Thoughts on Freedom

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys”
–- P.J. O’Rourke

“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones”
-– Calvin Coolidge

“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
– Thomas Paine

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
– Milton Friedman

“Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.”
– Charles Peguy

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
– H.L. Mencken

“He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
– Galatians 5:1-5

“Politics has always been the institutionalised and established way in which some men have exercised the power to live off the output of other men.”
– Karl Hess

“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
– John Maynard Keynes

“Jean Jacques Rousseau and Frederic Engels, if they had lived in the primitive state which they describe with nostalgic yearning, would not have enjoyed the leisure required for their studies and for the writing of their books.”
– Ludwig von Mises

“The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse – that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.”
– H.L. Mencken

“In regard to economic policy, socialism and communism are identical.”
– Ludwig von Mises

“That a fact is deemed true by the majority does not prove its truth. That a policy is deemed expedient by the majority does not provide its expediency.”
– Ludwig von Mises

“If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”
– P.J. O’Rourke

“The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can’t tolerate a libertarian community.”
– David D. Boaz

“Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”
– Douglas Casey

“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.”
– Friedrich Hayek

“A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”
– Ayn Rand

“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

“Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism.”
– Ron Paul

“You can’t give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad – in fact, to do anything it wants.”
– Harry Browne

“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.”
– Thomas Sowell

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first”
-– Mark Twain

“Write a wise saying and your name will live forever”
-– Unknown

“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his”
-– John Locke

“The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only be small children and large nations”
– David Friedman

“No nation was ever ruined by trade”
– Benjamin Franklin

“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so”
– Thomas Jefferson

“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none”
-– Thomas Jefferson

“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest”
-– Mahatma Gandhi

“The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients”
-– Edmund Burke

“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

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule”
-– H.L. Mencken

“Now my guess is that Soon has been taken in by the jedi-knight skills of this Humphreys character”
– Kiwi Bird II