railroads, and other useful public works, the capital needed was provided by the savings of individual citizens and borrowed by the government.”
“Capitalism is essentially a system of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. It pours a horn of plenty upon the common man. It has raised the average standard of living to a height never dreamed of in earlier ages. It has made accessible to millions of people enjoyments which a few generations ago were only within the reach of a small elite.”
“The development of capitalism consists in everyone having the right to serve the consumer better and/or more cheaply.”
“The capitalist system of production is an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. The consumers are the sovereign people. The capitalists, the entrepreneurs, and the farmers are the peoples mandatories.”
“Capitalism needs neither propaganda nor apostles. Its achievements speak for themselves. Capitalism delivers the goods.”
“Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.”
” There is really no essential difference between the unlimited power of the democratic state and the unlimited power of the autocrat.”
“The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers.”
“The evil that a man inflicts on his fellow man injures both not only the one to whom it is done, but also the one who does it. Nothing corrupts a man so much as being an arm of the law and making men suffer.”
“Corruption is an evil inherent in every government not controlled by a watchful public opinion.”
“Majorities are no less exposed to error and frustration than kings and dictators. That a fact is deemed true by the majority does not prove its truth.”
“Economics is not about goods and services; it is about human choice and action.”
“An entrepreneur cannot be trained.”
“Free trade begins at home.”
“As soon as the economic freedom which the market economy grants to its members is removed, all political liberties and bills of rights become humbug.”
“Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.”
“The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.”
Quotes:
Ayn Rand
(February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982), born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
A Russian-born American novelist and philosopher, best known for creating a philosophy she named "Objectivism" and for writing the novels We the Living, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and the novella Anthem.
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
"I do not believe that the government has the right to prohibit [homosexual behavior]. It is the privilege of any individual to use his sex life in whichever way he wants it."
"Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decisions on others."
"Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think."
"Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him."
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction [that] you give it."
"The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles."
"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
"The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system – and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
“I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction."
"When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism – with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church."
"Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice."
"The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth."
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
Quotes and Writings:
Mahatma Gandhi
(October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948)
He was the pioneer of Satyagraha — the resistance of tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence — which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for the alleviation of poverty, for the liberation of women, for brotherhood amongst differing religions and ethnicities, for an end to untouchability and caste discrimination, and for the economic self-sufficiency of the nation, but above all for Swaraj — the independence of India from foreign domination.
Throughout his life, Gandhi remained committed to non-violence and truth even in the most extreme situations.
"For to the God-fearing, death has no terror"
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always."
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
"There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for."
"At every meeting I repeated the warning that unless they felt that in non-violence they had come into possession of a force infinitely superior to the one they had and in the use of which they were adept, they should have nothing to do with non-violence and resume the arms they possessed before."
"As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side."
"Yes I am. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew."
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."
"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."
"I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life."
"I want freedom for the full expression of my personality."
"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary."
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right."
"I think it would be a good idea." when asked what he thought of Western civilization
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
Quotes:
John Locke
(August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704)
An English philosopher who argued that government was only legitimate if it received the consent of the people, and protected natural rights of life, liberty, and property
“Man... hath by nature a power .... to preserve his property - that is, his life, liberty, and estate - against the injuries and attempts of other men.”
“All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”
“The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
“Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.”
“Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others”
[Freedom is] "... in our being able to act, or not to act, according as we shall choose, or will."
“Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.”
[A] "ruling body if it offends against natural law must be deposed."
"The Legislative cannot transfer the Power of making Laws to any other hands."
Milton Friedman
(July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006)
- Nobel Prize in Economics 1976
- Friedman advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom
-------The Economist
- Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton and Rose D. Friedman (Book and TV series)
- Capitalism and Freedom, 1962
Quotes:
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
“Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”
“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”
“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
“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.”
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.”
“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”
"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both."
"Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist."
"With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves."
"Every friend of freedom... must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence."
"The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of money in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933'"
"The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. . . . . . . Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not — can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system."
"The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people who are unemployed because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn't do a thing for them."
"I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason I am is because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. "
"There are four ways in which you can spend money.
- You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.
- Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.
- Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!
- Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income."
"The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country."
"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. "
"I am a limited-government libertarian."
"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."
" The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."
"The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits."
"We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work."
"If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don't be surprised if you get unemployment."
"Everywhere, and at all times, economic progress has meant far more to the poor than to the rich."
"Complete free trade is not politically feasible. Why? Because it's only in the general interest and in no one's special interest. The benefits of a tariff are visible. [Union workers] can see they are "protected". The harm which a tariff does is invisible. It's spread widely. There are people that don't have jobs because of tariffs but they don't know it."
"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."
"It is because it's prohibited. See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true."
"So long as large sums of money are involved — and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal — it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope."
"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes."
Thomas Jefferson
(13 April 1743 N.S.–4 July 1826)
AUTHOR OF
THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
OF THE
STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
AND
FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
(All Jefferson wanted on his tomestome)
"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
"A little rebellion now and then...is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."
"My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war--and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair."
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
"If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."
"The Price Of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance."
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. "
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
"There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people. "
"Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%. "
"Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society."
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
"Never spend your money before you have it."
"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive."
"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government..."
Quotes
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
(January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
Nobel Peace Prize, 1964
One of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement, a political activist, a Baptist minister, and was one of America's greatest orators.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
"Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power."
"A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."
"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."
"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."
"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."
"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love."
"I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor."
"Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one's whole being into the being of another."
"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation... I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow... I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed."
"There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws... What is the difference between the two?...An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law."
"The ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy."
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.""
"I just want to do God's will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."
"From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, let freedom ring. But not only that: Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi."
"If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."
"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right."
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation…"
Quotes
Henry Louis Mencken
(September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956),
better known as H. L. Mencken, was a twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore" and the "American Nietzsche". He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century.
"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wink your eye at some homely girl."
Mencken's Creed
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty...
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech...
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I - But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
Quotes:
"Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished."
"It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake."
"Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again."
"...school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men [& women] in the whole group of mental workers. "
"In brief, she assumed that, being a man, I was vain to the point of imbecility, and this assumption was correct, as it always is. "
"The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists. "
"...the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free. "
"The surest way to get on in politics in America is to play the leading part in a prosecution which attracts public notice. "
"Government under democracy is thus government by orgy, almost by orgasm. "
"It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths."
"The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe."
"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker. "
"...people will believe what they want to believe. "
"...'the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.' This is like saying that the cure for crime is more crime.."
"To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason."
"The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic. "
"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. "
"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights. "
"...every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. "
"...free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted. "
"I am not only wrong, it appears, I am also immoral - the familiar step in Puritan logic. "
Henry David Thoreau
(July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862;
was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
"If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. "
"It is never too late to give up our prejudices."
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. "
"The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free. "
"The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. "
"The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. "
"I heartily accept the motto, that government is best which governs least ... Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, that government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison ... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor."
"Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way."
"Others -- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders -- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few -- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men -- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part ..."
"Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw."
"Talk about slavery! ... It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone. ... I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice."
"Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?"
"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."
Quotes:
Lysander Spooner
(January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887)
was an American individualist anarchist, entrepreneur, political philosopher, abolitionist, and legal theorist of the 19th century. He is also known for competing with the U.S. Post Office with his American Letter Mail Company, which was forced out of business by the government.
Quotes:
"A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years."
"The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that -- however bloody -- can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave."
"Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given."
"If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them."
"Vices are not crimes. ....Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
.........Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another."
"But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: 'Your money, or your life.' And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful."
"FOR more than six hundred years - that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 - there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws."
“That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support”
“If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.”
“The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets”
"Of course no honest man will authorize and request another to do an act which he thinks it wrong to do himself. Every voter, therefore, is bound to see, before voting, whether he could himself honestly swear to support the constitution."
"The right and the physical power of the people to resist unjustice, are really the only securities that any people ever can have for their liberties. Practically no government knows any limit to its power but the endurance of the people. And our government is no exception to the rule."
"That every man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so called) puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will."
"That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take a man's money without his consent, for any such object as they profess to take it for, viz., that of protecting him; for why should they wish to protect him, if he does not wish them to do so?..."
Eric Arthur Blair
(25 June 1903[1][2]—21 January 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell
An English author and journalist. Noted as a novelist and critic as well as a political and cultural commentator, Orwell is among the most widely admired English-language essayists of the 20th century. He is best known for two novels critical of totalitarianism in general, and Stalinism in particular: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both were written and published towards the end of his life.
Animal Farm Quotes:
Squealer consoles the animals, saying, "Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
The Seven Commandments
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed. with sheets
5. No animal shall drink alcohol. to excess
6. No animal shall kill any other animal. without cause
7. All animals are equal. but some animals are more equal than others
1984 Quotes:
Big Brother is Watching You
'Who controls the past', ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'
The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face.
the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.
The primary aim of modern warfare:
Part 1n accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.
the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.
Murray N. Rothbard
(March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995)
A highly influential American economist, historian and natural law theorist belonging to the Austrian School of Economics who helped define modern libertarianism.
A prolific witer see:
Quotes:
"All government wars are unjust."
"The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology."
"The State thrives on war – unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed – expands on it, glories in it."
"It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society."
"Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at."
"Human life is not some sort of race or game in which each person should start from an identical mark. It is an attempt by each man to be as happy as possible. And each person could not begin from the same point, for the world has not just come into being; it is diverse and infinitely varied in its parts. The mere fact that one individual is necessarily born in a different place from someone else immediately insures that his inherited opportunity cannot be the same as his neighbor's. The drive for equality of opportunity would also require the abolition of the family since different parents have unequal abilities; it would require the communal rearing of children. The State would have to nationalize all babies and raise them in State nurseries under 'equal' conditions. But even here conditions cannot be the same, because different State officials will themselves have different abilities and personalities. And equality can never be achieved because of necessary differences of location."
"If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his "human right"—or his property rights in his own person—he must also have the property right in the material world, in the objects which he produces."
“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 being 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 neighborhood? Each block? Each house? Each person? But, of course, if each person may secede from government, we have virtually arrived at the purely free society, where defense is supplied along with all other services by the free market and where the invasive State has ceased to exist.”
"Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium."
"I see a great future for gold and silver coins as the currency people may increasingly turn to when paper currencies begin to disintegrate."
"The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his “free will.” He also discovers the natural fact of his mind’s command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self."
"All of the services commonly thought to require the State—from the coining of money to police protection to the development of law in defense of the rights of person and property—can be and have been supplied far more efficiently and certainly more morally by private persons. The State is in no sense required by the nature of man; quite the contrary."
"For there is one crucially important power inherent in the nature of the State apparatus. All other persons and groups in society (except for acknowledged and sporadic criminals such as thieves and bank robbers) obtain their income voluntarily: either by selling goods and services to the consuming public, or by voluntary gift (e.g., membership in a club or association, bequest, or inheritance). Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming. That coercion is known as “taxation,” although in less regularized epochs it was often known as “tribute.” 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."
"Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer— except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs."
