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The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.
Sep 10, 2025
Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy.
A tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government.
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.
If you feel driven to feed the poor, get your checkbook out and keep your tyrannical mouth shut about it.
Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from.
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
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 free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.
If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you.
A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property - an unpaid tax bill.
The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.
No nation was ever ruined by trade.
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.
The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.
Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist seeking to bring comfort to the needy - all are pursuing their interests, as they see them, as they judge them by their own values.
We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.
Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.
There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.
The freedom of any society varies proportionately with the volume of its laughter.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.
A politician who commends himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to do good with other peoples' money.
If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains", if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed".
What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not...the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army...our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms...
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.
The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
Government, in it's last analysis, is organized force.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.