Objectivism & Libertarians
The Philosophy of Freedom & Its Practitioners
Quotations - Updated August 5, 1999

"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."

"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion."

"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"Sacred cows make the best hamburger."

"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session."

"There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress."

"A child miseducated is a child lost."

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."

"Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic."

"A man who can be bought isn't worth the price."

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."

"Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but you never dared question your code ... You went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good? - by what standard?

"You wanted to know John Galt's identity. I am the man who asked that question.

"Yes, this is an age of moral crisis ... Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality ... but to discover it."

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."

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

"Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force."

"...the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."

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

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."

"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."

"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

"I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us."

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

"Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism."

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...we [will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent ...till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

"Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated."

"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' ... If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"

"To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."

"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth."

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ....The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or the state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People."

"A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom."

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of Socialism is the equal sharing of misery."

"There is only one basic human right, to do as you damn well please. And it comes with the only basic duty, the duty to take the consequences."

I take minor exception to Mr. O'Rourke's simplistic declaration lest it be severely misinterpreted. The right of which he speaks is the right to take any course of independent action chosen. This obviates criminal actions which are defined as the initiation of the use of force. Initiation of the use of force is neither a legitimate nor independent action.

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases. If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

"America needs fewer laws, not more prisons."

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

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."

An interesting observation to apply to today's global warming fanaticism.

"War is just one more big government program."

"War is the health of the State."

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

"Respect for religion must be reestablished. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of public officials must be curtailed. Assistance to foreign lands must be stopped or we shall bankrupt ourselves. The people should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence."

"More laws, less justice."

"You cannot help men permanently by doing what they could and should do for themselves. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence"

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

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamoring to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are."

"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality."

"If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all."

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

"Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively, the pacifist is pro-Nazi."

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

"A man may fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame someone else."

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions."