Amos Ch 5 v 24

“Let justice roll on like a running river, Integrity like a never-failing stream!”

Some of my supporters in the last election, stated that I should be their “Watchdog”. I have tried to live up to that expectation and give more than that.

When keeping ‘watch’ there is more than one wolf that wishes to feed off the people. 

Relentless attacks on freedom come from many different directions, mainly from government, but sometimes the greatest enemy is ourselves. This is caused by lack of information concerning complex subjects.

I hope that these pages are of assistance and inspiration.

Contact Ron Owen 

If further information is required please email b3969976@spiderweb.com.au or phone 07 54 825070 at work or 07 54 829566 at home or write to 24 Mc Mahon Rd, Gympie,4570.

Regularly I am  asked, what is my philosophy?  To often, manipulated by the media, I am placed in a labelled box.

 So to know what I think,please read my quotes below, and others that  have inspired me and find useful in the search for truth. 

If you have any objection to the inclusion of any of these idea’s or any queries email b3969976@spiderweb.com.au  or phone 07 54 825070 at work or 07 54 829566 at home or write to 24 Mc Mahon Rd, Gympie,4570.

To begin with here is two of my own humble efforts as comparisons to the famous quotes below. 

“Local Government main role is to supply justice so people can live closely together in peace, and equity, town planning rules are not needed when people live in isolation, only when they live closely together. When greed favours some and not others, when the rules are not upheld, peace is forgotten, in-justice prevails. Then Local Government is responsible for the result, when eventually the locality deteriorates and people get packed into ambulances or mobile morgues. These decisions give perceptions that Council is variously either a patsy or a collaborator to the manipulations of private operators. The reason we have these rules is for the safety net of people living together in peace and harmony, if you make the wrong decision consider your future consciences.”   Ron Owen

 

“When we opened with prayers this morning the Lady Reverend read us a passage concerning a parable that states, “We cannot Serve two Masters, it relates to this Council as we have to serve the Public not the Council. After having discussions with five ex-middle managers who have resigned from this shire, my conclusion is that this Council propagates and survives on prevarication. It has done so for many years, but fabrications can only be maintained for such time as the Council can shield the people from the political and economical consequences of the lie. It has become vitally important for the Council to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of this Council and that is why we have secret meetings, altered reports and secret reports. This is why the staff are leaving and morale is low, you cannot have high morale with low moral leadership as an example. Thank You! For giving me the opportunity, to have placed on the record, in large letters that I am not a party to it.” Ron Owen.

WARNING

Only Read Further If You Are Interested In Which Philosophers Ron Owen  Finds Inspirational. For More Council Related Articles Use Above Menu’s To Navigate This Large Site.   

History predicts  the future, 

Lord Alexander Tytler on “The Fall of the Athenian Republic.” A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.”

Which sequence and stage do you judge we are upto now?

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

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone. – Frédéric Bastiat

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. – Edward R. Murrow

Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless. – Kenneth Baker

Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. – Mikhail Bakunin

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

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

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw

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)

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

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)

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)

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

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein

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

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

The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. – Mark Skousen

A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. – John Hay (1872)

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. – James Bovard (1994)

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. – Thomas Jefferson

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. – Thomas Jefferson

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Goethe

When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. – Gary Lloyd

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

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

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. – Henry George

Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable. – Anonymous

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater (1964)

Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. – Lord Acton

The power to tax is the power to destroy. – John Marshall

[On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon

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

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. – Lysander Spooner

In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. – Leo Tolstoy

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. – Samuel Adams

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. – Somerset Maugham

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. – Justice Learned Hand

It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. – Charles A. Beard

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. – Thomas Jefferson (1781)

The desire to rule is the mother of heresies. – St. John Chrysostom

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter

It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. – Justice Casey Percell

No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. – Edmund A. Opitz

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

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. – Mark Twain

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. – Edward Langley

I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights. – Abraham Lincoln

Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. – Thomas Paine

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. – Harry Emerson Fosdick

The state in which the rulers are the most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed; and the state in which they are the most eager, the worst. – Anonymous

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

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. – Thomas Jefferson

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. – Voltaire

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. – Herbert Hoover

Give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry

First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I’m not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I’m not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I’m not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me. – Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)

Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one. – Thomas Paine

There’s never been a good government. – Emma Goldman

We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk. – Millicent Fenwick (1983)

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. – Montesquieu

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. – P. J. O’Rourke

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. – Henry David Thoreau

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. – Mark Twain

There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress. – Mark Twain

Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it. – Cullen Hightower

You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest. – Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct. – Thomas Jefferson (1799)

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1976)

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire. – Joseph Sobran (1995)

Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. – Allan H. Meltzer (1993)

When important issues affecting the life of an individual are decided by somebody else, it makes no difference to the individual whether that somebody else is a king, a dictator, or society at large. – James Taggart (1992)

No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power. – P. J. O’Rourke (1992)

Here’s your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute – often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is. – Charley Reese (1998)

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. – Milton Friedman

The best government is the one that charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone. – Thomas Rudmose-Brown (1996)

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free. – P.J. O’Rourke (1993)

The Government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. – Ronald Reagan

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. – James Madison

The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals … It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of. – Albert Gallatin (1789)

The Constitution shall never be construed … to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. – Samuel Adams

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. – Alexis De Toqueville

I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. – Thomas Jefferson (1800)

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. – Winston Churchill

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. – Charles Peguy

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. – George Washington

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.

He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. – the Bible, Luke 22:36.

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, in Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446

Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. – Benjamin Disraeli, 1874

These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. – UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29(3).

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. – P.J. O’Rourke (1993)

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)

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. – Sidney Hook

War is the health of the State. – Randolph Bourne (1917)

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

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 Sobran (1995)

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)

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. – 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)

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. – Will Rogers

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

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

There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. – P.J. O’Rourke (1993)

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)

There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as “caring” and “sensitive” because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money – if a gun is held to his head. – P.J. O’Rourke

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. – Herbert Spencer (1891)

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

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

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

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)

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. – John Quincy Adams (1821)

An Avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he a establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. – Thomas Paine (1795)

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. – Frederic Bastiat

Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your government is doing to you. – Joseph Sobran (1990)

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

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)

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

Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. – Thomas Paine (1776)

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies. – Honore de Balzac

Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production. – Ludwig von Mises (1920)

If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government that is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. – James Madison

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)

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom – they are the pillars of society. – Henrik Ibsen (1877)

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

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? – Thomas Jefferson (1801)

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)

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

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

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 (1997)

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)

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. – Thomas Sowell (1992)

War has all the characteristics of 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)

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that 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 (1782-1852)

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. – Albert Einstein

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. – George Bernard Shaw

In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. – Thomas Jefferson

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests. – Patrick Henry

The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it. – Thomas Edison

The Constitution is a written instrument. As such, its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when it was adopted, it means now. – South Carolina v. United States, 199 U.S. 437, 448 (1905)

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”

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. – H.L. Mencken

Collectivism doesn’t work because it’s based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person’s “fair share” of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless. – P. J. O’Rourke, “How to Explain Conservatism”

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. – Ludwig von Mises

The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. – Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC

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

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

Liberty consists in doing what one desires. – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free. – Harry Browne

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. – Noam Chomsky

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. – Aldous Huxley

The care of every man’s soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills. – Thomas Jefferson

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. – Ayn Rand

There’s always someone telling you not to do something. The main thing is just to ignore them. – Tim Robbins

Everyone thinks about changing the world, but no one thinks about changing himself. – Leo Tolstoy

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. – Plato

Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention. – Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

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)

When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both. – James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

Virtually all reasonable laws are obeyed, not because they are the law, but because reasonable people would do that anyway. If you obey a law simply because it is the law, that’s a pretty likely sign that it shouldn’t be a law. – Unknown

The U.S. Constitution may be flawed, but it’s a whole lot better than what we have now. – Unknown

The welfare state reduces a citizen to a client, subordinates them to a bureaucrat, and subjects them to rules that are anti-work, anti-family, anti-opportunity and anti-property … Humans forced to suffer under such anti-human rules naturally develop pathologies. The evening news is the natural result of the welfare state. – Unknown

I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people. – John Anderson, Independent presidential candidate, 1980

When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will. – Fredric Bastiat, early French economist

Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire. – Ludwig Mises,

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial … the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. – Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies. – Alan Burris, “A Liberty Primer”

Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers. – Frank Chodorov

The legacy of Democrats and Republicans approaches: Libertarianism by bankruptcy. – Nick Nuessle, 1992

Truth and news are not the same thing. – Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer. – Henry Kissinger

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. – Stephen Schneider, environmental activist, in “Discover”, Oct. ‘89

I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS. – Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism

Let the people decide through the marketplace mechanism what they wish to see and hear. Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this box of transistors and tubes when we don’t do the same for Time magazine? – Mark Fowler, FCC Chairman

The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it. – James A. Donald

Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. – Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books. – Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark - Mapp vs. Ohio

If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread. – Thomas Jefferson

Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation. – Fletcher Knebel, historian

Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. – George Santayana

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, 1690

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation. – James Madison

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. – Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher

Alcohol didn’t cause the high crime rates of the ’20s and ’30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today’s alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does. – US District Judge James C. Paine, addressing the Federal Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. – Congressman Ron Paul, 1987

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave. – Ayn Rand

I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics. – Ayn Rand

They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here? – Paul Harvey 8/31/94

Even the most Bush-happy, flag suckling jack-arse knows deep-down inside that something is wrong. America is over and everyone knows it. The New World Order has a dying empire odor and changing the channel ain’t going to make this go away. – Jello Biafra

If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence … and the courts must abide by that decision. – US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006

Love your country but fear its government. – N.E. folk wisdom

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? – Daniel Webster

There are many farm handouts; but let’s call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, “Vote for me. I’ll use my office to take another American’s money and give it to you.” – Walter Williams, economist and syndicated columnist

National Health Insurance means combining the efficiency of the Postal Service with the compassion of the I.R.S. … and the cost accounting of the Pentagon. – Louis Sullivan/Connie Horner quoted by Novak in _Forbes_

Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA – ordinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the State. – Heinrich Himmler

The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words. – The Atlanta Journal

Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities. – Michael Cloud

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

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. – Ronald Reagan

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom. – Justice William O. Douglas

Why doesn’t everybody just leave everybody else the hell alone? – Jimmy Durante

For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead in the future! – Adolf Hitler

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military. – William S. Burroughs

To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors. – John Stuart Mill

When taxes are too high, people go hungry. – Lao Tsu

Show me a movement that doesn’t hate somebody and I will join it at once. – Robert Anton Wilson

What’s *just* has been debated for centuries but let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn *belongs* to you – and why? – Walter Williams

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. – Henry David Thoreau

No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: “But what would you replace it with?” When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with? – Thomas Sowell

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort … is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence. – Ayn Rand

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. – Thomas Paine

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license. – P.J. O’Rourke

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. – Abraham Lincoln

The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer the people become. – Lao Tsu

When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. – Thomas Jefferson

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place. – Mohandas Gandhi

Force always attracts men of low morality. – Albert Einstein

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot – because the first leads inevitably to the second. – Harry Browne

It is not charity if it’s at the point of a gun. – Unknown

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. – Ayn Rand

When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That’s progress? – Marilyn French

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. – Ronald Reagan

There is no more country – everyone go home. – Bracken

I’m not going to pontificate and tell you to execute your government at dawn, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. – John Lydon

Society exists for the benefit of its members – not the members for the benefit of society. – Herbert Spencer

When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty. – George Mason

What is a Communist? One who has yearnings – for equal division of unequal earnings. – Ebenezer Elliot

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. – Mary McCarthy

Equality of opportunity is freedom, but equality of outcome is repression. – Dick Feagler

There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation. – Frédéric Bastiat

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace. – H. L. Mencken

A man should be upright, not be kept upright. – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of committee. – F. Lee Bailey

People fear witches, and burn women. – Justice Louis Brandeis

The American heritage was one of individual liberty, personal responsibility and freedom from government … Unfortunately … that heritage has been lost. Americans no longer have the freedom to direct their own lives … Today, it is the government that is free – free to do whatever it wants. There is no subject, no issue, no matter … that is not subject to legislation. – Harry Browne

Communism is like one big phone company. – Lenny Bruce

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. – Edmund Burke

If we have learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot Federalize Virtue. – George Bush

It must never be unpatriotic to support your country against your government. It must always be unpatriotic to support your government against your country. – Stephen T. Byington

The office of the government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves. – William Ellery Channing

If you ruin your life, you will pay the price of rehabilitating yourself … We are not punished for our sins, but by them. Liberty means responsibility. – Michael Cloud

We are living in a sick society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbour but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them. – William L. Comer

America was born of revolt, flourished on dissent, became great through experimentation. – Henry Steele Commager

Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business. – Calvin Coolidge

You can only be free if I am free. – Clarence Darrow

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment. – Philip K. Dick

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

A tyranny based on … deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself. – Albert Einstein

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

That which we call sin in others is experiment for us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. In giving them freedom, we free ourselves. – Marilyn Ferguson

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace. – Milton Friedman

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless or, which is the same thing, corrupt. – Mohandas Gandhi

The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. – Ulysses S. Grant

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. – Alexander Hamilton

Don’t do drugs because if you do drugs you’ll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison. – John Hardwick

Past studies by and large confirm the prediction that higher minimum wages reduce employment opportunities and raise unemployment, particularly among teenagers, minorities and other low-skilled workers. – Masanori Hashimoto

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation. – William Hazlitt

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery! Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry

The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. – Adolf Hitler

I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own. – Billie Holiday

Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control. – Jack Hugh

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. – Charles Evans Hughes

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. – Thomas Jefferson

It’s no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense of duty. – Albert Einstein

On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. – Thomas Jefferson

According to George Hitchings, co-winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in medicine, FDA’s five-year delay in approving the antibacterial drug Septra cost 80,000 lives. – Sam Kazman

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

I let go of all desire for the common good, and the good becomes as common as the grass. – Lao Tsu

If men are good, you don’t need government; if men are evil or ambivalent, you don’t dare have one. – Robert LeFevre

Low-income workers as a group are the major victims of minimum wage legislation. – Keith B. Leffler

Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. – Abraham Lincoln

Public educators, like Soviet farmers, lack any incentive to produce results, innovate, to be efficient, to make the kinds of difficult changes that private firms operating in a competitive market must make to survive. – Carolyn Lochhead

Those who attack the rationale of the game, and not the players, are its most formidable adversaries. – James J. Martin

Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. – Mohandas Gandhi

If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded. – Karl Marx

In 1950, the average family of four paid 2% of its earnings to federal taxes. Today it pays 24%– William R. Mattox, Jr. (sometime before 1996)

Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy. – Ludwig von Mises

When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.

When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent.

When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don’t own a gun.

Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet. – Lyle Myhr

In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew … Then they came for the Catholics. I didn’t speak up then because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up. – Reverend Martin Niemoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the Gestapo in 1937.

It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money. – P.J. O’Rourke

Petty laws breed great crimes. – Ouida

The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. – Edith Packer

When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny. – Thomas Paine

The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. – Thomas Jefferson

The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. All initiation of force is a violation of someone else’s rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it’s supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals. Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense. – Congressman Ron Paul, (R) Texas

As you increase the cost of the license to practice medicine, you increase the price at which the medical service must be sold and you correspondingly decrease the number of people who can afford to buy the service. – William Pusey, then president of the American Medical Association

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand

The American Dream was not about government’s taking huge sums of money (under the label of “taxation”) from citizens by force. The American Dream was about individualism and the opportunity to achieve success without interference from others. – Robert Ringer

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it. – Will Rogers

I am convinced that we can do to guns what we’ve done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control. – George L. Roman

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day. – Theodore Roosevelt

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. – Seneca

Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out … People who object to weapons aren’t abolishing violence, they’re begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically “right.” Guns ended that, and a social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. – L. Neil Smith (from The Probability Broach)

Let him who would move the world, first move himself. – Socrates

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long. – Thomas Sowell

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. – Mohandas Gandhi

However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible. – Herbert Spencer (from “The Right To Ignore The State”)

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit … Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do … He does not keep “protecting” you by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that. – Lysander Spooner

If I were a Brazilian without land or money or the means to feed my children, I would be burning the rain forest too. – Sting

I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society it is none of the government’s business what ideas a man puts into his mind; likewise, it should be none of its business what drugs he puts into his body. – Thomas Szasz

That government is best which governs least. – Henry David Thoreau

In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man and brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot. – Mark Twain

I love my country far too much to be a nationalist. – Unknown

I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. – Voltaire

If even one new drug of the stature of penicillin or digitalis has been unjustifiably banished to a company’s back shelf because of exceedingly stringent regulatory requirements, that event will have harmed more people than all the toxicity that has occurred in the history of modern drug development. – William Wardell

It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something. – John Wayne

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any body of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. – Noah Webster

Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy. – Orson Welles

Liberals believe government should take people’s earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people’s earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one’s property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage. – Walter Williams

Taking somebody’s money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it’s taxation. Killing people en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it’s National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it’s National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it’s counter-intelligence. – Robert Anton Wilson

Government, in it’s last analysis, is organized force. – Woodrow Wilson

Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it. – Cousin Woodman

The proper direction of man’s thought is not toward the creation of new laws for government, but toward the acceptance of every person’s moral dignity. – Edmund Yates

The higher entry standards imposed by licensing laws reduce the supply of professional services … The poor are the net losers, because the availability of low-cost service has been reduced. In essence, the poor subsidize the information research costs of the rich. – S. David Young

The pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge. – U.S. vs. Dougherty, 1972

The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. – Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun, August 29, 1558

We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: … an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand … the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education … We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents … The government must undertake the improvement of public health – by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor … by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth. We combat the … materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of the common good before the individual good. – From the political program of the Nazi Party, adopted in Munich, February 24, 1920

I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials. – George Mason.

The proverb warns that “You should not bite the hand that feeds you.” But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself. – Thomas Szasz

When freedom is outlawed … Only outlaws will be free! – Anon

I have always thanked all my enemies profusely for expanding my horizons. – Unknown

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. – The Wizard of Oz

People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We’ll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us. – Joseph Sobran May 13, 1998 (commenting on US vs Microsoft)

I believe the states can best govern our home concerns and the federal government our foreign ones. – Thomas Jefferson

It took about 150 years, starting with a Bill of Rights that reserved to the states and the people all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government, to produce a Supreme Court willing to rule that growing corn to feed to your own hogs is interstate commerce and can therefore be regulated by Congress. – David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. – J. Edgar Hoover

First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards. – Mark Twain

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder. – Frédéric Bastiat

The police can’t stop an intruder, mugger, or stalker from hurting you. They can pursue him only after he has hurt or killed you. Protecting yourself from harm is your responsibility, and you are far less likely to be hurt in a neighborhood of gun-owners than in one of disarmed citizens – even if you don’t own a gun yourself. – Harry Browne

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke

Patriotism means loving our country, not the government. – Michael Cloud

Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let’s make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there’s no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person’s property to give it to another to whom it does not belong – in effect, legalized theft. – Walter Williams

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people. – Justice William O. Douglas

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this. – Albert Einstein

I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. – Milton Friedman

One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman. – Mohandas Gandhi

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits. – Thomas Jefferson

There comes a time when a moral man can’t obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be. – Lao Tsu

You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have. – P.J. O’Rourke

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody. – Thomas Paine

Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to please one’s fellow man … that’s what competition is all about: “outpleasing” your competitors to win over the consumers. – Walter Williams

To me, it doesn’t matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine. – Robert Anton Wilson

A strong body makes a strong mind. As to the species of exercise I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your walks. – Thomas Jefferson

The World’s Smallest Political Quiz is the single best outreach tool we libertarians have. –George Getz, Libertarian Party press secretary

Gun control? It’s the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I’m a bad guy, I’m always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I’ll pull the trigger. We’ll see who wins. – Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, whose testimony convicted John Gotti

Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. – Josef V. Stalin

In our desire to have government become our benefactor and sustainer, we have allowed it to become our taskmaster and overlord. As a result, we have become little more than well-fed, well-entertained slaves to the state. Freedom, as envisioned by our forefathers, is gone. – Chuck Baldwin 2001 (www.chuckbaldwinlive.com)

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. – Richard Henry Lee (who drafted the Second Amendment as well as the rest of the Bill of Rights) 1788

Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles. – Gerry Spence

I say that the Second Amendment doesn’t allow for exceptions – or else it would have read that the right “to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise.” And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong – because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience. – Harry Browne, meetings with NRA’s EVP, Wayne LaPierre and other panelists at a gun rights rally in Hot Springs, AR, 8/8/2000

The angels and the devils are definitely within us, not within the machines we use. – Michael Dertouzos

The limitation of tyrants is the endurance of those they oppose. – Frederick Douglass

Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice. – William Lloyd Garrison

The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency. – Eugene McCarthy

The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy. – John Jay, Joint-author of the Federalist Papers and first U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice

There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something. – Thomas Edison

The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all. – H. L. Mencken

Most economic fallacies derive … from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. – Milton Friedman, Economic Freedom and Representative Government; 1973

Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man – in temperament, character, and capacity – and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so. – Frank Chodorov

When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves. – George Pataki

Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. – Ronald Reagan

The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression. – Alexander Berkman

Live and let live. – Friedrich von Schiller

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable … – H. L. Mencken

It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. – Emiliano Zapta, Mexican revolutionary

The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization. – Henry Hazlitt

Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks. – Thomas Sowell, a black sociologist, author and columnist

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. – Abraham Lincoln

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated. – Thomas Paine

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. – The Declaration of Independence

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence. – Henri Frederic Amiel

Liberty is always unfinished business. – Anonymous

And now that the legislators and do gooders have futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems. And try liberty … – Frederic Bastiat, 1850

Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hangs on the results. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the greatest historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us. – Ludwig von Mises

If our country is to survive and prosper, we must summon the courage to condemn and reject the liberal agenda, and we had better do it soon. – Walter E. Williams, “The Gathering Racial Tragedy”

I think we need to find out why the citizens of the world’s wealthiest, most envied, most powerful country are so cynical, so distressed, so angry, so ticked of about so many things. – William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever. – George Orwell, 1984

Not only can no one predict the future, we don’t understand the present – and there isn’t even any certainty about the past. – Harry Browne

A man who walks down the centre line of a road risks getting hit from both sides. – Alexander Ziatanovic

It ain’t so much what a man doesn’t know that causes him so many problems, but what he knows that ain’t so. – Will Rogers

To take what there is, and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived – to dig deep into the actual and get something out of it – this doubtless is the right way to live. – Henry James

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. – Shakespeare

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand. – Montaigne

When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. – Dresden James

I have thought that a man of tolerable abilities may work great changes if he first forms a good plan and makes the execution of that same plan his whole study and business. – Benjamin Franklin

For all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been!” – John Greenleaf Whittier

It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes. – Bernard DeFoutenelle

People never believe in volcanoes until the lava actually overtakes them. – George Santayana

After you’ve heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident, it makes you wonder about history. – Bits & Pieces

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today. – Robert E. Lee

Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an “independent” agency operated by selfless public servants striving to “fine-tune” the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat. – Thomas J. DiLorenzo

I do not deny the allegation, I deny the allegator. – Jesse Jackson [!]

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

The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny. – Michael Parenti

Any story sounds true until someone tells the other side and sets the record straight. – Proverbs 18:17

War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength. – George Orwell

The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. – George Orwell, 1984

For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade. – Noam Chomsky

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us all. – Justice William O. Douglas

An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff. – Adlai Stevenson

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but the newspapers. – Thomas Jefferson

When the mass media in some foreign countries serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of their government, the result is ludicrous propaganda. When the mass media in our country serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of the U.S. government, the result is responsible journalism. – Norman Solomon

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. – Second Amendment to the Constitution

An armed society is a polite society. – Robert A. Heinlein

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. – H L. Mencken

We must remember that government, no matter how hard it tries, cannot protect an individual from themselves. This legislation is simply one more attempt by big government to tell us that they know what is best for us. It is not the first time and it will not be the last. – Peter Calcagno

Washington is not America. It has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire. – Richard Maybury

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think. – Adolf Hitler

Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one’s own need to think. – Adolf Eichmann, Memoirs written after his 1960 capture by Israel.

A man’s home may be his castle, but that does not keep the government from taking it. – United States v. Hendler, 952 F2d 1364 (Fed Cir 1991)

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness. – George Washington

A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished. – John Stuart Mill

The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide. – R. J. Rummel, Death by Government

A nation that expects the government to prevent churches from burning, to