Quotes on Libertarianism

At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man...is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person's benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.

Those (who) seek to establish systems of Government based on the regimentation of all Human Beings by a handful of individual rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

Dependence leads to subservience.

There is no limit to the ingenuity of man if it is properly and vigorously applied under conditions of peace and justice.

The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone.

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

To be governed ... is to be watched, inspected, directed, indoctrinated, numbered, estimated, regulated, commanded, controlled, law-driven, preached at, spied upon, censured, checked, valued, enrolled - by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so.

In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.

Government is not the solution, but rather the cause of our problems.

No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy.

Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. Bankruptcies and losses concentrate the mind on prudent behavior.

Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable - as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.

Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.

We are going to tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.

Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.

There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.