Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him."

~ Alexis de Tocqueville  

"If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth -- any man of integrity."

~ Ayn Rand  

"Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state.  That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals."

~ Lew Rockwell  

"What, actually, is the difference between communism and fascism?  Both are forms of statism, authoritarianism.  The only difference between Stalin’s communism and Mussolini’s fascism is an insignificant detail in organizational structure."

~ Leonard E. Read  

"In principle, there are only two fundamental political viewpoints.
That is, two contradictory ends of the 'political spectrum.'
Those two principles are freedom and slavery."

~ Mark Da Cunha  

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right,
but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right.
There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream --
the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order --
or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.
Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives,
those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on
this downward path. Plutarch warned,
'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he
who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.'"

~ Ronald Reagan  

"The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word 'Nazi' is a German abbreviation for 'National Socialist' (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was 'The National Socialist German Workers' Party' (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)."

~ Dr. John Joseph Ray  

"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means."

~ Henry Grady Weaver  

"To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole."

~ Joseph Paul Goebbels  

"The unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual."

~ Adolf Hitler  

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society."

~ Hillary Clinton  

~ Mario Palmieri  

"The more profound problem, however, is the degree to which many academic intellectuals, especially in the humanities, have lost their ability to distinguish the 'state' from 'society'."

~ Stephen Cox  

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all."

~ Frederic Bastiat  

"We must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people.  But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.  No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact."

~ Murray N. Rothbard