Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright."

~ Baruch Spinoza  

"Socialism is workable only
in Heaven where it isn’t needed,
and in Hell where they’ve got it."

~ Cecil Palmer  

"True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world."

~ Felix Emmanuel Schelling  

"You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's FREE again."

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  

"Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureucrat's  tool is fear."

~ Ayn Rand  

"Beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche  

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me.
They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business
of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine
for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them.
Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing.
The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B.
In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and
every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"It is natural that citizens of great and powerful nations see themselves, collectively speaking, as immortal and immune to the processes that have brought down other illustrious nations and peoples."

~ James Thornton  

"The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. Therefore, when I consider and weigh in my mind these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, I perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men in procuring their own commodities under the name and authority of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible."

~ Thomas More  

"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  

"We may define a Puritan as a man who holds that certain kinds of acts, even if they have no visible bad effects upon others than the agent, are inherently sinful, and, being sinful, ought to be prevented by whatever means is most effectual - the criminal law if possible, and, if not that, then public opinion backed by economic pressure."

~ Bertrand Russell  

"The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That’s why I became an operative working with Democrats. With Democrats all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ole cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd."

~ James Carville (Questionable)

"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  

"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  

"Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God. This I could never accept,... I strongly disagreed with Communism’s ethical relativism… there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently, almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the ‘millennial’ end."

~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.