Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression."

~ James Madison  

"Let me explain this.  There are, fundamentally, only two causes of the progress of the nineteenth century -- the same two causes which you will find at the root of any happy, benevolent, progressive era in human history.  One cause is psychological, the other existential -- or: one pertains to man's consciousness, the other to the physical conditions of his existence.  The first is reason, the second is freedom.  And when I say "freedom," I do not mean poetic sloppiness, such as "freedom from want" or "freedom from fear" or "freedom from the necessity of earning a living."  I mean "freedom from compulsion -- freedom from rule by physical force."  Which means: political freedom. "

~ Ayn Rand  

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."

~ John Adams  

"You can't give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad - in fact, to do anything it wants."

~ Harry Browne  

"Using governmental force to impose a vision on others is intellectual sloth."

~ Ken Schoolland  

"A moderate is either someone who has no moral code of his own, or if he does, then he's someone who doesn't have the guts to take sides between good and evil."

~ Rick Gaber  

"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority."

~ Alexander Hamilton  

"The creation of the world -- said Plato -- is the victory of persuasion over force... Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals... Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of these two forms: force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force."

~ Alfred North Whitehead  

"Any person or any so-called 'political spectrum' that equates live-and-let-livers with control freaks is even more evil than the worst control freaks themselves."

~ Bert Rand  

"We should never define libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals and conservatives, nor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times."

~ Harry Browne  

"The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

~ John Adams  

"The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind."

~ Ayn Rand  

"Never — and I mean never — blindly trust the statistics you read [or hear] about the economy."

~ Don Luskin  

"The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured."

~ Hannah Arendt