Edward Abbey
“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.” — Edward Abbey
“Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” — Edward Abbey
Lord Acton
“Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end.” — Lord Acton
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord Acton
“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.” — Lord Acton
“There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.” — Lord Acton
John Adams
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” — John Adams
“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.” — John Adams
“Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.” — John Adams
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” — John Adams
Samuel Adams
“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” — Samuel Adams
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” — Samuel Adams
“The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.” — Samuel Adams
Radley Balko (author, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces)
“Police officers today are a protected class, one no politician wants to oppose. Law enforcement interests may occasionally come up short on budgetary issues, but legislatures rarely if ever pass new laws to hold police more accountable, to restrict their powers, or to make them more transparent. In short, police today embody all of the threats the Founders feared were posed by standing armies, plus a few additional ones they couldn’t have anticipated.” — Radley Balko
Frédéric Bastiat
“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.” — Frédéric Bastiat
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” — Frédéric Bastiat
“Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.” — Frédéric Bastiat
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.” — Frédéric Bastiat
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat
Walter Block
“Libertarianism is neither of the left nor of the right. It is unique. It is sui generis. It is apart from left and right. The left right political spectrum simply has no room for libertarianism. Think of an equilateral triangle, with libertarianism at one corner, the left at a second corner and the right at the third corner. We are equally distant from both of those misbegotten political economic philosophies. No, better yet, think in terms of an isosceles triangle, with us at the top and the two of them at the bottom, indicating they have more in common with each other than with us.” — Walter Block
“Protectionism is a misnomer. The only people protected by tariffs, quotas and trade restrictions are those engaged in uneconomic and wasteful activity. Free trade is the only philosophy compatible with international peace and prosperity.” — Walter Block
Louis Brandeis
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” — Louis Brandeis
Harry Browne
“Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, ‘See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.’” — Harry Browne
“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
“We should never define Libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals or conservatives — nor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are Libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times.” — Harry Browne
Edmund Burke
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” — Edmund Burke
Christopher Cantwell
“Barack Obama can spout off at the mouth about his bizarre egalitarian agenda all day long, so long as he does not send assassins to my home. Congress, CSPAN, and indeed every statist political body become utterly impotent and pointless in the absence of police.” — Christopher Cantwell
“We live in a physical universe that is no more or less free than the world we hope to see in the future, we just have a very serious organized crime problem that most people refer to as ‘the government’.” — Christopher Cantwell
Winston Churchill
“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time — a tremendous whack.” — Winston Churchill
“Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” — Winston Churchill
“Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.” — Winston Churchill
“Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.” — Winston Churchill
Cicero
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero (42 B.C.)
Ron Crickenberger
“If the government can’t keep drugs away from inmates who are locked in steel cages, surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, drug-tested, strip-searched, X-rayed, and videotaped — how can it possibly stop the flow of drugs to an entire nation?” — Ron Crickenberger
“The War on Drugs is a price support system for terrorists and drug pushers. It turns ordinary, cheap plants like marijuana and poppies into fantastically lucrative black market products. Without the War on Drugs, the financial engine that fuels terrorist organizations would sputter to a halt.” — Ron Crickenberger
Thomas J. DiLorenzo
“Peaceful secession and nullification are the only means of returning to a system of government that respects rather than destroys individual liberty.” — Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Benjamin Franklin
“All Wars are Follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones. When will Mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their Differences by Arbitration? Were they to do it, even by the Cast of a Dye, it would be better than by Fighting and destroying each other.” — Benjamin Franklin
“I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Remember that time is money” — Benjamin Franklin
“There never was a good war or a bad peace.” — Benjamin Franklin
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin
Milton Friedman
“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” — Milton Friedman
“I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.” — Milton Friedman
“I am in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values 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
“I am a libertarian with a small ‘l’ and a Republican with a capital ‘R’. And I am a Republican with a capital ‘R’ on grounds of expediency, not on principle.” — Milton Friedman
“I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it’s only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.” — Milton Friedman
“I think the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.” — Milton Friedman
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” — Milton Friedman
“Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority.” — Milton Friedman
“There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.” — Milton Friedman
“To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.” — Milton Friedman
Henry George
“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
“The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny — the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.” — Henry George
William Godwin
“If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.” — William Godwin
Alexander Hamilton
“Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped.” — Alexander Hamilton
Sharon Harris
“Libertarianism is, as the name implies, the belief in liberty. Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property, and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life — as long as he simply respects the same right of others to do the same.” — Sharon Harris
Patrick Henry
“It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, “Peace! Peace!” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 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 great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.” — Patrick Henry
Audrey Hepburn
“I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.” — Audrey Hepburn
Frank Herbert
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.” — Frank Herbert
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” — Frank Herbert
“It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced — in a word, insane.” — Frank Herbert
“When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.” — Frank Herbert
Robert Higgs
“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.” — Robert Higgs
“Every year, on Veterans Day, orators declare that our leaders have gone to war to preserve our freedoms and have done so with glorious success, but the truth is just the opposite. In ways big and small, direct and indirect, crude and subtle, war—the quintessential government activity—has been the mother’s milk for the nourishment of a growing tyranny in this country, and it remains so today.” — Robert Higgs
“H. L. Mencken famously said that ‘every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.’ By now, however, I am no longer ashamed, because I do not identify with the government under which I live. Rather, I view it as a criminal organization that without provocation has chosen to make war on my just rights—not only mine, of course, but everyone’s. Although this vile enterprise is my problem, because it robs and bullies me relentlessly and without mercy, it is not my responsibility: the nail is not the hammer.” — Robert Higgs
“If anarchists are idealists, they may simply be likened to someone who finds himself swimming in a cesspool and, rather than paddling about looking for the area with the least amount of floating faeces, seeks to climb out of the pool completely.” — Robert Higgs
“In regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven’t even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration. I’ve never received an offer from my rulers, so I certainly have not accepted one; and rather than consideration, I have received nothing but contempt from the rulers, who, notwithstanding the absence of any agreement, have indubitably threatened me with grave harm in the event that I fail to comply with their edicts.” — Robert Higgs
Jacob G. Hornberger
“A minimum-wage law, a law that prevents employers and employees from entering into mutually beneficial economic exchanges, is as far from a free market or free enterprise as one can get. That’s why it causes so much damage and destruction, especially to black teenagers and others whose labor, for one reason or another, is valued by employers at less than the government-established minimum wage.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
“For libertarians, freedom entails the right of people to live their lives any way they choose, so long as their conduct is peaceful. For conservatives, freedom entails the right of government to do just about anything it wants, even if its conduct is violent.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
“History has shown more than once that when people surrender totalitarian powers to their rulers, they are inevitably exercised in the next big crisis. And let’s not forget here that the next president who wields this power and who will be in charge of military might well be Hillary Clinton.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
“Individual freedom and drug laws contradict each other. In a genuinely free society, people are free to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful or destructive. What people ingest is none of the government’s business. If drug users or drug addicts wish to get help, a free society provides the means to do so.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
“The reason people hate America is because they don’t like being treated like garbage by arrogant, pompous, hypocritical, self-righteous, duplicitous, imperialist political and bureaucratic hacks.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
“There is one—and only one—way to end the violence in Latin America. There is one—and only one—way to terminate the drug gangs. That way is by legalizing drugs. Legalizing drugs today would put an immediate end to the drug gangs and the drug-war violence.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
“There’s the old saying that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. There are few better places to apply that adage than the drug war. It’s time to end it. It’s time to restore peace and harmony to Latin America and the United States. It’s time to end the failed war on drugs. It’s time to legalize drugs.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
“Those who advocate either slavery or income taxation should be ashamed of themselves. Genuine freedom entails the abolition, not the reform, of income taxation and the IRS, just as genuine freedom entailed the abolition, not the reform, of slavery.” — Jacob G. Hornberger
Nelson Hultberg (Director, Americans for a Free Republic)
“Today’s neoconservatives are not conservative; they are rabid collectivists. But you won’t hear that from the American people. They have been bamboozled. The only solution to this ideological deception and corruption is to revive the vision of ‘libertarian conservatism’ subscribed to by the Founders. This means a free-market, not a mega-state. It means the protection of equal rights, not the conveyance of special privileges. It means a mind-our-own business foreign policy, not the pursuit of world hegemony.” — Nelson Hultberg
Robert G. Ingersoll
“I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.” — Robert G. Ingersoll
“Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.” — Robert G. Ingersoll
“Take the word Liberty from human speech and all the other words become poor, withered, meaningless sounds — but with that word realized — with that word understood, the world becomes a paradise.” — Robert G. Ingersoll
“The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.” — Robert G. Ingersoll
Thomas Jefferson
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” — Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)
“I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.” — Thomas Jefferson
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” — Thomas Jefferson
“If we run into such [government] debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-suffers.” — Thomas Jefferson
“It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.” — Thomas Jefferson
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” — Thomas Jefferson
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” — Thomas Jefferson
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” — Thomas Jefferson
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” — Thomas Jefferson
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” — Thomas Jefferson
John F. Kennedy
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — John F. Kennedy
George C. Leef
“What is so bad about big government? My indictment of big government is that it is bad because it attacks liberty, prosperity, progress, harmony, and morality. Thanks to big government, we have significantly less of all of those good things than we would if we had been able to keep government right-sized. Big government is cancerous. Like a cancer, it hurts the body and tends to spread, doing more and more harm as it grows. It is time for some radical surgery.” — George C. Leef
John Locke
“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.” — John Locke
“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.” — John Locke
James Madison
“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” — James Madison
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” — James Madison
“Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” — James Madison
“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” — James Madison
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” — James Madison
“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.” — James Madison
W. Somerset Maugham
“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.” — W. Somerset Maugham
H. L. Mencken
“All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.” — H. L. Mencken
“All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.” — H. L. Mencken
“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” — H. L. Mencken
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” — H. L. Mencken
“I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.” — H. L. Mencken
“Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner.” — H. L. Mencken
“Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.” — H. L. Mencken
“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.” — H. L. Mencken
“One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty.” — H. L. Mencken
“The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.” — H. L. Mencken
“The government I live under has been my enemy all my active life. When it has not been engaged in silencing me it has been engaged in robbing me. So far as I can recall I have never had any contact with it that was not an outrage on my dignity and an attack on my security.” — H. L. Mencken
“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
“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.” — H. L. Mencken
“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-bye to the Bill of Rights.” — H. L. Mencken
“The strange American ardor for passing laws, the insane belief in regulation and punishment, plays into the hands of the reformers, most of them quacks themselves. Their efforts, even when honest, seldom accomplish any appreciable good.” — H. L. Mencken
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken
Federica Montseny
“The love of liberty and the sense of human dignity are the basic elements of the Anarchist creed.” — Federica Montseny
Albert Jay Nock
“If you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength; a weak State will always be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the proper limit of weakness — which, by the way, is a vast deal lower limit than people are led to believe — its criminality may be safely got on with.” — Albert Jay Nock
“The State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation — that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class — that is, for a criminal purpose. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient.” — Albert Jay Nock
“There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man’s needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.” — Albert Jay Nock
Thomas Paine
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” — Thomas Paine
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; [and] in its worst state, an intolerable one.” — Thomas Paine
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” — Thomas Paine
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” — Thomas Paine
“Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.” — Thomas Paine
“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 their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. 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
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” — Thomas Paine
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.” — Thomas Paine
Ron Paul
“Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals.” — Ron Paul
“The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.” — Ron Paul
“We have a lot of goodness in this country. And we should promote it, but never through the barrel of a gun. We should do it by setting good standards, motivating people and have them want to emulate us. But you can’t enforce our goodness, like the neocons preach, with an armed force. It doesn’t work.” — Ron Paul
“We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.” — Ron Paul
William Pitt the Younger
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” — William Pitt the Younger
Will Porter
“The history of government is the Earthly manifestation of evil wrought through the bayonet, the gendarme, the concentration camp, and the hangman. The greatest crimes of bygone days have been carried out by society’s rulers, its kings, its political classes and the hordes of police, soldiers, and bureaucrats who serve them.” — Will Porter
Ayn Rand
“An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man’s value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man’s reason and his emotions—provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow—then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others.” — Ayn Rand
“In a fully free society, taxation – or, to be exact, payment for governmental services – would be voluntary.” — Ayn Rand
“Man has no choice about his capacity to feel that something is good for him or evil, but what he will consider good or evil, what will give him joy or pain, what he will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on his standard of value. If he chooses irrational values, he switches his emotional mechanism from the role of his guardian to the role of his destroyer. The irrational is the impossible; it is that which contradicts the facts of reality; facts cannot be altered by a wish, but they can destroy the wisher. If a man desires and pursues contradictions—if he wants to have his cake and eat it, too—he disintegrates his consciousness; he turns his inner life into a civil war of blind forces engaged in dark, incoherent, pointless, meaningless conflicts (which, incidentally, is the inner state of most people today).” — Ayn Rand
“My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.” — Ayn Rand
“The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.” — Ayn Rand
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
“The word ‘We’ is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.” — Ayn Rand
“There can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards.” — Ayn Rand
“When I say ‘capitalism,’ I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism — with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. A pure system of capitalism has never yet existed, not even in America; various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start. Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future — if mankind is to have a future.” — Ayn Rand
Ronald Reagan
“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” — Ronald Reagan
“Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.” — Ronald Reagan
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem!” — Ronald Reagan
“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.” — Ronald Reagan
“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” — Ronald Reagan
“Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.” — Ronald Reagan
Sheldon Richman
“Anyone who believes in the natural and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is obliged to accept that individuals have the right to buy and sell alcohol. That’s why all the regulations that people take for granted—the restrictions on hours of operation, the ban on Sunday sales, the minimum distance from schools and churches, the minimum age, and the protection of local wineries from competition by wineries in other states—are illegitimate.” — Sheldon Richman
“Americans live under the delusion that enterprise here is both private and free. It may be nominally private, but it’s anything but free. Unfortunately, most people don’t know what freedom is. So they are unfazed when they hear that before you can do anything of a commercial nature, you need government permission.” — Sheldon Richman
“Why is Netanyahu pushing war? Among several reasons, demonizing Iran reduces pressure on Israel to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians. Many Israelis prefer building Jewish settlements on Palestinians’ land instead. Moreover, Israel’s rulers oppose any development—such as an Iranian-U.S. detente—that could diminish Israel’s U.S.-financed hegemony in the region. War with Iran would be a catastrophe all around. Netanyahu and his hawkish American allies—the same people who gave us the disastrous Iraq war and ISIS—must be repudiated.” — Sheldon Richman
Lew Rockwell
“Libertarianism is concerned with the use of violence in society. That is all. It is not anything else. It is not feminism. It is not egalitarianism (except in a functional sense: everyone equally lacks the authority to aggress against anyone else). It has nothing to say about aesthetics. It has nothing to say about religion or race or nationality or sexual orientation. It has nothing to do with left-wing campaigns against ‘white privilege,’ unless that privilege is state-supplied. Let me repeat: the only ‘privilege’ that matters to a libertarian qua libertarian is the kind that comes from the barrel of the state’s gun. Disagree with this statement if you like, but in that case you will have to substitute some word other than libertarian to describe your philosophy.” — Lew Rockwell
“The people and the warmakers are two distinct groups. We must never say ‘we’ when discussing the US government’s foreign policy. For one thing, the warmakers do not care about the opinions of the majority of Americans. It is silly and embarrassing for Americans to speak of ‘we’ when discussing their government’s foreign policy, as if their input were necessary to or desired by those who make war.” — Lew Rockwell
Larken Rose
“If you can’t talk about defending yourself against government aggression, you don’t believe in freedom, you don’t believe in self-ownership; you’re either an idiot or a coward.” — Larken Rose
“If you don’t have enough self-respect to object to being deprived of the fruits of your time and effort, if YOU being robbed isn’t enough to make you want to resist, then at least have enough decency to object to YOUR time and effort being used to fuel injustice, oppression and violence.” — Larken Rose
“If you love death and destruction, oppression and suffering, injustice and violence, repression and torture, helplessness and despair, perpetual conflict and bloodshed, then teach your children to respect ‘authority,’ and teach them that obedience is a virtue. If, on the other hand, you value peaceful coexistence, compassion and cooperation, freedom and justice, then teach your children the principles of self-ownership, teach them to respect the rights of every human being, and teach them to recognize and reject the belief in ‘authority’ for what it is: the most irrational, self-contradictory, anti-human, evil, destructive and dangerous superstition the world has ever known.” — Larken Rose
“The belief in ‘authority,’ which includes all belief in ‘government,’ is irrational and self-contradictory; it is contrary to civilization and morality, and constitutes the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed. Rather than being a force for order and justice, the belief in ‘authority’ is the arch-enemy of humanity.” — Larken Rose
“The Constitution created the biggest authoritarian empire the world has ever known; you want to try it AGAIN and see what happens?” — Larken Rose
“The truth is, one cannot believe in ‘authority’ and be free, because accepting the myth of ‘government’ is accepting one’s own obligation to obey a master, which means accepting one’s own enslavement. Sadly, many people believe that begging the master, via ‘political action,’ is all they can do, So they forever engage in rituals which only legitimize the slave-master relationship, instead of simply disobeying the tyrants. The idea of disobeying ‘authority,’ ‘breaking the law,’ and being ‘criminals’ is more disturbing to them than the idea of being a slave.” — Larken Rose
“Those who proudly cheered for Stalin in the USSR SHOULD have been roundly criticized and condemned by anyone with a brain. Those stupid enough to cheer for Mao in China SHOULD have been made to feel uncomfortable. Those silly enough to vehemently advocate the enslavement of mankind anywhere SHOULD feel bad about it, because what they condone is anti-human evil. I don’t give a crap if they feel good about it or not, nor do I care if they ‘mean well.’ The empires that have slaughtered tens of millions were elected and funded by people who ‘meant well.’ I like to give people a chance—or two, or three, or ten—to choose the only rational, moral option (peaceful coexistence, i.e., voluntaryism), but if they don’t, the last thing you’ll ever hear out of me is, ‘Oh well, to each his own, let’s agree to disagree.’ If you advocate that I be enslaved, and continue to praise and worship the institution that already caged me and robbed me into poverty, then I invite you to go have intercourse with yourself.” — Larken Rose
“Want to fix the world? Throw the crown away. Ignore politics. Don’t threaten, attack, or rob your neighbor; and don’t vote for anyone who offers to threaten, attack, or rob your neighbor on your behalf. Don’t, by yourself or by way of those in power, try to force others to be what you wish they were or force them to fund what you wish they would fund. Instead, try treating your neighbor as if he owns himself — because he does.” — Larken Rose
“We are the beginning of humanity. The group of people who dares to say, ‘we shouldn’t initiate violence against each-other’. How painfully obvious is that? But it needs to be said because most people have been taught that there’s a giant exception called government. Future generations are gonna be really glad we talked about this.” — Larken Rose
Murray Rothbard
“Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.” — Murray Rothbard
“I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.” — Murray Rothbard
“If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his ‘human right.’” — Murray Rothbard
“If you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place.” — Murray Rothbard
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” — Murray Rothbard
“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?” — Murray Rothbard
“The libertarian creed, finally, offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Even more than conservatives… libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government, and a free-market economy.” — Murray Rothbard
“This, by the way, is the welfare state in action: It’s a whole bunch of special interest groups screwing consumers and taxpayers, and making them think they’re really benefiting.” — Murray Rothbard
Kenneth W. Royce
“Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew.” — Kenneth W. Royce
L. Neil Smith
“A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.” — L. Neil Smith
“‘Global Warming’ represents the last gasp of so-called ‘scientific progressivism’, a mass of pitifully transparent falsehoods being employed to justify reducing mankind under the absolute despotism of ‘experts’, the obvious implication being that we can’t even breathe responsibly. Environmentalism, Gaianism, is a religion on the basis of which — illegally under the First Amendment — public policy is being generated. Exhaling carbon dioxide is Original Sin, a reliable source of unlimited power and wealth to a Parasitic Class of politicians, bureaucrats, and cops with which our civilization now finds itself infested.” — L. Neil Smith
“Most libertarians agree that all rights are, in effect, property rights, beginning with this fundamental right to self-ownership and control of one’s own life. As owners of their own lives, individuals are completely free to do absolutely anything they wish with them — provided, of course, that it doesn’t violate the identical right of others — whether the people around them approve of what they do or not.” — L. Neil Smith
“Politicians must be taught, in no uncertain terms, that the only real way to economically ‘stimulate’ the Productive Class is to stop stealing their fucking money! If the government announced a total tax amnesty, as well as a complete, permanent end to individual and corporate taxes — repealing all unconstitutional economic regulations would help, too — this depression would be over by the end of the week.” — L. Neil Smith
Lysander Spooner
“A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” — Lysander Spooner
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” — Lysander Spooner
“For this reason, whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.: 1. That every man who puts money into the hands of a ‘government’ (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. 2. That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future. 3. That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take a man’s money without his consent, for any such object as they profess to take it for, viz., that of protecting him; for why should they wish to protect him, if he does not wish them to do so? To suppose that they would do so, is just as absurd as it would be to suppose that they would take his money without his consent, for the purpose of buying food or clothing for him, when he did not want it. 4. If a man wants ‘protection,’ he is competent to make his own bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to rob him, in order to ‘protect’ him against his will. 5. That the only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets, until they have assurances, perfectly satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used as they wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not for their injury. 6. That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.” — Lysander Spooner
“The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that—however bloody—can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.” — Lysander Spooner
George Sutherland (U.S. Supreme Court Justice)
“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.” — George Sutherland
Margaret Thatcher
“No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.” — Margaret Thatcher
“No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect. … To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukemia with leeches.” — Margaret Thatcher
“Pennies don’t fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.” — Margaret Thatcher
“Socialists cry ‘Power to the people’, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.” — Margaret Thatcher
“Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.” — Margaret Thatcher
Henry David Thoreau
“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.” — Henry David Thoreau
“I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.” — Henry David Thoreau
“I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — ‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” — Henry David Thoreau
“If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.” — Henry David Thoreau
Harry S. Truman
“Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty. The external threat to liberty should not drive us into suppressing liberty at home. Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.” — Harry S. Truman
Gideon J. Tucker
“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” — Gideon J. Tucker
Jeffrey Tucker
“Anarchy is all around us. Without it, our world would fall apart. All progress is due to it. All order extends from it. All blessed things that rise above the state of nature are owed to it. The human race thrives only because of the lack of control, not because of it. I’m saying that we need ever more absence of control to make the world a more beautiful place. It is a paradox that we must forever explain.” — Jeffrey Tucker
“Morals do not come from the state and society. Morality deals with weightier matters that measure our thoughts, words, and deeds against universals that are true regardless of time and place.” — Jeffrey Tucker
“Now, I’m not saying that we don’t need rules in society. But the question of who makes the rules and on what basis becomes supremely important. Will the rule-making flow from the matrix of voluntary exchange based on the ethic of serving others through private enterprise? Or will the rules be made and enforced by people wearing guns and bulletproof vests with a license to shock or kill based on minor annoyances?” — Jeffrey Tucker
Laurence M. Vance
“The last time I checked, I noticed that about 7,600 Americans die every year from non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin. And the U.S. government wages war on marijuana? What a stupid and evil government we have. And what stupid and evil members of Congress we have, Republicans included. The war on drugs should be ended immediately.” — Laurence M. Vance
“There is no right to service. In a free society, every individual and business owner has the right to refuse service. It is part and parcel of the inviolability of private property, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of association, the freedom of contract, free enterprise, and the free market. In a free society, business owners, like homeowners, have the right to run their businesses as they choose, including the right to refuse service, and including the right to discriminate on any basis against anyone. I am speaking of a free society—a society that hasn’t existed in the United States for quite some time.” — Laurence M. Vance
George Washington
“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence” — George Washington
“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.” — George Washington
“It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones.” — George Washington
“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.” — George Washington
Robert Wenzel
“Liberty is about liberty, nothing else. It is about freedom to think, say and write whatever one chooses, as long as one does not violate the non-aggression principle. It is about associating with those you want to associate with on your property and having the freedom to tell anyone you don’t want to associate with to get the hell of your property. This is so far from advocating for feminism, again a man-hating, state-loving movement, that it is really hard to understand how the two can be matched up in anyway. It is perversion of the worst kind.” — Robert Wenzel
Oscar Wilde
“Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.” — Oscar Wilde
“Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” — Oscar Wilde
“Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.” — Oscar Wilde
“People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.” — Oscar Wilde
“Public Opinion is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.” — Oscar Wilde