Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"The surest way to ruin a promising career in economics, whether professional or academic, is to venture into the 'cranks and crackpots' world of suggestions for reform of the financial system."

~ Michael Rowbotham  

"If, as it appears, the experiment that was called 'America' is at an end... then perhaps a fitting epitaph would be ... 'here lies America the greatest nation that might have been had it not been for the Edomite bankers who first stole their money, used their stolen money to buy their politicians and press and lastly deprived them of their constitutional freedom by the most evil device yet created --- The Federal Reserve Banking System.' "

~ G. D. McDaniel  

"In ancient Babylon, Sumeria, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome, for instance, price controls promoted not fairness but famine. During the twentieth century, central banks were supposed to help safeguard economies, but they brought on the worst inflations and depressions. Alcohol and drug prohibition, intended to enforce moral behavior, contributed to escalating violence."

~ Marisa Manley  

"If you do not specify and confront real issues,
what you will do will surely obscure them.
If you do not alarm anyone morally,
you will yourself remain morally asleep.
If you do not embody controversy,
what you say will be an acceptance
of the drift to the coming human hell."

~ C. Wright Mills  

"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."

~ Mark Twain  

"[Natural rights are] moral claims to those spheres of action which are necessary for the welfare of the individual and the development of his personality."

~ Miner Searle Bates  

"Altruism is a code of ethics which hold the welfare of others as the standard of 'good', and self-sacrifice as the only moral action. The unstated premise of the doctrine of altruism is that all relationships among men involve sacrifice. This leaves one with the false choice between maliciously exploiting the other person (forcing them to be sacrificed) or being 'moral' and offering oneself up as the sacrificial victim."

~ Jeff Landauer  

"Compelling a man by law to pay his money
to elect candidates or advocate law or doctrines he is against
differs only in degree, if at all, from compelling him by law
to speak for a candidate, a party, or a cause he is against.
The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the
people of this country free to think, speak, write and
worship as they wish, not as the Government commands."

~ Justice Hugo L. Black  

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world."

~ Octave Mirbeau  

"Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and,
when it cannot take a long breath,
laws are girdled too tight."

~ Rev. Henry Ward Beecher  

"To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so ...

To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon  

"There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong... . In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right... ."

~ James Madison  

"If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups."

~ Frederic Bastiat  

"Collectivism, unlike individualism, holds the group as the primary, and the standard of moral value."

~ Mark Da Cunha