Great Libertarian Quotes

"This country is a one-party country. Half of it is called Republican, and half is called Democrat. It doesn't make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians." Hugh Downs (1997)

"I would much rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." Thomas Jefferson (1791)

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." George Washington

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Thomas Jefferson

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan (1986)

"America needs fewer laws, not more prisons." James Bovard


"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." Albert Einstein (1950)

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." John Adams (1814)

"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." Douglas Casey (1992)

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression." Thomas Paine (1795)

"If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist." Joseph Sorban (1995)

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." Thomas B. Reed (1886)

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." Voltaire (1764)

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." William Pitt (1783)

"I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least.'" Henry David Thoreau

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P. J. O'Rourke

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." Barry Goldwater (1964)

"Politicians are the same all over: they promise to build a bridge even where there is no water." Nikita Khrushchev (1960)

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." Will Rogers

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." Tacitus

"Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others." William Allen White

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." John Bradshaw

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L. Mencken

"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." Robert A. Heinlein

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." Pericles (430 BC)

"More laws, less justice." Marcus Tullius Ciceroca (42 BC)

"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session." Mark Twain (1866)

"The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients." Edmund Burke (1899)

"I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war." Thomas Jefferson (1823)

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." Milton Friedman

"God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it." Daniel Webster (1834)

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Justice Louis Brandeis (1928)

"The era of resisting big government is never over." Paul Gigot (1998)

"Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies." Honore De Balzac

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." Daniel Webster

"Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed." William Penn (1693)

"In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: littering, noise and chewing gum. Teachers, last year, were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: rape, assault and suicide." William Bennett (1993)

"The threat posed by humans to the natural environment is nothing compared to the threat to humans posed by global environmental policy." Fred L. Smith (1992)

"Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent." H. L. Mencken

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Mao Zedong (1938)

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton (1887)

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." Winston Churchill (1903)

"War has all the characteristics of a socialism most conservatives hate: centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results and blindness to unintended secondary results." Joseph Sobran (1991)

"There never was a good war or a bad peace." Benjamin Franklin (1773)

"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time." Justice George Sutherland (1938)