Best Libertarian Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters.”

“When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'.”

Philosophy Religion Freedom Liberty Psychology Ethics Libertarian Rational Sanity Self Knowledge Beliefs Critical Thinking Superstition Indoctrination Statism Voluntaryism False Objective

Author:Stefan Molyneux

“SCREW CHILDREN! That's the mantra of the world. Instead of burying them with a national debt, shoving them in shitty schools, drugging them if they don't comply, hitting them, yelling at them, indoctrinating them with religion and statism and patriotism and military worship, what if we just did what was right for them? The whole world is built on "screw children", and if we changed that, this would be an alien planet to us.”

Philosophy Freedom Liberty Psychology Libertarian Anarchy Child Abuse Self Knowledge Childhood Trauma Voluntaryism

Author:Stefan Molyneux

“Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you. 1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master’s whims. He is often cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on. 2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time. 3. The master has a group of slave, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on. 4. The master allows the slave four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own. 5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking. 6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what use to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on. 7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into discussion of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers. 8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselve3s to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master may also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.) 9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome. The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of the slave?”

Philosophy Politics Libertarian Anarchy State And Utopia

Book:Anarchy, state, and utopia

Source: Anarchy, state, and utopia

“If you can convince people that freedom is injustice, they will then believe that slavery is freedom.”

Philosophy Government Freedom Liberty Libertarian Socialism Communism Anarchy Indoctrination Statism Leftists Brainwashing Voluntaryism

Author:Stefan Molyneux

“There's a huge swath of humanity that has developed verbal abilities to extract resources from guilt-ridden people. They used to be priests, and now they're leftists.”

Philosophy Freedom Liberty Libertarian Manipulation Anarchy Theft Statism Parasites Voluntaryism Ancap Anarcho Capitalism Austrian School Of Economics Free Markets

Author:Stefan Molyneux

“The ruling classes use broken and smashed up childhoods as weaponised instruments of domination around the world. This is why the government has no incentive to end child abuse; because the government needs abuse victims as enforcers.”

Philosophy Freedom Liberty Psychology Trauma Libertarian Anarchy Statism

Author:Stefan Molyneux

“Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.”

Philosophy Freedom Economics Libertarian Anarchy Sociology Anarcho Capitalism Austrian School Of Economics

Book:Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

Source: Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“The calls for "solidarity" and "unity of purpose" are in truth a demand for "submission.”

Freedom Liberty Individuality Libertarian Socialism Communism Progressive Sadism Masochism Collectivist

Author:A.E. Samaan

“The 20th Century proved that there is nothing more dangerous to the health of ethnic minority communities than big government.”

Diversity Individuality Libertarian Civil Rights Genocide Individualism Libertarianism Totalitarianism Eugenics Bill Of Rights Big Government Individual Liberty Central Planning Planned Societies Democide Ethnic Minorities

Author:A.E. Samaan

“FUCK "UNITY"!! What a pathetic way of thinking. How arrogant of Progressives to think that my hopes and dreams mirror their hopes and dreams. What an absolute bore.... what an total lack of originality or individuality... I believe in individual liberty. I am an extremist on the topic of individual liberty, precisely because I value original thinking and original accomplishments. Fuck unity of purpose. Fuck collectivism. My life is not your life. I have my own path. Get out of my way.”

Liberty Unity Individuality Libertarian Socialism Communism Fascism Autonomy Utopia Fascists Collectivism Utopian Individual Liberty Individual Rights Progressives Communists Socialists

Author:A.E. Samaan

“Sadly enough, individual liberty remains the ideal of revolutionary thinkers even in the 21st Century.”

Liberty Individuality Libertarian Socialism Individualism Libertarianism Marxism Collectivism Individual Liberty Socialists Collectivists

Author:A.E. Samaan

“I think, therefore I am an individual... not a drone in a collective. I think, therefore I am... Libertarian.”

Liberty Individuality Libertarian Libertarianism American Politics Individual Liberty

Author:A.E. Samaan

“For the most part, people strenuously resist any redefinition of morality, because it shakes them to the very core of their being to think that in pursuing virtue they may have been feeding vice, or in fighting vice they may have in fact been fighting virtue.”

“Until one corporation is left standing, and the impoverished revolt.”

Poverty Health Economics Libertarian Socialism Wellbeing Income Inequality

Book:Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

Source: Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

“If there is such a thing as "white privilege" its the belief that the last 200 years of progress in human liberty and technological innovation would have occurred under any other type of government. THE CONSTITUTION MATTERS.”

Liberty Poverty Libertarian Third World White Privilege Constitutional Government The Constitution

Author:A.E. Samaan

“The problems on campus life today are not about free speech. They are about how the students have absolutely nothing to do with their lives but sit and listen to lectures, find the best parties to attend, and otherwise discover first-world problems to stew about and protest. That's the root of the problem. This is not a commercial environment where people are incentivized to find value in each other. Campuses have become completely artificial 4-year holding tanks for infantilized kids with zero experience in actual life in which people find ways to get along. These students are not serving each other in a market exchange, and very few have worked at day in their lives, so their default is to find some offense and protest. It's all they've been taught to do and all they know how to do. Idle hands and parents' money = trouble.”

“A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.”

“The essential difference between rich societies and poor societies does not stem from any greater effort the former devote to work, nor even from any greater technological knowledge the former hold. Instead it arises mainly from the fact that rich nations possess a more extensive network of capital goods wisely invested from an entrepreneurial standpoint. These goods consists of machines, tools, computers, buildings, semi-manufactured goods, software, etc., and they exist due to prior savings of the nation's citizens. In other words, comparatively rich societies possess more wealth because they have more time accumulated in the form of capital goods, which places them closer in time to the achievement of much more valuable goals.”

Freedom Liberty Poverty Capitalism Economics Libertarian Anarchy Free Market Private Property Free Trade Voluntaryism Laissez Faire Non Aggression Principle Anarcho Capitalism Austrian School Of Economics

Author:Jesús Huerta de Soto

“The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response. To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.”

“Socialism is an alternative to capitalism as potassium cyanide is an alternative to water.”

Source: Human action: a treatise on economics

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Steal a fish from one guy and give it to another--and keep doing that on a daily basis--and you'll make the first guy pissed off, but you'll make the second guy lazy and dependent on you. Then you can tell the second guy that the first guy is greedy for wanting to keep the fish he caught. Then the second guy will cheer for you to steal more fish. Then you can prohibit anyone from fishing without getting permission from you. Then you can expand the racket, stealing fish from more people and buying the loyalty of others. Then you can get the recipients of the stolen fish to act as your hired thugs. Then you can ... well, you know the rest.”

“Deep pockets and empty hearts rule the world. We unleash them at our peril.”

“There is nothing virtuous or noble about being "tolerant" of people whose attitudes and behaviors you approve of. If you don't defend the freedom of even those individuals whose attitudes and behaviors you find disgusting, narrow-minded and offensive, then you are not tolerant. To "tolerate" doesn't mean you like it or approve of it; it means only that you ALLOW it to EXIST--i.e., you refrain from violently interfering. The people who look to "government" to FORCE people to be "nice" are not tolerant.”

“No one has the right to place one human being in a position of political power over another.”

“The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”

Government Evil Freedom Liberty Libertarian Socialism Communism Anarchy Bureaucracy Taxation Theft State Statism Voluntaryism Totalitarian Minarchy

Author:Hannah Arendt

“History has been stolen from us and replaced with guilt inducing lies.”

“When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you – you know your nation is doomed.”

Government Evil Politics Freedom Liberty Clinton Corruption Libertarian Socialism Communism Gang Mafia Collectivism State Statism Objectivism Hillary

Author:Ayn Rand

“The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inﬂicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.”

“A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.”

“My take on socialism is this: Socialism only seems to work when you don't fully implement it, when you keep enough capitalism around to pay socialism's bills, at least for a time. It's the difference between milking the cow and killing it. Socialism has no theory of wealth creation; it's just a destructive, envy-driven fantasy about redistributing it after something else (and somebody else) creates it first.”

“Socialism is not really an option in the material world. There can be no collective ownership of anything materially scarce. One or another faction will assert control in the name of society. Inevitably, the faction will be the most powerful in society -- that is, the state. This is why all attempts to create socialism in scarce goods or services devolve into totalitarian systems of top-down planning.”

“It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles.”

“Liberty means refusing to allow some men to use the state to compel other men to serve their interests or opinion.”

“In the natural sciences, some checks exist on the prolonged acceptance of nutty ideas, which do not hold up well under experimental and observational tests and cannot readily be shown to give rise to useful working technologies. But in economics and the other social studies, nutty ideas may hang around for centuries. Today, leading presidential candidates and tens of millions of voters in the USA embrace ideas that might have been drawn from a 17th-century book on the theory and practice of mercantilism, and multitudes of politicians and ordinary people espouse notions that Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and others exploded more than two centuries ago. In these realms, nearly everyone simply believes whatever he feels good about believing.”

“In a covenant...among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and removed from society.”

“We know how the people of Argentina ruined their country. We know how the people of Venezuela ruined their country. Few Americans know much about the history of Argentina or Venezuela. But if they wish to know how the people of the USA are ruining their own country, all they have to do is look around themselves, including, in most cases, looking in the mirror.”

“There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.”

Source: A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics

“Collectivism is the "philosophy" of every cockroach and sewer rat: "If I want it, I must need it, and if I need it, I have a right to it, and if I have a right to it, it doesn't matter what I have to do to get it." The fact that such an inherently animalistic, short-sighted, anti-human viewpoint is now painted by some as compassionate and "progressive" does not make it any more sane, or any less dangerous.”

“Irony: Taking a 170-year-old envy-based "philosophy," which has led to the murder of several hundred million human beings and the oppression of billions more, and calling it "progressive".”

“Accepting necessary conflicts for the sake of improving the lives of children is the only fundamental moral crusade that matters.”

“Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same.”

“I was reading in the paper today that Congress wants to replace the dollar bill with a coin. They’ve already done it. It’s called a nickel.”

“When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.”

“There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism—and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy—that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug.”

“Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government.”

“A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration.”

“Are you for peace? The great test of your devotion to peace is not how many words you utter on its behalf. It’s not even how you propose to deal with people of other countries, though that certainly tells us something. To fully measure your “peacefulness” requires that we examine how you propose to treat people in your own backyard. Do you demand more of what doesn’t belong to you? Do you endorse the use of force to punish people for victimless “crimes”? Do you support politicians who promise to seize the earnings of others to pay for your bailout, your subsidy, your student loan, your child’s education or whatever pet cause or project you think is more important than what your fellow citizens might personally prefer to spend their own money on? Do you believe theft is OK if it’s for a good cause or endorsed by a majority? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then have the courage to admit that peace is not your priority. How can I trust your foreign policy if your domestic policy requires so much to be done at gunpoint?”

War Government Evil Politics Peace Freedom Liberty Violence Authority Prosperity Libertarian Anarchy Taxation Theft Coercion Authoritarianism Statism Voluntaryism Laissez Faire Ancap

Author:Lawrence W. Reed

“Monopoly is a market, or part of a market, reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force by the government, or with the sanction of the government. Monopoly exists insofar as the freedom of competition is violated, with the freedom of competition being understood as the absence of the initiation of physical force as the preventive of competition. Where there is no initiation of physical force to violate the freedom of competition, there is no monopoly. The freedom of competition is violated only insofar as individuals are excluded from markets or parts of markets by means of the initiation of physical force. Monopoly is thus a market or part of a market reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force. It is thus something imposed upon the market from without—by the government. (Private individuals—gangsters—can initiate force to reserve markets only if the government allows it and thereby sanctions it.) Thus, monopoly is not something which emerges from the normal operation of the economic system, and which the government must control.”

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Libertarian Quotes