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Sound Bites

QUOTATION, n.

The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.: Spanish Proverb
The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.: Chinese Proverb
Since when do the chickens on the ground shit on the chickens that roost on the top?: Mexican Proverb
Until lions have storytellers, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.: African Proverb
The church is near, but the way is icy; the tavern is far, but I will walk carefully.: Ukranian Proverb
Be happy while you're living, For you're a long time dead.: Scottish Proverb

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.: -- ?
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggy...' until you can find a rock.: -- ?
The meek shall inherit the Earth... the rest of us are going to the stars.: -- ?
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.: -- ?
Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today - I think he's from the CIA.: -- ?
When your only tool is a hammer, you tend to treat everything you find like a nail.: -- ?
Democracy is mob rule, but with income taxes.: -- ?
You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.: -- ?
If you don't believe in Gosh you'll be darned to heck.: -- ?

What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.: Henry David Thoreau
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order, who observe the law when the government breaks it.: Henry David Thoreau, "Slavery in Massachusetts"
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 I also 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 I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house to do me good, I would run for my life.: Henry David Thoreau

Well, Jazz is definately about the possibilities inherant in our system, 'cause when a band plays, it's dealing with a negotiation. But the thing about Jazz is, it's a healing but not by running. It's the type of healing of engagement. It's like, Well, we have a problem. But we're gonna' heal it with some soul. But in order for us to heal it, we have to deal with it. We can't run from it. The more we run from it, we run into it.: Wynton Marasallas, Ken Burns's Jazz
As an American, you can definately live without Jazz. The only thing you need to live is water and some food. The question of Art in general is non-essential ... to live. But now the style that you gonna' be livin' in, I don't know about that. You don't need a bed to sleep. You don't have to cook food to eat it. You don't have to have clothes of a certain style. You don't have to speak a certain way. Most of the things you are surrounded by, you don't need them, but when you have these things around you, it makes you feel good about living in the world. And it gives you something to look forward to, and it also gives you a way to connect yourself with everything that has happened, and the flow of humans on Earth and of civilization.: Wynton Marsallas, Ken Burns's Jazz, Episode Six.
I contend that the Negro is the creative voice of America, is creative America. And it was a happy day when the first unhappy slave was landed on its shores.: Duke Ellington, Ken Burns's Jazz, Episode Seven
Critics are sometimes extraordinarily obtuse. They claim to wanna' hear new things, but new things bother them because they can't categorize them.: Nat Hentoff, Ken Burns's Jazz, Episode 8

The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth; 'I, the state, am the people.': Friedrich Nietzsche
[T]he state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies -- and whatever it has, it has stolen. Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth.: Friedrich Nietzsche
Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.: Friedrich Nietzsche
It is destroyers who set snares for many and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred desires over them.: Friedrich Nietzsche
Many too many are born: the state was invented for the superfluous!: Friedrich Nietzsche
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.: Friedrich Nietzsche

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.: Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964 (1909-1998)
[ but penned by Karl Hess, author of the 1969 Playboy article, "The Death of Politics" -bk]
Anarchists have no quarrel with any institution that contents itself with enforcing the law of equal freedom ... they oppose the State only after first defining it as an institution that claims authority over the non-aggressive individual ...: Benjamin Tucker, Liberty and Politics
Attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell.: Karl Popper
"Saving the world" is just a rationalization for trying to conquer it.: Bob Wallace, "On Not Saving the World"
Liberty should never be mistaken for licence. It is too precious a prize to be degraded by those who accept no obligation to others in the exercise of their freedoms.: Thomas Paine
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.: The Hippocratic Oath
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.: Andre Gide
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.: Seneca
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.: Thomas Paine
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.: Benjamin Franklin
The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.: Woodrow Wilson
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 free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.: George Washington
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients.: Edmund Burke
Republic ... it means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose.: John Wayne
We can foresee a time when . . . the only people at liberty will be prison guards who will then have to lock up one another.: Albert Camus
Every increase in the size of government necessitates a decrease in an individual's freedom.: Christian Harold Fletcher Riley
All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.: George Bernard Shaw
Let the people decide through the marketplace mechanisms 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, former FCC Chairman
We're not really going to get anywhere until we take the criminality out of drugs.: Secretary of State George P. Schultz, PBS, McNeil-Lehrer
News Hour, December 18, 1989
Democracy in America (bourgeois democracy) means nothing more than the domination of the majority over the minority. That is why Black people can cast votes all year long but if the majority is against us, we suffer.: Black Panther Party
... big thieves are ruthless in punishing little thieves.: Diogenes of Sinope
European intellectuals are so deeply indoctrinated that they cannot perceive that they are servants of power. They see themselves as courageous opponents of power who stand up for human rights and so on, a perception that is completely false.: Noam Chomsky
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded, and the amount of eccentricity in a society has been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained.: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.: Samuel Adams (1722-1803)
How fortunate for leaders, that the masses do not think.: Adolf Hitler
Why are people starving? Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes. Therefore the people are starving.: Lao Tzu
Why are the people rebellious? Because the rulers interfere too much. Therefore they are rebellious.: Lao Tzu
The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be.: Lao Tzu
The more rules and regulations, The more thieves and robbers.: Lao Tzu
Therefore, The sage does nothing and people govern themselves, Provokes no one and people are peaceful, Does not interfere and people prosper, Is without desire and people fulfill themselves. The more people are controlled, the less contented they become. But when will leaders understand the significance of this?: Lao Tzu
Liberty is the Mother, not the Daughter of Order.: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it.: Peter Kropotkin, Law and Authority
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.: Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.: George Bernard Shaw
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.: George Bernard Shaw
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.: George Bernard Shaw
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.: George Bernard Shaw (1944), Everybody's Political What's What? ch. 30
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.: George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.: George Bernard Shaw
Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that oour globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course ...: Emma Goldman
Patriotism: A Menace To Liberty
Anarchism and Other Essays
Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.: George Bernard Shaw, Misalliance (1914) p. 85
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.: George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: The Golden Rule'
If you strike a child take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.: George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) `Maxims for Revolutionists: How to Beat Children'
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.: George Bernard Shaw
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.: George Bernard Shaw
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.: George Bernard Shaw
Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.: Gandhi
One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman.: Gandhi
The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form.: Gandhi
Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.: Albert Einstein
My body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm ... it is I who suffers, not the state.: Mark Twain
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.: George Orwell
Possible things are what the powerful do and what the weak yield to.: Thucydides
We both alike know that in the discussion of human affairs the question of justice only enters where there is equal power to enforce it, and that the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what they must.: Thucydides
All state organizations resist the individual's attempt to control any part of our lives, whether it's physical or neurological, through the medical monopoly.: Timothy Leary, Mavericks of the Mind
In a civil society, citizens make the decisions affecting their lives for themselves. In a political society, government officials make many or even most of those decisions for citizens. The citizen's judgment about what is in his or her own best interest is supplanted by the judgment of others, who may not have the citizen's best interests at heart - or even know what those best interests are.: David Bardallis
All political movements are basically anti-creative -- since a political movement is a form of war.: William S. Burroughs
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.: (?)
Accentuate the negative!: Professor Bernardo de la Paz,
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
What we have in this country is socialism for the rich, and free enterprise for the poor.: Gore Vidal
The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion.: Edmund Burke, 1784
Every government program or law eventually requires another program or law to try to make it work. And when that followup program or law doesn't work either, the politicians expand it even further, adding more rules, penalties, surveillance and bureaucrats to administer it.: Gary Snyder, Chairman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party.
Ever notice that when freedom fails, politicians use that failure to justify abandoning freedom, but when the state fails, politicians use the failure to justify expanding the state?: Gary Snyder, Chairman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party.
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them.: Albert Einstein
If Stalin ever told me to urinate, I'm not sure I'd be able to.: Phil Donahue
These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others.: Groucho Marx
One should respect public opinion insofar as it is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.: Bertrand Russell
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.: Howard Aiken
1935 will go down in History! 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 to the future!: Adolf Hitler, prior to confiscating all civilian firearms.
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.: David Hume
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.: John Gilmore
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.: Edgar W. Howe
A little kindness from person to person is better than a vast love for all humankind.: Richard Dehmel
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 only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or to impede their efforts to obtain it.: John Stuart Mill
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
Without using street language, how do you describe those who make a good living by fervently clinging to failed ideas that have killed thousands of people?: James Ostrowski
It is the Nature of Power to be ever encroaching, and converting every extraordinary Power, granted at particular Times, and upon particular Occasions, into an ordinary Power, to be used at all Times, and when there is no Occasion, nor does it ever part willingly with any Advantage....: "Cato's Letters"
It is sure that the workers can never permanently secure themselves in the control of their products except through the method of Liberty; but it is almost equally sure that, unless they are shown what Liberty will do for them in this respect, they will try every other method before they try Liberty.: Benjamin Tucker
"Conservatives want to be your daddy, telling you what to do and what not to do. Liberals want to be your mommy, feeding you, tucking you in, and wiping your nose. Libertarians want to treat you as an adult.": some anonymous libertarian
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
To complain that a free economy favors the rich is like complaining that free speech favors the eloquent.: Joseph Sobran
"Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?": George Carlin
Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.: Justice Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Courte,
Lawrence versus Texas [sodomy laws]
The Democrats cry, "The emperor should subsidize the poor!", Republicans argue, "No, the emperor should subsidize the rich!", Libertarians respond, "The emperor wears no clothes", while Terra Librans ask, "Why do they call that naked man emperor?": Craig Green, Grateful Slave
The exercise of freedom trumps the discomforts of novelty.: Susan Lee
The health of the state and the health of civilization are mutually exclusive concepts. Too bad such thinking can't be written into a country song.: Christopher Westley, Ph.D.,
Terrorism and the Moral Hazard
Society’s tastes in food, music, sports, and other things are equally transient. So, too, is what society deems proper and improper. For this reason alone, it is foolish for any generation to seek legislation to codify what it considers proper. Doing so imposes on future generations the tastes of their predecessors.: Jon Sanders,
The Tyranny of the Proper
Many Europeans see us as heartless and uncaring because we don't expect Uncle Sam to coddle us from cradle to grave.: Lawrence W. Reed
One does not encourage "responsibility" by forcibly restricting the range of people's authority over their own lives.: Butler Shaffer
Juries regularly convict citizens of various victimless crimes such as drug possession, gun possession, money possession (tax evasion) and free trade (smuggling).: James Ostrowski, What's Wrong with Juries
... juries are now packed with people who make a living from government work or depend on the government for much or all of their income. Expect no sympathy from such jurors in your tax evasion trial. You're what's for dinner.: James Ostrowski, What's Wrong with Juries
Everybody has asked the question ... "What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!: Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants"
... it is comfortless only to be able to work for one's own petty glory, when one has imagined for a while that one was working for the public good.: Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.: Arthur C. Clarke
Core principles contain within them the power to slice through billions of other words based on trivia and fallacy. Though we are outnumbered and outgunned on every front, we believe in the power of ideas to make a difference. This is why libertarians write.: Lew Rockwell, Words in Defense of Liberty
Our age of word proliferation has taught us all to be discriminating readers. Some words matter more than others. If we care about the well-being of our children and their children, words in defense of liberty matter the most.: Lew Rockwell, Words in Defense of Liberty
The longtime emphasis of the old liberal tradition with regard to war is this: even the victor loses.: Lew Rockwell, Words in Defense of Liberty
We should pursue a world of minor imperfections rather than accept a world with major imperfections. But we would be wise not to demand political perfection. Messianic societies never attain perfection. They attain only tyranny.: Gary North
In China, the nation is moving in a capitalist direction while still calling it communism. In America, we are moving toward a communist system while calling it freedom. I am not saying I would rather live in China, given how unfree that country still remains. But I would rather live in a "communist" country that is free than a "free" country that is communist.: Steven Greenhut
I don't see myself as conservative, but I'm not ultra-leftist. You build a philosophy of your own. I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone.: Clint Eastwood
Alas! monopoly is as fatal to science as it is to industry. Competition is as necessary a stimulant to economists as it is to the spinners of wool and cotton. In a word, socialist agitation must be given free reign if the French are to learn political economy.: Gustave de Molinari
We've all taken a vow of poverty. It begins, "I pledge allegience to the flag ...": L. Neil Smith, "The Tyranny of Democracy"
As an individualist, it's hard for me to see even one percent as insignificant, especially since that one percent always seems to include me.: L. Neil Smith, "The Tyranny of Democracy"
Rights aren't additive. Systems which assume that they are labor under the false and dangerous assumption that two people have more rights than one.: L. Neil Smith, "The Tyranny of Democracy"
For our purposes, Utopia might just be a place where people look forward to getting up in the morning.: L. Neil Smith, Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision
Heaven is being able to fire a rifle in any direction from my front porch & not hit anyone but trespassers.: L. Neil Smith, Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision
In the absence of laws against duelling, people will be more polite to each other, less inclined to offer unwanted advice. Either that or, thanks to natural selection, they'll soon have faster reflexes.: L. Neil Smith, Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision
Those who commit irrevocable murder will suffer the cruelest punishment of all: exile to a place where there's a government!: L. Neil Smith, Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision
Those few leftists who still believe in a static notion of how things ought to be, which they're willing to impose at bayonet-point, work their butts off making society dull & boring.: L. Neil Smith, Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision
But perhaps there never will be any libertarian talk radio. The left wing socialists own television, where they communicate in pretty pictographs and can emote to their bleeding hearts' content -- instead of offering ideas and logical argument. The right wing socialists own radio, the "Theater of the Mind". It's the internet, in many ways, the city of the future, that belongs to us.: L. Neil Smith
Prostitution involves sex and free enterprise. Which of these are you opposed to?: Joseph A. Hauptman
Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.: L. Neil Smith, The Atlanta Declaration
A system of liberty allows for the individual to be creative, productive, or spiritual on one's own terms, and encourages excellence and virtue. All forms of authoritarianism only exist at the expense of liberty. Yet the humanitarian do-gooders claim to strive for these very same goals. To understand the difference is crucial to the survival of a free society.: Ron Paul, "A Wise Consistency"
None of us, I suspect, really want to go back to some previous age, and encounter the brutality of nature and the rampant ignorance. The comforts and knowledge of our modern age have been a blessing and a legacy of the free market. But what we do want is the renewal of social power, of letting society evolve on its own terms rather than on the dictates of the officials of a central State.: James Leroy Wilson, "Social Power and the New Opposition"
The pursuit of coercive power over others will someday be universally recognized as a symptom of profound mental illness.: L. Neil Smith
Intellectual secession from the ruling regime is the first step to clear, creative thought.: Lew Rockwell, "Libertarianism and the Old Right"
At last, it is clear to anyone who cares about liberty that the real enemy is the ruling regime in government and academia, and that this ruling regime resides within our own borders.: Lew Rockwell, "Libertarianism and the Old Right"
Viewing Keynes as perhaps "the model liberal of the twentieth century" can only render an indispensable historical concept incoherent.: Ralph Raico, "Keynes and the Reds"
[S]uch crimes against another person as enslavement and murder are surely far worse than theft. (For while theft injures the extension of another?s personality, enslavement injures, and murder obliterates, that personality itself.): Murray N. Rothbard,
The Myth of National Defense
The libertarian's basic attitude toward war must then be: It is legitimate to use violence against criminals in defense of one's rights of person and property; it is completely impermissible to violate the rights of other innocent people. War, then, is only proper when the exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals. We may judge for ourselves how many wars or conflicts in history have met this criterion.: Murray N. Rothbard,
The Myth of National Defense
The absurdity ... is that egalitarians suppose that justice requires ignoring whether people deserve what they have and whether they are responsible for what they lack.: John Kekes, "The Absurdity of Egalitarianism"
It is not unjust that millionaires have less than billionaires.: John Kekes, "The Absurdity of Egalitarianism"
Libertarians are just promoting consistency to what most people already accept in general.: Terry Liberty Parker
Today, human civilization is drowning in a sea of lies. We are expected, for example, to believe that the awful events of September 11, 2001 happened, not because we've been murdering people's children and distorting the survivors' lives in the Middle East for almost a century, but because they're all evil over there and envy our freedom -- as if we had that much left to envy.: L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies
If we were only half as interested in liberty as in lust, we would not have half the problems we have.: Dr. Thomas Szasz
There are just two rules of governance in a free society: mind your own business; keep your hands to yourself.: P.J. O'Rourke, speech to the Cato Institute 1993
Without principles which you will adhere to and defend no matter how difficult it becomes (this being the definition of radicalism), you're like a ship without an anchor or rudder, adrift and lost.: L. Neil Smith, "Hollow woman"
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.: The Virginia Declaration of Rights
It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say 'Enough!' Let our tribute to the September dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.: Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain
This is why the American Revolution was successful, because it wasn't one. Secession is inherently more stable than revolution. Funny how it's more reviled than revolution is.: Jesse Ogden, The Reluctant Anarchist
Boys and girls, please be wary of any sales pitch with only two choices, because it would seem this world, and any world, could hold many, many more.: Jesse Ogden's friend Ridgely
FEE's founder, the late Leonard E. Read, once warned of sinking in a sea of "buts." I believe in freedom and self-responsibility, "but" we need some minimum government social "safety net." I believe in the free market, "but" we need some limited regulation for the "public good." I believe in free trade, "but" we should have some form of protectionism for "essential" industries and jobs. Before you know it, Read warned, the case for freedom has been submerged in an ocean of exceptions.": Richard M. Ebeling, "What Friends of Freedom Can Learn From The Socialists"
If you consistently want individual liberty, you're a libertarian -- not a conservative.: Harry Browne, "Freedom First"
It is nonsense to make any pretence of reconciling the State and liberty.: Vladimir Lenin
There are definitely conservatives who are more pro-capitalism than pro-war, and liberals who are more pro-peace than pro-socialism. On the other hand, there are those on the Right who don't mind the welfare state, so long as it accompanies empire; and there are those on the Left who don't mind bombing a few countries and trashing the Fourth Amendment as long as the government also provides a free lunch. The first kind of leftists and rightists should be working together to oppose the second kind, who always manage to be the ones in control of the state and its two parties.: Anthony Gregory, "Down With Left and Right"
What is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.: George Mason, father of the Bill of Rights
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.: Thomas Jefferson's commonplace book, 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment (1764) by criminologist Cesare Beccaria
The real triumph of civilization is the extent to which coercion is banished from human relations.: Anthony Gregory, The Failed War on Terrorism"
Libertarianism in One Sentence: Other people are not your property.: Roderick T. Long
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 Moon is a Harsh Mistress
But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.: Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom... If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.: Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859)
There is only one cure for the evils that newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.: Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859)
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

May it be to the world... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.: Thomas Jefferson
The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.: Thomas Jefferson
No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government.: Thomas Jefferson
It is sinful and tyranical to force a man to pay for the promulgation of ideas with which he disagrees.: Thomas Jefferson
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.: Thomas Jefferson (1799)
If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.: Thomas Jefferson
Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.: Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.: Thomas Jefferson
what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.: Thomas Jefferson
The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that ... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.: Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824
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

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.: Patrick Henry, Virginia's Ratification convention, 1788
The great and direct end of government is liberty. Secure our liberties and privileges, and the end of government is answered. If this be not effectively done, government is an evil.: Patrick Henry, speech against the U.S. Constitution, June 25, 1788
If this be treason, make the most of it!: Patrick Henry
Congress, by the power of taxation, by that of raising an army, and by their control over the militia, have the sword in one hand, and the purse in the other. Shall we be safe without either?: Patrick Henry warning of the dangers of a standing army in the course of his trenchant and prophetic attack on the proposed U.S. Constitution in the Virginia ratifying convention.

History is nothing more than the behind of the present.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
The horrible truth about the War between the States is that it ended with many more individuals enslaved than when it began. Before the war, most Americans were free. They owned their own lives. But by the time it ended, everybody was the property of the state. Men were nothing but replaceable parts in the machinery of war. Women were nothing but factories to replace them. And the government could take your life -- or anything else it wanted -- any time it wanted, for any reason it cared to offer.: L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies
If you study the domestic policies of the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administrations, and compare them with the policies of Adolf Hitler and his mentor, Benito Mussolini, you will eventually come -- however reluctantly -- to the conclusion that World War II was not a conflict between fascism and something else, as advertised, but a conflict between competing brands of fascism.: L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies
I did learn to see through government lies -- "as through a glass darkly" --by taking the number of American B52 bombers the North Vietnamese claimed they had shot down every month, and the smaller number the American government admitted to, and averaging them. After the war, it turned out that my method was correct, within one or two percent.: L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies
What is history? History is a selective recreation of the events of the past, according to a historian's premises regarding what is important and his judgment concerning the nature of causality in human action. This selectivity is a most important aspect of history, and it is this alone which prevents history from becoming a random chronicling of events. And since this selectivity is necessary to history, the only remaining question is whether or not such judgments will be made explicitly or implicitly, with full knowledge of what one considers to be important and why, or without such awareness.: Roy Childs, "Big Business and the Rise of American Statism"
A popular philosophical doctrine holds that the methodology of history is entirely different from the methodology of other sciences. Yet fundamentally the methodology of all sciences is the same -- logic.: Roy Childs, "Big Business and the Rise of American Statism"
Under the Nuremburg standards, Lincoln would have been executed as a war criminal.: Paul Craig Roberts
Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro. This was a duelist religion.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of huge triangular cubes. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
The Boston Tea Party was held at Pearl Harbor.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Christianity was just another mystery cult until Jesus was born.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
During the Dark Ages it was mostly dark.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Spartacus led a slave rebellion in ancient Rome and then appeared in a movie about it later.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Satan Husane invaided Kiwi and Sandy Arabia.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Judyism had one big God named Yahoo.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Plato invented reality. He was teacher to Harris Tottle, author of The Republicans.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him.... After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.: Dribbleglass.com: Revisionist History
Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what has worked with what sounded good. In area after area -- crime, education, housing, race relations -- the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.: Thomas Sowell

"You must accept human liberty whole or entire, or you must give up all cogency of reasoning by which to defend any part of it.": Auberon Herbert
Address on the Choices between Personal Freedom and State Protection, 1880
"Whatever party names we may give ourselves, this is the question always waiting for an answer, Do you believe in force and authority, or do you believe in liberty?": Auberon Herbert
Address on the Choices between Personal Freedom and State Protection, 1880
"Force rests on no moral foundations; you cannot justify it; it rests on no moral basis; you cannot reconcile it with reason and conscience and the higher nature of men.": Auberon Herbert
A Plea for Voluntaryism, 1908
"Between liberty and compulsory taxation there is no possible reconciliation.": Auberon Herbert
A Plea for Voluntaryism, 1908
"Destroy the rights of property, and you will also destroy both the material and the moral foundations of liberty. To all men and women, rich and poor, belong their own faculties, and as a consequence, equally belongs to them all that they can honestly gain in free and open competition, through the exercise of those faculties": Auberon Herbert
A Plea for Voluntaryism, 1908
"Destroy the rights of property, and you will also destroy both the material and the moral foundations of liberty. To all men and women, rich and poor, belong their own faculties, and as a consequence, equally belongs to them all that they can honestly gain in free and open competition, through the exercise of those faculties": Auberon Herbert
The Principles of Voluntaryism and Free Life, 1887
"The nature of man is indivisible; you cannot cut him across, and give one share of him to the state and leave the other for himself.": Auberon Herbert
The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, 1885
"There is no profession which seems to me to be greater or nobler in itself that that which is concerned with human healing, but I am convinced that its interests cannot and will not coincide with those of society, so long as any legal power or any kind of monopoly is left in its hands.": Auberon Herbert
The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, 1885
"Dynamite is not opposed to government; it is, on the contrary, government in its most intensified and concentrated form.": Auberon Herbert
The Ethics of Dynamite, 1894
"There can be no true condition of rest in society, there can be no perfect friendliness amongst men who differ in opinions, as long as either you or I can use our neighbour and his resources for the furtherance of our ideas and against his own.": Auberon Herbert
"Every form of socialism only represents the dominant faction - that and nothing more.": Auberon Herbert
"the socialist is under the unhappy destiny of having to plead for an impossible creed - a creed founded on Old World reactionary and superstitious ideas, that are only waiting half-alive to be decently buried forever by the race that has suffered so much and so long for them . . . ": Auberon Herbert

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.: Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914)

Politics gives the habit of butting into other people’s business an aura of respectability...: Cat Farmer
What new class of criminal will the next wave of political reforms create? What legal behavior will next be classified as criminal for the sake of public health or national security? Whose standards will decide what is crime, and what defines freedom? It's absurd to make such a stink about secondhand smoke and ignore the more deadly, offensive, and ubiquitous effects of secondhand politics.: Cat Farmer
There is no minimum age to take up the foul habit of polluting other people's lives with the odor of sensibilities run amok. Kids may not be able to vote, but they certainly get involved in politics and are often encouraged to do so. Where's the outrage over seducing young minds into the vile and addictive habit of minding everyone else's business?: Cat Farmer
Did you know that politics is the leading cause of war? That politics probably kills more people worldwide than smoking, every year? Do you want your kids taking up such a nasty habit, especially at a tender age? While you're warning them about the dangers of drugs, sex, and alcohol, toss in a word of caution about politics.: Cat Farmer
He who loves peace has already overcome the enemy in his own heart...: Cat Farmer
To protect the unwitting consumer from unscrupulous big business, small business must henceforth be witlessly nipped in the bud.: Cat Farmer
Alas! The priceless may be pawned for a pittance, and the shame is, the purchaser rarely esteems the priceless higher than the pittance he paid for it. Such is politics ... the vote that meant so much to the voter, pawned at the poll booth; perhaps the voter would have held on to it, had he recognized its value. That vote, withheld, might have counted: while the vote that was cast -- like a favor, once granted too readily -- is soon forgotten, and courted no longer.: Cat Farmer
Government is the mechanism by which you mind my business and I mind yours.: Cat Farmer
We even find ourselves mysteriously bamboozled into supporting the absurd pretense that political participation has something to do with self-government. It has nothing to do with self-government in reality, and everything to do with not being able to pinpoint who in fact is really governing us, or to what end. Are we the stooges of a liberal media, or a conservative agenda gone out to eat grass? Or perhaps they really are our stooges, as the theory goes: Wouldn't it be more practical to drop the middlemen and self-govern?: Cat Farmer
Even if a Restraining Order ever did any good, who is going to issue one against the government?: Cat Farmer
Anarchism is my declaration of peace with you. It is a repudiation of the use of coercive power to achieve my own ends, or to abet the domination of any man by his fellows, or over his fellows.: Cat Farmer
Good intentions are no excuse for making prisoners and hostages of people who have less political clout than you do.: Cat Farmer
Anarchism is my statement of intention to mind my own business, and not to interest myself in yours beyond what is welcome, mannerly, and appropriate to our relationship, because I expect the same courtesy from you. We will only care about each other when our relationship is peaceful, and it is not a peaceful act to care to the extent of violating another person's boundaries.: Cat Farmer
If you honestly value diversity, yet believe that it must be administered or doled out by a central authority, you anticipate that the one thing that is most capable of killing diversity, and also has the best incentive to destroy it, will magically act to preserve it.: Cat Farmer
Giving diversity a limited range of acceptable ways in which it can manifest doesn't honor it any more than protest zones honor the right to free speech; that's just another way to quarantine the healthy elements of society against infecting the diseased ones.: Cat Farmer
There are good drugs and bad drugs. Good drugs are the ones that some authority wants you to take. Bad drugs are the ones some authority thinks you shouldn't take.: Cat Farmer
It's your body, but the public health is at stake. The public can deprive individual bodies of medical freedom to protect the well being of the public as a "collective body.: Cat Farmer
It is desirable to take rights away from everyone as individuals, so that we may exercise rights collectively on behalf of everyone's common welfare. By this process, the ability to exercise those rights ends up in the hands of a few people who thereby acquire power over the many, but this isn't nascent tyranny: It's political representation.: Cat Farmer
Since government tramples by and for (and on) the people, no individual is accountable for it or has recourse against it. Everyone may stomp on everyone else with impunity via politics ...: Cat Farmer
God, of course, would heartily approve of our government; after all, He created the Kudzu vine, too.: Cat Farmer
The answer to problems created by coercive government is always more government.: Cat Farmer
Do not pinch yourself: every one will say ouch, now that we've become a "collective body.": Cat Farmer
When the public has gained rights, the individual has lost them.: Cat Farmer
People who presume so far as to take on responsibility for anyone other than their own dependents have exchanged the principle of personal obligation for the prospect of political entitlement.: Cat Farmer
Church and state will never be entirely separate, because they are fraternal twins.: Cat Farmer
Fewer laws to break result in fewer criminals: more laws to break result in more crime. Laws are a leading preventable cause of crime; hence, one suspects, the apt term "criminal law.": Cat Farmer
Does electing a government to kill, steal, lie, or envy in one's stead absolve one of responsibility for aggression?: Cat Farmer
Am I government until proven individual, or individual until proven government? I plead individual.: Cat Farmer
A privileged class of scofflaws engineers laws. A vast, ever expanding assembly line of scofflaws is the product of laws.: Cat Farmer
The manufacture of criminals is an example of profit motive at its most cynical; however profitable a crime industry may be for the state, it puts a terrible social and economic burden upon the people.: Cat Farmer
The more laws, the less justice administered by them; the more regulations, the more burdensome the apparatus of state becomes to maintain.: Cat Farmer
The more criminals produced by the (so-called) "Justice System," the more dangerous society becomes; the once harmless pothead may not be so harmless after he's done fifteen years in federal prison, where he may trade in his peace pipe for brass knuckles, courtesy of the eminently insensible "War on (some) Drugs.": Cat Farmer
Laws are the primary means by which a minority may control a majority, because the enforcement of law rationalizes coercion.: Cat Farmer
The law creates criminals by declaring actions illegal.: Cat Farmer
If society is over-run by criminals, perhaps more scrutiny is warranted regarding the process by which crime is defined, and therefore produced.: Cat Farmer
Fewer crimes will result in fewer criminals.: Cat Farmer
Call a habit you don't like a crying shame; not a crime.: Cat Farmer
It may be your unpopular habit that leaves you clamped in the vice-grips of law tomorrow.: Cat Farmer
New laws are constantly created to address problems caused by previous laws. One bad law begets another, and another, and another.: Cat Farmer
A homeowner who has repeatedly painted his house without stripping down past layers first will understand the consequence of adding layers of fresh laws when the old ones were flaking and should have been stripped.: Cat Farmer
an ostensibly intended function of law was to protect the individual's rights against invasion. When the law does precisely what it claimed to prevent, it is lawlessness; it's become malicious, not judicious.: Cat Farmer
Once passed, laws regarding private behavior are a master key into the safest of sanctuaries.: Cat Farmer
If you don't want to live in a society of criminals, don't advocate for capricious laws against things that people are going to do or own anyway.: Cat Farmer
It's the law that makes the jailbird, not the jailbird that makes the law.: Cat Farmer
Regulations are the prime weapon of social engineers (or behavior modifiers, as you prefer): construct a cage quietly around the lab rats; then the white coats come out of the closet. Let the experiments begin. Life as the subject of someone else's study isn't pretty; object now.: Cat Farmer
A right that is assumed contrary to just principles is privilege; it's absurd to agitate for the rights of the under-privileged unless you first renounce privilege in favor of justice.: Cat Farmer
Privilege is political power, and political power has one object: shedding darkness into the light.: Cat Farmer
When people are not united in respect for each other's rights, they are easily divided into countless interest groups pulling against each other, and soon fall into political mayhem.: Cat Farmer
Laws are not to be confused with Justice.: Cat Farmer
A society that honors justice will not require an ever-growing volume of laws to address injustice.: Cat Farmer
Justice does not deal in coercive action; it measures corrective response.: Cat Farmer
Justice and Liberty are both wallflowers now; the Law has forgotten who it brung to the dance and is doing the two-step with Tyranny, and Uncle Sam has gone carousing with Privilege.: Cat Farmer
What healthy cell can successfully plead innocent in the court of the cancer?: Cat Farmer
Let people talk and act as they please; I must be a speed bump on the road to empire, and I must keep my honor.: Cat Farmer
If my concept of "anarchy" roughly translates to "democracy" in someone else's mind, and their "democracy" translates to "tyranny" in mine, relying on those terms fails to communicate useful meaning, and consulting dictionaries doesn't resolve issues of differing perception or subjective interpretation.: Cat Farmer
It's unsettling to realize that I might have far more in common with someone who speaks so eloquently against the free market and for democracy, than I do with someone whose language is closer to my own.: Cat Farmer
The "free market" (as I define it) is the ebb and flow of transactions that occur peacefully between people who have choices, and voices. It does not mean freedom for monstrous people-eating corporations to prey freely on a captive workforce; it means freedom for people to interact without coercion.: Cat Farmer
"Democracy," in my mind, denotes an involuntary and unsatisfactory arrangement in which government issues itself a limitless credit card, uses it to buy trouble, give generous gifts to its many dependents, gamble on impossible odds, donate to unworthy causes, and make irresponsible investments: literally debiting the taxpayer's account for "services" rendered.: Cat Farmer
The moment a word enters the political vocabulary, it becomes corrupt.: Cat Farmer
The thing that politics is least capable of doing is the one thing that makes a peaceful, harmonious and diverse society possible: agreeing to disagree, or laissez faire. Minding one's own business is rewarding when one is free to mind it; politics makes a public wading pool of everyone's business, and a morass out of everyone's private affairs. There simply is no right to privacy when everything is political: just as stagnant pools breed mosquitos, politics breeds busybodies.: Cat Farmer
People who experience political abuse tend to become future political abusers themselves, in an ongoing and socially devastating cycle.: Cat Farmer
The less your neighbors' politics can control you, the less it matters what they believe.: Cat Farmer
Wars on drugs, poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, deviance, intolerance, terrorism; wars between sexes, wars between races and religions, wars to acquire peace, wars to vanquish hate or destroy evil.... What greater evil could exist than war itself? Why use the greatest evil to rid the world of lesser ones?: Cat Farmer
The men who would govern us are pros at cons to deprive us of voluntary divisions of labor, setting up fines, licenses, regulatory agencies and even prohibitions to serve as "tollbooths" between persons A and B. First go get in line to pay the man at window C.: Cat Farmer
Some time ago I read an article about a city that spent considerably more to install and maintain parking meters than the meters took in ... a few meter maid jobs created, at what cost to local businesses? No job is too small for government to create, and no price too large to stick taxpayers with.: Cat Farmer
Petty tyrant jobs entail enforcement of rules: you can identify a petty tyrant by heavy reliance on variations of the statement "I don't make the rules, it's just my job to enforce them.": Cat Farmer
Unlimited liberty frightens people, so administrative and petty tyrant jobs serve to ensure our safety from the bogeyman of limitless liberty.: Cat Farmer
A state that overtaxes labor and rewards laziness only hastens its own demise, and people who blame laziness on human nature only justify servitude to the state.: Cat Farmer
Self-interest opposes laziness as vehemently as the state opposes self-interest.: Cat Farmer
A free market is the aggregate product of choices that free individuals take responsibility for. A government is the compiled result of discarded choices that people refused to take individual responsibility for and/or denied their neighbors liberty to take responsibility for. A free market is the antithesis of centralized government. Politician, govern thyself.: Cat Farmer
Separation of Church and State seems like a linguistic shell game unless that means bona fide separation of ideology from the force to impose ideological uniformity.: Cat Farmer
A dragon in a dress is still a dragon, and a State with the power to impose ideology is simply a Church operating under a military alias.: Cat Farmer
The State has no incentive to protect the independence of the individual, since it has no power without dependents to justify its protective authority.: Cat Farmer
I object to the idea of making a sport of social dominance - in such a game, the only thing I find less palatable than playing for the losing team is playing for the winning team, and considering the options it suits me best not to play at all or cheer for either side.: Cat Farmer
The whole attitude underlying partisan politics is that freedoms must not be equal; no one gains unless someone else loses. Something seems very wrong to me with the picture of winners who celebrate political victory in the full knowledge that it comes at the expense of both liberty and equality of some, for the benefit of others.: Cat Farmer
Go ahead and give me hell for not voting for my idea of heaven, but don't tell me to "vote my conscience" when it told me not to vote. Vote your conscience, but mind your own politics - my voting is not your affair, and my conscience does not take dictation from yours.: Cat Farmer
Maybe he'll clap when his "overseers" come for everyone he disagrees with, but who will clap when it's his turn? That old picture of Nero fiddling while Rome burned insists on doing a flip-flop in my mind... what if Nero had burned while Rome was fiddling? Are fiddles on Mr. S's no-buy list too? All hail fiddle rights, they're safe as long as they're in Nero's hands...? Hail no!: Cat Farmer
Hail no!: Cat Farmer

Who knows what cosmic screen saver pattern we're making: from the right distance.: Paul Knatz
I was moved by it: and I resented it. Fascinated silence from the circle. They showed the nice Edleweiss Austrians, Yay, and the brutish Nazis, Boo. I felt like my reflexes had been accurately mapped and were being meticulously exploited in an utterly meaningless exercise of mastery. No learning was taking place. Neither Hollywood nor I risked anything.: Paul Knatz on The Sound of Music
Those who see the Institutions' ass are beneath the Institutions' notice.: Paul Knatz
People planning to conquer the world always have the size wrong: radically, fatally wrong. The size, the scope, they always have everything important wrong.: Paul Knatz
To be a lawyer you have to fail a morality test; to write for the media you have to fail English and logic.: Paul Knatz
Every time the citizen goes to the Bureaucracy, there's a different bureaucrat. Bureacrat2 has no knowledge of what you said to Bureaucrat1 (and if he does, the Bureaucracy can substitute Bureaucrat3, Bureaucrat4 ....) So only the Bureaucracy's records count. The citizens' experience gets erased again and again.: Paul Knatz
.. how easy civilization finds it to be honest about the politics and society of three or four generations ago, where no one can sue or be sued, no one left alive to defend or deny. That's why it's a good thing empires don't last: so that other empires can talk bad about them.: Paul Knatz
Theory is the highest form of knowledge a sentient creature can aspire to.: Paul Knatz
Myth is the only place most of us humans ever live.: Paul Knatz
As long as you've got the H-bombs, you can serve the devil and call him God.: Paul Knatz
I don't believe there are any political solutions to our problems.: Paul Knatz
In theory authority can be identified with truth and the right; in practice, authority is indistinguishable from power.: Paul Knatz
Kleptocracy is the last word in having the last word.: Paul Knatz
Nature already contains all the laws either life or the physical world (or God) can ever need.: Paul Knatz
Don't interfere should be our entire politics.: Paul Knatz
No government, no matter how dictatorial, can do much damage without the public as an active partner-in-crime.: Paul Knatz
...in order to be heard you first have to prove that you have nothing to say.: Paul Knatz
The school's advertised purpose is to educate. Schools are inefficient and incompetent as well as inappropriate for education. The school's actual purpose is to domesticate. There the schools shine. A kleptocracy that wants trained sheep for citizens really gets its money's worth from a school.: Paul Knatz
Kleptocratic society is set up so that those who commit the greatest crimes sit in judgment on those who didn't.: Paul Knatz
Is there any difference between a protection racket and a government?: Paul Knatz
Satan promised Eve things he didn't have to give or sell. Now governments promise us the same things.: Paul Knatz
The thieves, the street gang ... can take my freedom away. How is government different from a street gang?: Paul Knatz
Dogma must die.: Paul Knatz
There is no knowledge; only belief. But of course some beliefs are better based than others.: Paul Knatz
Opinion which is in accord both with experience and theory is called knowledge.: Paul Knatz
Knowledge: belief in accord with both the best available facts and the best available theories.: Paul Knatz
The responsible parent trains its young to be independent; The pathological state trains the young it's kidnapped to stay dependent.: Paul Knatz
If success isn't an option, it's still best to try anyway.: Paul Knatz
Society: a synergy of conspiracies.: Paul Knatz
There's no deception like self-deception.: Paul Knatz
What's wrong with us cannot be brought up in polite society.: Paul Knatz
Received wisdom is immune to learning. Experience doesn't count wherever authority is enthroned.: Paul Knatz
There are no paths to truth; only paths shown to avoid known errors.: Paul Knatz
"Sticks and stones may break my bones" but names are what we go to war over.: Paul Knatz
School is artificial scarcity, factitious expense.: Paul Knatz
How does one know what (meta) game(s) one is in? One Don't!: Paul Knatz
All have some ability to determine the truth. Some have a genius for it. All have some ability to deny the truth. Some have a genius for it.: Paul Knatz
The function of law is to protect the successful thefts of the past from present ambition.: Paul Knatz
People trust their governments to cheat on their behalf.: Paul Knatz
Standards are nice: there are so many to choose from.: Paul Knatz
We don't need sound reasoning: We're the good guys.: Paul Knatz
After the flood, universities will be filled with professors teaching arc-building.: Paul Knatz
How can there be "science" in a society where the "scientists" beg for funding from the illusionists?: Paul Knatz
The function of myth is to tell the truth: so simply, so blatantly, that no one gets it.: Paul Knatz
Too young to have a clue, we're sent to church where we're trained to say things that will become lies in time if they're not already lies at the time.: Paul Knatz
I was brought up to believe we were nice. I grew up believing that I am nice. Now I'm not at all sure. I've never been handed the power of life and death. Who knows what I'd do with it if I were. Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin might come to look puny compared to pk's potential devastations. If I did it at all, I'd want to kill in the billions. Genocide the genocides.: Paul Knatz
Has mankind ever seen anything more beautiful than the bomb? The awesome mushroom. More beautiful than God.: Paul Knatz
I'd like to kill everyone who is or ever has been a racist. I'd like to kill everyone who is or ever has been a religious bigot. I know, I know: then I'd have to kill myself too. That's OK. I'd do it.: Paul Knatz
We're programed to believe that there must be a solution: one we won't have to pay for. Real philosophy doesn't have a chance: against politics.: Paul Knatz
Monotheism is like socialism, rather socialism is like monotheism. Can't stand all those competing plans? Can't stand all those gods, all those taboos? Centralize! Put all your gods in one big basket. One god, one state, one committee, one leader, one plan. That anarchist rap works as well for theology as it does for politics. Politics is theology, just way retarded in time.: Paul Knatz
If I can get far far far enough into my own head, maybe God will leave me alone.: Paul Knatz
If government is always onshore, let's all go offshore.: Paul Knatz
Science can prove error, not truth. Plagiarism can be proved, originality cannot. Theft can be proved; not ownership. One could prove that the devil isn't God, God himself could not prove that God is God.: Paul Knatz
If you're going to be an idiot, which we all are, it helps to be a genius at it.: Paul Knatz

NATIONAL SECURITY IS THE CHIEF CAUSE OF NATIONAL INSECURITY!!!: Hagbard Celine
THOSE WHO EMPLOY SECRET POLICE MUST MONITOR THEM TO BE SURE THEY ARE NOT ACQUIRING TOO MUCH POWER.: Hagbard Celine
IN RUSSIA, THE GOVERNMENT IS TERRIFIED OF PAINTERS AND POETS!: Hagbard Celine
"IF THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T TRUST THE PEOPLE, WHY DOESN'T IT DISSOLVE THEM AND ELECT A NEW PEOPLE?": Hagbard Celine
COMMUNICATION IS POSSIBLE ONLY BETWEEN EQUALS.: Hagbard Celine
NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING, OR IF THEY DO, THEY ARE CAREFUL TO HIDE THE FACT!: Hagbard Celine

It is the Fundamentalism in any group, or any individual, that causes me alarm; and nobody's Fundamentalism alarms me as much as my own, whenever I spot a bit of it skulking around in the back rooms of my skull.: Robert Anton Wilson, The New Inquisition
Dr. Leary, like Dr. Reich, went to prison. And now other researchers are forbidden by law to check or test his models.: Robert Anton Wilson, The New Inquisition
Belief is an obsolete Aristotelian category.: Dr. Jack Sarfatti to Robert Anton Wilson, as quoted in The New Inquisition
I don't trust clergymen much, myself. Some of them are as dogmatic as some scientists.: Robert Anton Wilson, The New Inquisition
Try to think, just for a moment ... Try. Thoughts are the one phenomenon still private in this world; they won't come around and arrest you at once. You have nothing to lose but mental chains. You might have a world of phsychological freedom ... to gain.: Robert Anton Wilson, The New Inquisition
We are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to walk with a perpetual mental crouch.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
Anti-Semitism is a complex aberration, of many facets and causes, but in its classic form (the "Jewish Bankers' Conspiracy") it simply holds that a hostile gene-pool controls the tickets for bio-security. Such paranoia is inevitable in a money economy; junkies have similar myths about who controls the supply of heroin.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
Welfare-ism, socialism, totalitarianism, etc. represent attempts, in varying degrees of rationality and hysteria, to re-create the tribal bond by making the State stand-in for the gene-pool.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
Mary Baker Eddy may have been exaggerating slightly when she said, "All illness is manifested fear;" but holistic medicine more and more recognizes that if that damned word "all" is replaced by a more tentative "most," Mrs. Eddy was close to the facts.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
Thus, a genius is one who, by some internal process, breaks through to Circuit VII -- a minor neurological miracle loosely called "intuition" -- and comes back down to the third circuit with the capacity to paint a new semantic map, build a new model of experience. Needless to say, this is always a profound shock to those still trapped in the old robot-imprints, and is generally considered a threat to territory ...: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
Are the most important scientific ideas of 1997 going to be published in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN in 1997, or 2017?: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
It is sometimes mistakenly stated that there are no universal sexual taboos. This is not true. There is one omni-purpose taboo which exists in every tribe. That taboo stipulates that sexuality shall NOT be unregulated by the tribe.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
"Give us the child until he is five, and we will have him for life," bragged some 18th Century Jesuit. The Jesuit order of that time, as Aldus Huxley later noted sardonically, educated Voltaire, Diderot, and the Marquis de Sade; obviously their techniques of brain-programming were not perfect.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
It requires delicate neurological know-how to keep one's sense of humor in the secret police matrix.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
It does not matter whether any or all of these "heretics" were right or wrong. Scientific truth is only determined after a generation or more of research; it is not determined by throwing the dissenters in prison or burning their books.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
There is nothing rationally desirable that cannot be achieved sooner if rationality itself increases. This is virtually a tautology, but we must consider the corollary: Work to achieve Intelligence Intensification is work to achieve our other sane and worthwhile goals.: Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.: Robert Anton Wilson
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games ...: Robert Anton Wilson
It's hard to communicate with somebody when he thinks you're a diabolical mind-control agent and you're convinced that he's a little bit paranoid.: Robert Anton Wilson, Mavericks of the Mind
I believe everything admirable in the modern world results from the use of Argument by Experiment together with Argument by Logic (without making an Idol of either), whereas everything heinous and terrible results from the persistence of the older habits of Arguments by Authority, Intimidation, Self Interest and Legal Precedent, or the various forms of calling the other side sons of bitches.: Robert Anton Wilson

In contrast to all other thinkers, left, right, or in-between, the libertarian refuses to give the State the moral sanction to commit actions that almost everyone agrees would be immoral, illegal, and criminal if committed by any person or group in society.: Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto
But the libertarian sees no inconsistency in being "leftist" on some issues and "rightist" on others. On the contrary, he sees his own position as virtually the only consistent one, consistent on behalf of the liberty of every individual. For how can the leftist be opposed to the violence of war and conscription while at the same time supporting the violence of taxation and government control? And how can the rightist trumpet his devotion to private property and free enterprise while at the same time favoring war, conscription, and the outlawing of noninvasive activities and practices that he deems immoral? And how can the rightist favor a free market while seeing nothing amiss in the vast subsidies, distortions, and unproductive inefficiencies involved in the military-industrial complex?: Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto
Individualists have always been accused by their enemies of being "atomistic" -- of postulating that each individual lives in a kind of vacuum, thinking and choosing without relation to anyone else in society. This, however, is an authoritarian straw man; few, if any, individualists have ever been "atomists." On the contrary, it is evident that individuals always learn from each other, cooperate and interact with each other; and that this, too, is required for man's survival. But the point is that each individual makes the final choice of which influences to adopt and which to reject, or of which to adopt first and which afterwards. The libertarian welcomes the process of voluntary exchange and cooperation between freely acting individuals; what he abhors is the use of violence to cripple such voluntary cooperation and force someone to choose and act in ways different from what his own mind dictates.: Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto
We have been told countless times by pundits and political scientists that the genius of America and of our party system is its lack of ideology and its "pragmatism" (a kind word for focusing solely on grabbing money and jobs from the hapless taxpayers).: Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto
Current free-market economics is all too rife with appeals to gradualism; with scorn for ethics, justice, and consistent principle; and with a willingness to abandon free-market principles at the drop of a cost-benefit hat. Hence, current free-market economics is generally envisioned by intellectuals as merely apologetics for a slightly modified status quo, and all too often such charges are correct.: Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects.: Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto
Take, for example, the institution of taxation, which statists have claimed is in some sense really "voluntary." Anyone who truly believes in the "voluntary" nature of taxation is invited to refuse to pay taxes and to see what then happens to him.: Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto
There is no existing entity called "society"; there are only interacting individuals. To say that "society" should own land or any other property in common, then, must mean that a group of oligarchs -- in practice, government bureaucrats -- should own the property, and at the expense of expropriating the creator or the homesteader who had originally brought this product into