A Little Libertarianism

Those of you who have been reading our blog for a while will know I don't like over-reaching gov't (and the don't like is a HUGE understatement). My family is, of course, aware of my feelings as well, and as such, my bro-in-law sent me a fabulous link today with libertarian quotes. There are 1,313 of them so I haven't gotten through them all but I read the first 100 or so of them and I wanted to share a few with you that were my particular favorites, or just downright funny. All of them are, however, quite true in my opinion. Enjoy your daily dose of libertarianism!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Useless laws weaken the necessary laws." – Montesquieu

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." – Mahatma Gandhi, in Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446 (totally interesting quote even though he believed in peaceful civil disobedience)

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

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

"If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist." – Joseph Sobran (1995)

Whew, I posted a few more quotes than I planned on, but they were just too good to stop. Here's the link in case you actually got this far and still want to read more.