bkmarcus.com : quotes : government

In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! The thing itself is the abuse!

Edmund Burke, Vindication of the Natural Society, 1756

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Harry Truman

Drug control is a thin pretext, and getting thinner, to increase police powers and to brand dissent as criminal.

William S. Burroughs

"The first problem for the government in carrying out an industrial policy is that we actually know precious little about identifying, before the fact, a 'winning' industrial structure."

Charles L. Schultze, President Jimmy Carter's chief economic adviser

Political people don't solve stuff -- not really. Political people are like guys in pop music. Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that's going to stay at the top of the list forever. I don't have many illusions about this, but I'm not cynical about it.

Bruce Sterling

What would you think of someone who said, "I would like to have a cat provided it barked"? Yet your statement that you favor a government provided it behaves as you believe desirable is precisely equivalent. The biological laws that specify the characteristics of cats are no more rigid than the political laws that specify the behavior of government agencies once they are established. The way the government behaves and the adverse consequences are not an accident, not a result of some easily corrected human mistake, but a consequence of its constitution in precisely the same way that a meow is related to the constitution of a cat.

From "Free To Choose" by Milton Friedman

Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.

The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989

Having "a little government" is precisely identical to being "a little pregnant." At first, it doesn't show. After a while, it gets a little bigger. Ultimately, it causes a lot of unavoidable pain—and never really goes away for the rest of your life.

Government in this country has become like the parasitic 35-year-old son living in his parents' basement. They can ignore him, they can pretend he doesn't exist, but ultimately it's clear that the only thing he's doing is sucking away their money and providing precious little in return.

William Stone, III

Government is becoming an uglier caricature of its former unattractive self.

Catfarmer

Democracy--Everyone eventually gets a chance to make someone else miserable.

Catfarmer

We hold each other hostage as we attempt to extort some meaning out of life.

Catfarmer

[The] leash may be invisible, but it will only grow shorter.

Catfarmer

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises a formidable outcry in defence of custom."

Thomas Paine, 'Common Sense'

The people who signed the pretended "U.S. Constitution," called themselves "We The People... " They were lying. They signed it as individuals. And they never signed it in any way to make it a binding contract.

THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT by Frederick Mann

[T]hose who attack the rationale of the game... are its most formidable adversaries.

James J. Martin,
Introduction to Lysadner Spooner's No Treason

Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government. That is, libertarians believe that murder is murder and does not become sanctified by reasons of State if committed by the government. We believe that theft is theft and does not become legitimated because organized robbers call their theft "taxation." We believe that enslavement is enslavement even if the institution committing that act calls it "conscription." In short, the key to libertarian theory is that it makes no exceptions in its universal ethic for government.

Murray N. Rothbard,
Six Myths About Libertarianism

[T]he political confidence trick, whether monarchic or presidential, oligarchic or democratic, whether necessary or unnecessary, is at any rate effective, because most people are foolish and gullible.

Ferdinand Mount, The Theater of Politics

The theory is comforting: they are our hired servants. The practice is humiliating; we are their wayward wards, to be comforted, cajoled, bullied, but never to be treated as equals, never to be told more of the truth than suits their present purposes, and too often to be told off-white lies.

Ferdinand Mount, The Theater of Politics

Because most people obey the words of politicians and bureaucrats, they don't have to use their guns all that often.

THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT by Frederick Mann

Most people believe that some of the noises and scribbles emanating from the mouths and pens of the lawyers, politicians, and bureaucrats (masquerading as "government" so-called) are somehow special and constitute "the law." This is a grotesque superstition.

THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT by Frederick Mann

The first superstition that keeps "government" in place is the belief that because practically all of us use certain words without any thought as to their validity and the consequences they produce ... therefore these words are valid and represent reality.

THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT by Frederick Mann

You have a choice between the natural stability of gold and the honesty and intelligence of the members of government. And with all due respect for those gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, vote for gold.

George Bernard Shaw

A policeman is someone who writes your name down after you've been robbed.

Russell Baker

The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.

Frank Zappa

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

Denis Diderot

When you advocate any government action, you must first believe that violence is the best answer to the question at hand.

Allen Thornton, Laws of the Jungle

The weakness of fascism and communism consists in their turning citizens into slaves. Slaves have nothing to gain and nothing to lose.

The strength of democracy is that it encourages the common man to believe himself a ruler, that is, an oppressor of his neighbor.

Allen Thornton, Laws of the Jungle

In government, nothing succeeds like failure... Against the state, nothing fails like success.

Allen Thornton, Laws of the Jungle

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

Voltaire

Well, he didn't know what to do, so he decided to look at the government, to see what they did, and scale it down and run his life that way.

Laurie Anderson

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States, United States supreme Court, 1928

The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong. The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.

Alexis de Tocqueville

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir? We Americans are the only ones who didn't get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals.

Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning Was the Command Line, p. 53.

It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income.

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard?s Almanack, 1758

I like to pay taxes. It is purchasing civilization.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Fabianism can be summarized in one sentence: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." It always means this: "I'm here to help myself to whatever you own that is not hidden, and in exchange, I promise to do the same thing to your next-door neighbors."

Gary North

Nothing says 'limited government' like secession.

your most faithful and obedient servant, Alan Turin

[W]hoever came up with this idea of a mass democracy just wasn't thinking things through very clearly. Nothing runs well by majority vote, to say nothing of the fact that a truly free society shouldn't be "run" at all; it works on its own without would-be masters-and-commanders grasping at the helm.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.,
Illusions of Power

Democracy? Whether the idea was always a mistake, it takes a really stupid leap of faith to believe that it is anything but a failure right now.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.,
"My Early Vote Against Everyone"

The worst part of democracy is that it grants the state the luxury of believing that we approve of the system as it is.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.,
"My Early Vote Against Everyone"

There is nothing more dangerous than a politician with a mandate.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.,
"My Early Vote Against Everyone"

Some people say that voting is still a good idea if only to apply a measure of justice for the criminals currently in charge. Toss them out and teach them a lesson! That sounds like a good idea but the problem is that voting against someone always means voting for someone else.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.,
"My Early Vote Against Everyone"

The quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.

Charles Dickens

You can talk about "social justice" all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get reelected That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.

Thomas Sowell

If one does not carefully trace the problems back to their roots in a previous intervention, it is very easy to believe that yet another intervention is just the ticket for rectifying them.

Gene Callahan

It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last forever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization -- is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential, but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government, so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct.

Herbert Spencer

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Aesop

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

Harry S Truman

Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason?
Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason .

Sir John Harrington

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

Mark Twain

DEMOCRACY, n: The recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.

E. B. White

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

Douglas Casey, Classmate of William Jefferson Clinton at Georgetown University (1992)

Big government abroad is incompatible with small government at home. To the extent that we cheer war, we are cheering domestic socialism and our own eventual destruction as a civilization.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 37

Never have so many rich people who have been given so much by government demanded so much more.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 116

What is more troubling, and far more difficult to unravel, is the situation we currently face, in which a regime knows and embraces a partisan language of economic liberty while promoting the opposite.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 131

But overall, my favorite President is William Henry Harrison. He keeled over shortly after his inauguration.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 181

One wonders how it is possible that in wartime, all the rules of civilized life, all the lessons learned from history, all the checks on power that have been established over the centuries, are thrown onto the trash heap.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 201

Show me a student who aspires to enter the civil service these days, and I'll show you a failure.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 264

In every case we see stagnation, waste, vast bureaucracy, and lack of innovation, that is, we see the hand of the State.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 277

In all of human history, philosophers have sought to find a system of social organization that truly embodies the will of the people. With the market economy, we have that system.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 280

The ultimate lesson is that we cannot trust the State to do what it says it will do.

Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 325

When the Democrats wanted to torpedo Richard Nixon's candidacy for President in 1960, they put up a cheap, mass-produced drawing of him, with this phrase: "Would you buy a used car from this man?" Because of the closeness of that election, that poster probably cost him the Presidency. The suggestion was that Nixon was more crooked than a used car dealer. As it turned out three elections later, he was.

Gary North

When a regime that rules in our name engages in any form of mass killing, the primary question that will be asked of us is: did you speak out against it? Did you do all that you could do to stop it? Or did you remain silent?

Lew Rockwell, Words in Defense of Liberty

The word regulation, properly understood, should evoke thoughts such as protection of businesses from competitors, special privileges for established firms, and government efforts to exploit consumers.

Jim Cox, The Concise Guide To Economics

A decline in the power, might, and influence of the US is not the same thing as a decline in America; quite the opposite. The only real downside is the transition: the US government may increasingly behave like a dying and rabid animal, posing a danger to its random victims. But once you hear the "thud" of the final fall, the world will be more peaceful and prosperous than ever before.

Lew Rockwell, A World Recreated

If government organized mass relief is the crutch of a society crippled by proletarianism and enmassment, then we should direct all our efforts to being able to do without this crutch. This is true progress, from whatever point of view we look at it. It can be measured by our success on steadily widening the area of individual and voluntary group providence at the expense of compulsory public providence.

Wilhelm Roepke

In spite of its alluring name, the welfare state stands or falls by compulsion. It is compulsion imposed upon us with the state's power to punish noncompliance. Once this is clear, it is equally clear that the welfare state is an evil the same as every restriction of freedom.

Wilhelm Ropke

... it costs a great deal to finance injustice, domestic violence, and general illfare.

Gary North

If every proposal could be made to bear the burden of proving (not just asserting) that it actually advances the general welfare, we would have come a long way toward restraining government.

Gary M. Galles , "Half-Truths or Consequences", The Freeman

Perhaps we should adopt a variant of the ancient Greek practice and require legislators who propose new programs to do so with a noose around their necks, ready to be hanged if those programs do not advance the general welfare.

Gary M. Galles , "Half-Truths or Consequences", The Freeman

Almost everyone in prison is wrongfully convicted, even the guilty.

Paul Craig Roberts, "Fake Crimes"

The government schools long ago gave up teaching anything significant about the founding fathers, the Constitution, and the philosophy of limited government -- other than to trash and demean them.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo "Be Patriotic: Don't Vote"

In a democracy it is not in the state's best interest to educate its own citizens about the virtues of limited government, and ours doesn't.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo "Be Patriotic: Don't Vote"

Belief in the Constitution is essentially a lost cause.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo "Be Patriotic: Don't Vote"

In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse!

Edmund Burke, "A Vindication of Natural Society"

Today, as it has been since the late 1950s, the menace consists of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. Back in the 30s, it was, well, sex again -- and alcohol and jazz. Prohibition had laid an egg, you were expected to believe, not because it was one of the butt-stupidest political ideas in the history of mankind, but because people had stubbornly and upatriotically refused to give up their individuality and the choices that naturally come with it.

L. Neil Smith, "Empire of Lies"

Some claim that majoritarianism, despite its faults, is an alternative preferable to physical conflict. They're wrong: majoritarianism is physical conflict. Elections are a process of counting fists ... Majoritarianism, to put it straightforwardly, possesses the full measure of nobility manifested by any other form of extortion.

L. Neil Smith, "The Tyranny of Democracy"

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.

George W. Bush on Meet The Press, 2004 February 08

... the first money the United States government ever spent was a $20,000 check from a Dutch bank, drawn on an account that didn't exist. ... Apparently this piece of financial chicanery was the doing of one Alexander Hamilton ... who also favored deficit spending and maintaining a handsome national debt because he reasoned that if the government owed people money, they'd have an interest in making sure it survived. ... Thus the American Empire was born in the shadow of a lie.

L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies

Human civilization is drowning in a sea of lies. We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping.

L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies

Human civilization is drowning in a sea of lies. We're expected to overlook the fact that, although the majority of the hijackers on September 11 were Saudis, this government chose to invade Afghanistan -- which just happens to lie in the path of an oil pipeline George W. Bush and his friends have been planning to build for more than a decade.

L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies

We are all drowning in a sea of lies. During the Vietnam War, statists in academia and the media asserted that government has a right -- perhaps even a duty -- to lie in order to preserve itself. And without a doubt, if you could go back in time and remove each and every lie the government has ever told, the United States of America -- at least as we know it -- would cease to exist. I'll remind you all, however, that for government, existence is a privilege, not a right. And it is a privilege that, according to Thomas Jefferson, may be revoked at any time. Or should be revoked at regular intervals.

L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Children of the American Revolution, for some time, now, our political system has selected exclusively for evil, stupid, and crazy bastards who can't draw a breath without telling a lie.

L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies

While many soldiers, airmen, etc. died in combat believing they were defending our freedom, they were misguided in this belief.

Brad Edmonds, "Four Reasons We Should Abolish the Military"

What made a slave a slave was that he could not secede from his owner's governance and go into business for himself. What makes the states and all their citizens slaves to the union today is that we are not allowed to secede and govern ourselves.

Brad Edmonds, "Four Reasons We Should Abolish the Military"

The US military, in the only action it ever took that directly affected American liberty, prevented it -- prevented the secession of several states by killing 300,000 of their citizens, then over several years enforcing draconian martial law over the survivors.

Brad Edmonds, "Four Reasons We Should Abolish the Military"

The only impact the standing military has on our freedom is to take it away.

Brad Edmonds, "Four Reasons We Should Abolish the Military"

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right -- a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.

Abraham Lincoln's 1848 defense of the right of secession

One of the benefits of historical knowledge is that it brings perspective. Things that seem obvious look quite different when you realize that they are of recent origin. Things that seem inevitable do not appear so when you look at their past. One of the best examples of this is the size of modern government.

Stephen Davies, "Does Government Always Have to Grow?"

When the Edsel proved a flop, Ford dropped it. If the automaker had the philosophy and clout of government, it would have kept those production lines running full time, and passed laws requiring citizens to buy the things.

Paul Hein, "What's Next?"

Refusing even to consider the failure of our own policies is outrageous. Only in the context of commercial benefits to the special interests and the military-industrial complex, molded with patriotic jingoism, can one understand why we pursue such a foolish policy.

Ron Paul, "A Wise Consistency"

Just mention terrorism and the American people are expected to grovel and allow the war hawks to do whatever they want to do.

Ron Paul, "A Wise Consistency"

The pain of recognizing that the ongoing war is an example of what the CIA calls blowback and an unintended consequence of our foreign policy is a great roadblock to ever ending the war.

Ron Paul, "A Wise Consistency"

The greatest open-minded idea I'm aware of is to know that one does not know what is best for others, whether it's in economic, social, or moral policy, or in the affairs of other nations. Believing one knows what is best for others represents the greatest example of a closed mind.

Ron Paul, "A Wise Consistency"

Governments are no more capable of running an economy made fair for everyone than they are of telling the individual what is best for their spiritual salvation.

Ron Paul, "A Wise Consistency"

If the President and Congress cannot honestly vow to uphold and protect the Constitution, how can one in good conscience, who understands the spirit and letter of the Constitution, enlist or take a commission in any branch of the United States military?

Casey Khan, "Why I Didn't Reenlist"

The point is, we're all criminals-in-formation, as the State sees things.

Burton S. Blumert

The law is created by demonstrable criminals, enforced by demonstrable criminals, interpreted by demonstrable criminals, all for demonstrably criminal purposes.

L. Neil Smith

We have always depended on wise and courageous civilians. It is the military, the politicians, and the media that make me nervous.

Gore Vidal, "Black Tuesday"

No one can be patriotic or pretend to love his country and despise his government.

President Bill Clinton

In 1939, could a German have been considered unpatriotic for detesting Nazis?

Gore Vidal

Frederick II begins his main treatise of strategy, his General Principles of Warfare, with the exposition of fourteen rules on how to hinder desertion.

Ludwig von Mises, The Origins of Nazism

One of the reasons why [Winston] Churchill admired Italian Fascism was Churchill believed that Mussolini had found a formula that would neutralize the appeal of communism, namely super-nationalism with a social welfarist appeal. This is a domestic formula for power that still appeals today, if the [George W.] Bush Administration is any indication.

Adam Young, "The Real Churchill"

Without principles or scruples, Churchill as a prominent member of the Liberal party government naturally played a role in the hijacking of liberalism from its roots in individualism, laissez-faire, free trade and bourgeois morality, to its transformation into the "New Liberalism" as a proxy for socialism and the omnipotent state in Britain and in America.

Adam Young, "The Real Churchill"

War is to Washington what blood is to vampires.

Lew Rockwell, "The Emperor Bush Wages War" (1990)

One of my rules is never trust a reporter in a safari jacket.

Lew Rockwell, "The Emperor Bush Wages War" (1990)

I've never seen a congressional estimate that couldn't be doubled and still be low.

Lew Rockwell, "The Emperor Bush Wages War" (1990)

But isn't this unpatriotic? Aren't I, as a loyal American, required to support a federal war? No, true patriotism means love of America, her history, her people, her land, her culture, and her values -- not love of their enemy, the U.S. government.

Lew Rockwell, "The Emperor Bush Wages War" (1990)

As the Founding Fathers knew, we can't have a constitutional republic at home and an empire abroad.

Lew Rockwell, "The Emperor Bush Wages War" (1990)

You've got to give the Devil his due. Saddam Hussein saved our budget.

unnamed Pentagon official, "The Emperor Bush Wages War" (1990)

The United States has no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.

U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie to Saddam Hussein, "The Emperor Bush Wages War" (1990)

You shall not steal unless you use the government as your intermediary, in which case it's not stealing, it's social justice.

Robert Higgs, "Moral Precepts for Modern Americans"

So, we can expect from here on to be bombarded with annual observances that are on the one hand tearfully sentimental and on the other hand implicitly if not explicitly jingoistic. The core message will remain: weep, but don't just sit there crying forever; get up and kill somebody -- or better yet, support with great cheer your government as it does the killing in your name.

Robert Higgs, "What's So Special About Those Killed By Hijackers on September 11, 2001?"

And now, nearly sixty, I find that
    I am once again a stranger
    in my native land, wondering what
    it is that makes us see danger
    way out there, when it's always so much closer to home.

Robert Higgs, "A Stranger in My Native Land"

The worst thing about the Nanny State is that Nanny needs babies to mind, and if she can't find them, she'll make them out of the materials at hand.

L. Neil Smith

Policemen prevent crime the way a crowing rooster brings the sunrise.

L. Neil Smith

A panhandler is far more moral than corporate welfare queens....The panhandler doesn't enlist anyone to force you to give him money. He's coming up to you and saying, "Will you help me out?" The farmers, when they want subsidies, they're not asking for a voluntary transaction. They go to a congressman and say, "Could you take his money and give it to us?" That's immoral.

Walter E. Williams

Violence, bloodshed, bombs, and coups -- my goodness, how disorderly is the world. Might US foreign policy have something to do with it?

Lew Rockwell

Why does the US keep being surprised by events? Because the government, whether at home or abroad, acts like an irresponsible teenager driving a fast car. The decision calculus is myopic in the extreme. No thought is given to the effect of its decisions on others, and no uncertainties are ever presumed. When the crash occurs, there are fleeting moments of regret, but no actual learning. Ultimately, the US knows it can always flee the scene of the crime.

Lew Rockwell

Think about whether you would want the US military in your hometown telling you what to do, and then apply the Golden Rule. That thought process is a good beginning to thinking clearly about foreign policy.

Lew Rockwell

All my life I kept trying to go up in society. Where everything higher up was legal. But the higher I go, the crookeder it becomes. Where the hell does it end?

Michael Corleone, Godfather III

If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.

Joseph Sobran

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

Chief Justice John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

Thank God we don''t get as much government as we pay for.

Will Rogers

If a farming bill is passed by a Republican Congress, it is called the "Freedom To Farm Act." If it is passed by a Democratic Congress, it is called the "Family Farm Fairness Act." The text can be identical; only the coloring changes.

Lew Rockwell, "Libertarianism and the Old Right"

A tax-funded protection agency ... is a contradiction in terms: it is an expropriating property protector and can only lead to ever more taxes and less protection.`

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Myth of National Defense

[To claim] that a tax collecting government can legitimately protect its citizens against aggression is to contradict oneself, since such an entity starts off the entire process by doing the very opposite of protecting those under its control.

Walter Block, The Myth of National Defense

[The State] forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or alien.

Albert Jay Nock, 1928, On Doing the Right Thing

"Your papers, please" is not a phrase that Americans have been willing to tolerate.

Gary North, The Abolition of Grandparents

Parents say, "I never want to move in with my kids. I don?t want to be a burden." Then they vote for Social Security and Medicare, i.e., stick it to everyone else?s kids. They substitute the State for the family as the legal caregiver.

Gary North, The Abolition of Grandparents

Schools teach children to obey. Television teaches viewers to spend. Who teaches youngsters to produce?

Gary North, The Abolition of Grandparents

To the same extent that the state responds well to arguments that it should be larger and more powerful, it is institutionally hostile to anyone who says that it should be less powerful and less coercive. That is not to say that some work from the "inside" cannot do some good, some of the time. But it is far more likely that the state will convert the libertarian than for the libertarian to convert the state.

Lew Rockwell, "What Shuold Freedom Lovers Do?"

They didn't recognize the subtle ways in which they themselves were being drawn in. They recognize the futility of politely asking the state, day after day, to permit a bit more liberty here and there. Ultimately you must frame your arguments in terms of what is good for the state, and the reality is that liberty is not usually good for the state.

Lew Rockwell, "What Shuold Freedom Lovers Do?"

Nowadays the System has to confect its heroes out of unlikely material; really all you have to do is get killed, banged up, or captured, so long as you are serving the Empire when it happens.

Nicholas Strakon, Worse Than Nothing

When the personal becomes the political, you can be sure war is to follow.

Bob Wallace, "A War on Everything"

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and more intrusive.

Thomas Sowell

Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got.

Lawrence W. Reed, "Why Limit Government?"

Things that rely upon the regular affirmation of voluntary consent don't look at all like those that rest upon force. Whereas mutual consent encourages actual results and accountability, the political process puts a higher premium on the mere promise or claim of results and the shifting of blame to other parties.

Lawrence W. Reed, "Why Limit Government?"

The great myth that all public officials carry around in their heads is that the world will conform to any dictate so long as it is backed by the threat of force. Governments have always believed this because force and the threat of force are their only tools. If force does not work, government does not work.

Lew Rockwell, "Five Smooth Stones"

In Iraq, the result is the humiliating defeat of the largest, richest, most well-armed state in the history of the world. Small guns beat big guns. An ideology of national independence beat an ideology of national domination. The desire to be free trumped the demand to conform to the dictate of the imperial power. There is something incredibly inspiring about this.

Lew Rockwell, "Five Smooth Stones"

It cannot be stressed enough, that the state cannot create its antithesis, the market. Markets are rooted in private property; states are rooted in theft. Don't be fooled by squared circles.

Casey Khan, "What's Wrong with Terror-Futures Markets?"

For the activists, welfare programs did not involve complex relationships and intractable problems about which honest people could disagree. They were simple moral imperatives, and anyone who opposed them was seen as selfish and insensitive. (This dogmatic view has by no means disappeared from so-called liberal circles.)

James L. Payne, "Why the War on Poverty Failed"

In adopting the handout approach for their programs, the war-on-poverty activists failed to notice -- or failed to care -- that they were ignoring over a century of theory and experience in the social welfare field. Charity leaders of the nineteenth century had lived with the poor and had analyzed the effects of different kinds of aid. They discovered that almsgiving -- that is, something for nothing -- actually hurt the poor.

James L. Payne, "Why the War on Poverty Failed"

You can't limit government's coercion to just those transfers you believe are fair, because you can't give government the power to force good on the country without also giving it the power to force enormous evil on the country -- in fact, to do anything it wants. It becomes a tool for obtaining whatever anyone can't get on his own -- an instrument for every frustrated ambition.

Harry Browne, Why Government Doesn't Work

It's understandable that people believe government can protect us and educate our children, but that something has gone wrong and needs fixing. But the system must go wrong eventually. A government that can tax us -- confiscate our wealth -- to feed the poor and punish foreign villains will soon tax us to feed political cronies and punish political enemies.

Harry Browne, Why Government Doesn't Work

Any system that lets one person force his will on another -- by confiscating resources or by compelling obedience -- will inevitably break down, because everyone will want to use the coercion for his own ends. And so, sooner or later, government becomes a free-for-all to be won by those best able to deceive and manipulate.

Harry Browne, Why Government Doesn't Work

A government that tries to help those who can't help themselves will turn into a government that helps those with the most political power.

Harry Browne, Why Government Doesn't Work

A government we try to use as our servant inevitably will become our master.

Harry Browne, Why Government Doesn't Work

Today, the president is called the leader of the world's only superpower, the "world's indispensable nation," which is reason enough to have him deposed. A world with any superpower at all is a world where no freedoms are safe.

Lew Rockwell, "Down With the Presidency"

If a president can count on the fact that he won't be criticized so long as he is running a war, he will run more of them. So long as he is running wars, government at home cannot be cut.

Lew Rockwell, "Down With the Presidency"

Politics can stop at the water's edge only when policies stop at the water's edge.

Felix Morley

... it is the obligation of every patriot not only to denounce a president's actions at home, but to question, harass, and seek to rein in the presidency when it has sent troops abroad.

Lew Rockwell, "Down With the Presidency"

If we hold our tongues under some mistaken notion of patriotism, we surrender what remains of our freedoms.

Lew Rockwell, "Down With the Presidency"

If there is ever a time to get behind a president, it is when he withdraws from the world, stops wars, and brings the troops home. If there is ever a time to trip him up, question his leadership, and denounce his usurpations, it is when he does the opposite. A bipartisan foreign policy is a Napoleonic foreign policy, and the opposite of that prescribed by Washington in his farewell address.

Lew Rockwell, "Down With the Presidency"

Yet the State -- every State -- has been particularly successful in deluding its citizens that it fights wars and intervenes in other countries for their protection and benefit; when the reality is that war provides a golden opportunity for the State to bamboozle its citizens into gathering together to defend it and to advance its interests and its power.

Murray Rothbard, "The Case for Revisionism (and Against A Priori History)"

A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms -- an expropriating property protector -- and will lead to more taxes and less protection.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Motivated (like everyone else) by self-interest and the disutility of labor, but with the unique power to tax, a government agent's answer will invariably be the same: to maximize expenditures on protection -- and almost all of a nation's wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection -- and at the same time to minimize the production of protection.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The law enforcement system is flexible, which is another way of saying "arbitrary." Politicians pass complex laws that are the products of compromise. Bureaucrats then enforce some of these laws, ignore other laws, modify all laws, and generally feather their own nests by increasing the complexity of law enforcement. This gives them greater arbitrary power over others, and it provides them with greater job security.

Gary North

Voting Libertarian should be thought of as a methadone treatment for those who are recovering from belief in democracy.

Carlton Hobbs

'Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. And 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer.

Joseph Sobran

Nothing is more sickening than to see supposed tooth-and-claw watchdogs on the Left suddenly transform themselves into obedient lapdogs overnight when they think the power is theirs.

Mike Holmes

One of government's most pernicious effects is the way it colonizes our consciousness, in a manner deeper and more significant than advertising or markets ever manage.

Brian Doherty, "Beyond Conventional Thinking"

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

George Orwell

As any listener of a Clear Channel AM station can tell you, good radio today means keeping the Manicheans listening. The format is: reduce complex moral and geopolitical realities to simple black-and-white characterizations, throw in a few ad hominems, and damn the facts.

Christopher Westley, "The Trouble with Talk Radio"

... conflicts are no longer seen as struggles between groups of men. They are considered a war between two principles, the good and the bad. The good is embodied in the great god State, the materialization of the eternal idea of morality, and the bad in the "rugged individualism" of selfish men. In this antagonism the State is always right and the individual always wrong. The State is the representative of the commonweal, of justice, civilization, and superior wisdom. The individual is a poor wretch, a vicious fool.

Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy, p. 81

Thus the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again.

Joseph Schumpeter

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

President George W. Bush, August 5, 2004

[W]hen men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.

Herbert Spencer, Facts and Comments, chapter 20

Just about everyone you talk to these days admits serious dissatisfaction with the election choices this year. And yet most people will eventually decide for the "lesser of two evils" -- whatever that is, and there is probably no way to know in advance -- realizing that no real viable option is going to emerge

Lew Rockwell, "Two Kinds of Competition"

"First they came for the druggies, and I didn't care because I wasn't a druggie. Next they came for the insider traders, and I didn't care because I didn't even understand what insider trading was. Then they came for the gun owners, then the chess players, then the tobacco smokers, then the home-schoolers, then the big businessmen, then the small businessmen, and I wondered: where did the government get the right to jail and harass people who never hurt anyone?"

Anthony Gregory, "Socialist Conservatives"

Conservatives who make excuses for Republican attacks on the free market, who outright defend corporate welfare but have no sympathy for the innocent Martha Stewarts of the world, who are addicted to government power in the name of fighting drug abuse, who defend the biggest spending administration in decades, who think huge deficits are fine if caused by the GOP, who believe accused "terrorists" don't deserve due process, who consider it proper to have police on every street corner and snipers on every rooftop in the nation's capital, who have a romantic obsession with war and the mass murder it entails -- do they really think what they believe isn't a brand of socialism?

Anthony Gregory, "Socialist Conservatives"

Americans, for example, would only recognize a tyrant in the White House if he had a mustache the width of his nose.

Lew Rockwell, The Wanna-Be State

No amount of evil is considered out of bounds for those who hold power.

Lew Rockwell, The Wanna-Be State

All states everywhere want to be total.

Lew Rockwell, The Wanna-Be State

Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps

Ludwig von Mises, "Middle of the Road Policy Leads to Socialism"

We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good

Hillary Rodham Clinton, June 28, 2004.

One cannot deny the majority jurisdiction over the axioms and yet leave them jurisdiction over the theorems.

Roderick T. Long, "Victor Hugo on the Limits of Democracy"

That was the conclusion of a recent Beltway libertarian report on trillions in welfare, since there are still plenty of poor people. But the war on poverty hasn't failed. It has done exactly what it was intended to do: enrich and empower the state and its interest groups. One of the problems of being a think-tankian is that you must accept the state's bona fides, or be fired. Only radical criticism, however, criticism that goes to the root, in other words, has a chance of delegitimizing these evil activities.

Lew Rockwell, 'The War on Poverty Has Failed'

... to say that anything is government property, is to say that it was built by the use of coerced capital.

Christopher Westley, "In Defense of Pilfering"

As a central bank serving special interests, the Fed is one of the hallmarks of a corrupt society.

George F. Smith, "Myths of the Money Machine"

Owning a surplus is not a sin. Only governments could come up with an assertion so insidious.

Ryan McMaken

Inundated from early childhood with government propaganda in public schools and educational institutions by legions of publicly certified intellectual, most people mindlessly accept and repeat nonsense such as that democracy is self-rule and government is of, by, and for the people.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy, The God That Failed

Egalitarian socialism and conservatism are thus transformed into statist ideologies. They compete with each other in the sense that they advocate somewhat different patterns of redistribution, but their competitive efforts converge and integrate in joint support for statism and statist redistribution.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "The Sociology of Taxation"

Democracy, in and of itself, is a laugh and a farce anyways. No one really believes in it since everyone who participates in the process inevitably becomes a whining crybaby about it. I've never seen a system full of so many crybabies.

Jesse Ogden, Reluctant Anarchist, "Bash Democracy"

The way democracy works today, everyone wants to safeguard their own keepings but they want to make sure the system is rigged so that they can keep on plundering from everyone else. That may be the best definition of democracy, the ultimate game of plunder

Jesse Ogden, Reluctant Anarchist, "The Reluctant Anarchist vs. The Roomate"

The circus is coming to your town soon.... Time for the same tired two parties to trot out the same moronic messages that challenge the credulity of anyone with a healthy three figure IQ.

Gregory Bresiger, "Their Crisis, Our Leviathan"

Affairs of trade, like matters of conscience, change their very nature if touched by the hand of violence. For as faith forced would no longer be religion but hypocrisy, so commerce becomes robbery if coerced by warlike armaments.

Richard Cobden

Another strange notion pervading whole peoples is that the State has money of its own; and nowhere is this absurdity more firmly fixed than in America. The State has no money. It produces nothing. It existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say, by forced levies on the production of others. 'Government money,' of which one hears so much nowadays, does not exist; there is no such thing.

Albert J. Nock

What I was looking at was simply a tussle between two groups of mass-men, one large and poor, the other small and rich, and as judged by the standards of civilized society, neither of them any more meritorious or promising than the other. The object of the tussle was the material gains accruing from control of the State's machinery. It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it; and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.

Albert J. Nock

Indeed, the grand bargain of democracy is this: every individual within the system -- whether voluntarily or not -- cedes the inviolable title to his or her property for the ability to either elect, participate in or marshal a political movement that competes for the privilege of seizing and spending everyone else's money.

Grant Nulle, "Why the State Celebrates its Failures"

What is considered theft in the private sector is "taxation" when done by the state. What is kidnapping in the private sector is "selective service" in the public sector. What is counterfeiting when done in the private sector is "monetary policy" when done by the public sector. What is mass murder in the private sector is "foreign policy" in the public sector.

Lew Rockwell, "Why the State Is Different"

There will always be those who claim to have special rights over the rest of society, and the state is the most organized attempt to get away with it. To focus on these people as a unique problem is not an obsession, but the working out of intellectual responsibility.

Lew Rockwell, "Why the State Is Different"

When the Supreme Court claims to be achieving Jeffersonian goals with Hamiltonian means, there is a solid reason to be suspicious.

Lew Rockwell, "Will the Court Grant Us Freedom?"

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.

James Madison in a letter to Thomas Jefferson

The end of government is the happiness of the people...

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859)

...it is, therefore, says Mr. Southey, the first rule of policy, that the government should train the people in the way in which they should go...But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way themselves? Have there not been governments which were blind leaders of the blind? Are there not still such governments... And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859)

Mr. Southey and many other respectable people seem to think that, when they have once proved the moral and religious training of the people to be a most important object, it follows, of course, that it is an object which the government ought to pursue. They forget that we have to consider, not merely the goodness of the end, but also the fitness of the means?

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859)

The duties of government would be ... paternal, if a government were necessarily as much superior in wisdom to a people as the most foolish father, for a time, is to the most intelligent child, and if a government loved a people as fathers generally love their children. But there is no reason to believe that a government will have either the paternal warmth of affection or the paternal superiority of intellect...

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859)

And thus we see the government is at once both protector and predator. It is not that governments begin in virtue only to end in sin. Government begins by protecting some against others and ends up protecting itself against everyone. This is the course of history.

Robert LeFevre, "The Nature of Man and His Government"

You can grow with the growth of your family and your home. You can grow with the growth of your business or your work. But you cannot grow with the growth of your government. You must shrink, and from the shrinkage the government grows.And thus we see the government is at once both protector and predator. It is not that governments begin in virtue only to end in sin. Government begins by protecting some against others and ends up protecting itself against everyone. This is the course of history.

Robert LeFevre, "The Nature of Man and His Government"

I do not wish to be connected with politics. Indeed, I dare not commit myself with politicians. No one knows what they will be next year by what they are this year.

Francis Wayland (1796-1865), Baptist minister

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