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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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[The] impersonal process of the market ... can be neither just nor unjust, because the results are not intended or foreseen.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately coordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
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.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and essentially illiberal antireligionism which animated so much of nineteenth-century Continental liberalism. ... What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different spheres which ought not to be confused.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
[T]he power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest fonctionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work? And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
[I]t is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
Ever since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have recognized that "the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow with the advance of science." Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by many scientists, that the range of our ignorance is steadily diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehensive and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress. In the process by which opinion is formed, it is very probable that, by the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached. It is because we do not yet know which of the many competing new opinions will prove itself the best that we wait until it has gained sufficient support.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
To combat depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection -- a procedure which can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
The [classical] liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people -- he is not an egalitarian -- but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
In the United States, where it has become almost impossible to use "liberal" in the sense in which I have used it, the term "libertarian" has been used instead. It may be the answer; but for my part I find it singularly unattractive. For my taste it carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute. What I should want is a word which describes the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution. But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
To create conditions in which competition will be as effective as possible, to prevent fraud and deception, to break up monopolies -- these tasks provide a wide and unquestioned field for state activity.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
...if we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change "orderly."
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek		 
The authority of local government was similarly attacked. The not inconsiderable power of the Länder disappeared as a result of the decree of 28 February [1933] and the manipulated elections which followed. Control of the police passed into the hands of the NSDAP. ... Local elections were abolished and Reich Administrators ... were appointed to rule in place of the locally elected heads of government. On 30 January 1934 all local assemblies were abolished, and states were made totally subservient to central rule.
-- Paul Hayes		 
Unlike ordinary legislation, a constitution is enacted by the people themselves in their sovereign capacity and is therefore the paramount law.
-- Justice Frank Cruise Haymond		 
There have existed, in every age and every country, two distinct orders of men – the lovers of freedom and the devoted advocates of power.
-- Robert Y. Hayne		 
The root of the evil... lay not in corruption but in the system which bred it, the alliance between industrialists and politicians which produced benefits in the form of tariffs, public lands, and federal subsidies.
-- Samuel P. Hays		 
If you really want to compete with Russia and China to prevent the 21st Century from being dominated by a new axis of evil, you must first defeat the Church of Global Warming. As long as that’s the official state religion of the Western world, we haven’t got a prayer.
-- John Hayward		 
Causes that live by politics, die by politics.
-- Steven F. Hayward		 
The monetary managers are fond of telling us that they have substituted 'responsible money management' for the gold standard. But there is no historic record of responsible paper money management ... The record taken as a whole is one of hyperinflation, devaluation and monetary chaos.
-- Henry Hazlitt		 
The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.
-- Henry Hazlitt		 
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
-- William Hazlitt		 
The only vice that can not be forgiven is hypocrisy.
-- William Hazlitt		 
Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
-- William Hazlitt		 
The most fluent talkers or the most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
-- William Hazlitt		 
Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice.
-- Hearst newspapers nationwide		 
We hold that the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong, that in the exercise thereof people have an inviolable right to express their unbridled thoughts on all topics and personalities, being liable only for the use of that right.
-- William Randolph Hearst		 
Any man who has the brains to think and the nerve to act for the benefit of the people of the country is considered a radical by those who are content with stagnation and willing to endure disaster.
-- William Randolph Hearst		 
We hold that no person or set of persons can properly establish a standard of expression for others.
-- William Randolph Hearst		 
When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.
-- William Randolph Hearst		 
Fraud may consist as well in the suppression of what is true as in the representation of what is false. If a man professing to answer a question, select those facts only which are likely to give a credit to the person of whom he speaks, and keep back the rest, he is a more artful knave than he who tells a direct falsehood.
-- Justice Heath		 
We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.
-- Chris Hedges		 
This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths.
-- Simon Heffer		 
When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength.
-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel		 
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel		 
Freedom is the fundamental character of the will, as weight is of matter... That which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word.
-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel		 
What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel		 
The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel		 
The present homeschooling laws are, at best, a poor compromise between a highly structured, two hundred billion dollar a year industry and the principles and beliefs of a handful of parents.
-- Helen Hegener		 
Our tightly controlled educational system mocks the promise of democracy. With a closed educational system we simply cannot have an open political system. The current situation allows the government and big business to manufacture and maintain our culture for us, and in turn, control remains in the hands of the experts and institutions. The ability to change this situation is in the hands of the individuals and families who understand why change is necessary.
-- Helen Hegener		 
All special charters of freedom must be abrogated where the universal law of freedom is to flourish.
-- Heinrich Heine		 
Whenever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
-- Heinrich Heine		 
Whenever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
-- Heinrich Heine		 
Freedom is a new religion, the religion of our time.
-- Heinrich Heine		 
The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers."
-- Heinrich Heine		 
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
The great trouble with religion – any religion – is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason – but one cannot have both.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
The human race divides itself politically into those who want to be controlled, and those who have no such desire.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
An armed society is a polite society.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously—after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
The whole principle is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
In a society in which it is a moral offense to be different from your neighbor your only escape is to never let them find out.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Goodness without wisdom always accomplished evil.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily.  All other "sins" are invented nonsense.  (Hurting yourself is not a sin - just stupid.)
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Political tags -- such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth -- are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you may not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Love your country, but never trust its government.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Limiting the freedom of news ‘just a little bit’ is in the same category within the classic example ‘a little bit pregnant.’
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute, get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
...[A] fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
-- Robert A. Heinlein		 
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
-- Heisenberg		 
Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
-- Lillian Hellman		 
A careful examination of what is happening behind the scenes reveals that all of these interests are working in concert with the masters of the Kremlin in order to create what some refer to as a “New World Order.” Private organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Trilateral Commission, the Dartmouth Conference, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Atlantic Institute, and the Bilderberg Group serve to disseminate and to coordinate the plans for this so-called new world order in powerful business, financial, academic, and official circles.
-- Jesse Helms		 
We are now considering legislation based on statistics that include name-calling at public rallies as crimes. Are we going on to the school yards of this country and when two kids get angry with each other and call each other names -- what are we going to do, cart them over to the reformatory or add them to the list of 'hate crimes' perpetrators? This is ridiculous.
-- Jesse Helms		 
To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or knaves.
-- Claude-Adrien Helvetius		 
Everyone has his own conscience, and there should be no rules about how a conscience should function.
-- Ernest Hemingway		 
It is a sad reminder that many in the media are not interested in journalism but progressive advocacy.
-- Mollie Hemingway		 
Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit.
-- Robert Hemphill		 
If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.
-- Robert Hemphill		 
The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage.
-- Hazel Henderson		 
Satire dramatizes better than any other use of it, the inherent contradiction of free speech – that it functions best when what is being said is at its most outrageous.
-- Tony Hendra		 
Oh, judge, your damn laws: the good people don't need them and the bad people don't follow them so what good are they?
-- Ammon Hennacy		 
An anarchist is anyone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do.
-- Ammon Hennacy		 
Force is the weapon of the weak.
-- Ammon Hennacy		 


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