Great Libertarian Quotes

When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

Justice William O. Douglas

Libertarian Quotes

"The government was set to protect man from criminals – and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government."

– Ayn Rand

Libertarian Quotes

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

– C. S. Lewis

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government." 

James Madison

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help..."  

Gandhi

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"To protect us from terrorists our government treats us like terrorists." 

Hal O'Boyle

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"The most destructive thing governments do is divide people against each other, all in competition over the reins of the state."

Anthony Gregory

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"Liberals want the government to be your Mommy. Conservatives want government to be your Daddy. Libertarians want it to treat you like an adult."

– Andre Marrou

Great Libertarian Quotes

"If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. "

Jacob Hornberger (1995)

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"Both major parties are currently controlled by leaders who work for ever-expanding government programs with massive federal spending and continued meddling in the affairs of countries around the world, whatever rhetoric they may employ to the contrary."

Dr. Richard Davis
2010 Libertarian Congressional Candidate in Maryland's 1st District

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"The Constitution guarantees us our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's all. It doesn't guarantee our rights to charity. "

Jesse Ventura

Great Libertarian Quotes

"When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near. "

Will Durant

Friday's 2nd Amendment Quote

"The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner. "

Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session (February 1982)

Libertarian Quotes

"Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him. "

Charles DeGaulle

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"A concern for states rights, local self government and regional identity used to be taken for granted everywhere in America. But the United States is no longer, as it once was, a federal union of diverse states and regions. National uniformity is being imposed by the political class that runs Washington, the economic class that owns Wall Street and the cultural class in charge of Hollywood and the Ivy League. "

Michael Hill, professor of British History, University of Alabama

Libertarian Quotes

"The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it. "

Felix Frankfurter, Graves vs. New York; 1939

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk. "

Bertolt Brecht

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens."

Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk". "

Harry Browne

Sunday - Voices of Libertarian Prophets

"The Social Security system did not begin as an attempt to sabotage people's ability to plan for retirement, but it has worked out that way. The politicians who originally planned the system probably had no idea how it would turn out. But today's politicians know the system is rotted, and yet they refuse to make the changes necessary to free the American people from it. Instead, they make it worse. "

Ed Clark 1980 LP presidential candidate, A New Beginning

Ed Clark's statement ring truer today as we watch a Social Security System closer to it's death bell. Medicare programs where businesses are refusing to accept it and government trying to force them to accept it.

It is time we as American demand this program be eliminated. We wish to opt out and choose how we wish to invest all of our retirement, not a bureaucrat in Washington.