Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals
which you -- the social reformers -- see, but they may not,
is to deny their human essence,
to treat them as objects without wills of their own,
and therefore to degrade them."

~ Isaiah Berlin  

"All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?

~ Herbert Spencer  

"This is the gravest danger
that today threatens civilization:
State intervention, the absorption
of all spontaneous social effort by the State;
that is to say, of spontaneous historical action,
which in the long-run sustains, nourishes
and impels human destinies."

~ José Ortega y Gasset  

"Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power."

~ Eric Hoffer  

"Socialism means equality of income or nothing...
under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor.
You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught,
and employed whether you like it or not.
If it were discovered that you had not character
enough to be worth all this trouble,
you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner;
but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well."

~ George Bernard Shaw  

"A man’s liberties are none the less aggressed upon
because those who coerce him do so
in the belief that he will be benefited."

~ Herbert Spencer  

"A committee is a group of individuals
who all put in a perfectly good color,
and it comes out gray."

~ Alan Sherman  

"Socialism is but Catholicism addressing itself
not to the soul but to the sense of men...
[Both implore you to] accept authority,
accept the force which it employs,
resign yourself to all-powerful managers,
give up the free choice and the free act...
They both seek to sacrifice man."

~ Auberon Herbert  

"Those who would give up essential Liberty,
to purchase a little temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

~ Benjamin Franklin  

"What gives the new despotism its peculiar effectiveness
is indeed its liaison with humanitarianism,
but beyond this fact its capacity for entering
into the smallest details of human life."

~ Robert Nisbet  

"Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist."

~ William Graham Sumner  

"The Constitution was made to guard the people
against the dangers of good intentions."

~ Daniel Webster  

"Society's needs come before the individual's needs."

~ Adolf Hitler  

"[T]he State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation -- that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class -- that is, for a criminal purpose. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient."

~ Albert Jay Nock  

"How should it happen that the individual should be without rights,
but the combination of individuals should possess unlimited rights?"

~ Auberon Herbert