Top 100 Libertarian Quotes
#1. I became a Libertarian as a result of researching WWII and the Holocaust. Individual liberty is sacred.
A.E. Samaan
#2. The earliest depiction of libertarian eugenics may have appeared in a science fiction novel, Robert Heinlein's 1942 tale 'Beyond This Horizon.'
Gregory Benford
#3. After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything.
Murray Rothbard
#4. My reason for arguing against abolishing these types of sports isn't some kind of lofty, philosophical rationale. It's just that I did it and I liked it. It comes down to a libertarian issue for me. I feel that if I know the risks and I want to take them, I should be allowed to do so.
Jonathan Gottschall
#5. The libertarian thinks that this world is chiefly a stage for the swaggering ego; the conservative finds himself instead a pilgrim in a realm of mystery and wonder, where duty, discipline, and sacrifice are required-and where the reward is that love which passeth all understanding.
Russell Kirk
#6. Trying to be a socialist and a libertarian is obviously a very difficult balancing act, which nobody has pulled off too successfully in this century.
David Hare
#7. I would consider myself a rather staunch libertarian.
Peter Thiel
#8. I'm a libertarian. I think a lot of people are libertarians and are afraid to admit it - or don't know.
Kurt Russell
#9. It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.
Noam Chomsky
#10. [If Republicans] got to put their kids into public school. They got to take public health. They would become libertarian faster than you could say Ayn Rand.
Greg Gutfeld
#11. Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International and which were best understood and most strongly held by the libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance.
Rudolf Rocker
#13. I'm not a knee-jerk conservative. I passionately believe in free markets and less government, but not to the point of being a libertarian.
Rupert Murdoch
#14. Apparently my dad wasn't the only paranoid libertarian in Chesterton.
Anonymous
#15. A libertarian is someone who graduated from thinking that there are problems with the state to realizing that the state is the problem.
Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski
#16. My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism.
Ann Coulter
#17. A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.
Edward Abbey
#18. The Libertarian Party is a very mainstream party. It's a mainstream philosophy. It's of returning power from Washington to parents, to schools, to businesses in their communities.
Bob Barr
#19. I'm basically a libertarian, and I'm a conservative on economic matters, and I'm a social liberal.
David H. Koch
#20. One of the more pretentious political self-descriptions is 'Libertarian.' People think it puts them above the fray. It sounds fashionable, and to the uninitiated, faintly dangerous. Actually, it's just one more bullshit political philosophy.
George Carlin
#21. I stated that I'm a libertarian Republican, which means I believe in a series of issues, such as smaller government, constraint on budget deficits, free markets, globalization, and a whole series of other things, including welfare reform.
Alan Greenspan
#22. The Libertarian position on the freedom of speech is a strong support of freedom of speech, and we oppose government intervention in controlling what is or is not moral.
Michael Badnarik
#23. A libertarian is someone who can believe that the police are no more than a gang of thugs without realizing that in the absence of police, thugs will gather into gangs.
S.M. Stirling
#24. The libertarian can have no truck with 'left' or 'right' because he regrets any form of authoritarianism - the use of police force to control the creative life of man.
Leonard Read
#25. I am a passionate civil libertarian.
Ted Cruz
#26. You have to be careful as a libertarian because you can sound very Republican.
Penn Jillette
#27. I wish the Libertarian Party would get more play in the media but they don't.
Glenn Danzig
#28. The folks celebrating Jim Bunning are seeing him as an anti-government, anti-spending activist. But to embrace Jim Bunning is to embrace a strange record, if you really are a libertarian, if you really are a deficit hawk, if you really care about spending and responsibility.
Rachel Maddow
#29. I'm not an ultra-libertarian who thinks there shouldn't be insider-trading laws at all.
Gary Weiss
#30. Mrs. Bonneville never buckled her seat belt, even though it was required by state law; an ardent libertarian, she opposed government meddling in all matters of personal choice.
Carl Hiaasen
#31. It's nice to have a lot of people in the field. Independent, third party, Libertarian, Reform and other party candidates can do what they want to do. I welcome them to the race.
John Murray
#32. Sometimes I fantasize about the US head of state as a super-lazy, super-moral libertarian despot and think, "That would certainly make everything easier," even though I can't think of one person who'd qualify, except maybe Willie Nelson.
Chuck Klosterman
#33. Libertarians are constantly arguing with each other who is the most pure libertarian and who is most ideologically pure.
John Mackey
#34. I never thought I was a libertarian until I picked up Reason magazine and realized I agree with everything they had printed.
Drew Carey
#35. Libertarian immigration policy would be an experiment in which I don't think we should participate. We should not bet the republic that the results will be good. I suspect the results would be a disaster and the end of the American experiment.
Jan C. Ting
#36. Democracy is the current industry standard political system, but unfortunately it is ill-suited for a libertarian state.
Patri Friedman
#37. I agree that the two-party system stomps on any kind of competition. A great first step is to open the presidential debates to all qualified candidates, including the Libertarians. If that happens, the Libertarian party will experience unprecedented growth.
Gary Johnson
#38. I became very much, if I have to describe myself, I'm sort of a Libertarian Capitalist, and I was looking for, what's the economic engine that's going to drive us into space.
Peter Diamandis
#39. A libertarian presidential candidate isn't going to win anyway, so he can afford to say that all taxation is theft, and it isn't the job of a libertarian presidential candidate to cook up new ways to commit theft.
L. Neil Smith
#40. I'm a hardcore libertarian - I want everything legal - but I also believe that you have the right to free association.
Penn Jillette
#41. We tried many times before to speed on the social revolution in Spain; attempted to stir up the feelings of the people and to raise the banner of Libertarian Communism.
Federica Montseny
#42. Every single figure on Mount Rushmore was a third party at one time or another, so third parties become major parties, and I think that the Libertarian Party may become my major party.
Gary Johnson
#43. I'm an extreme libertarian, but I realize we're in a democracy, and in a democracy, people can have views of all stripes, and there's no reason to argue about it.
Eugene Fama
#44. I think, therefore I am an individual... not a drone in a collective. I think, therefore I am... Libertarian
A.E. Samaan
#45. Beloved friends and comrades ... the national Libertarian Party is dead.
L. Neil Smith
#46. The idea of the Internet as sort of open and democratic and free and with no hierarchy, the libertarian beginnings as it were, with peer-to-peer networks ... I'd sort of like for everyone to just admit that we're beyond that now.
Beeban Kidron
#47. Republicans are already on seriously thin ice, having presided over an era of unprecedented spending and consistently failing to articulate conservative principles on a wide variety of issues. But what Obama has in store will make President Bush appear, in retrospect, like a libertarian.
David Limbaugh
#48. The history of the Internet is not, as some people have tried to make it, a libertarian just-so story. It is a messy tale in which the government played a significant role. That role was, however, far more subtle than the plans of industrial policy gurus or techno-boosting politicians.
Virginia Postrel
#49. Whether you're a libertarian liberal or a more egalitarian liberal, the idea is that justice means being non-judgmental with respect to the preferences people bring to public life.
Michael Sandel
#50. I'm a Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic. It's a humorous way for me to describe that I'm not stereotypical.
Joel Salatin
#51. We're seeing conservatives and evangelicals and libertarian and Reagan Democrats all coming together as one, and that terrifies Washington, D.C.
Ted Cruz
#52. Librarian: taking the E.T. out of Libertarian.
Jud Barry
#53. But I'm very libertarian in the sense that I believe in small government and, as a general rule, I don't believe in imposing values upon people.
Stephen Harper
#54. I would like to be interpreted as a liberal libertarian, like leave everybody alone and let them do their own thing.
Clint Eastwood
#55. I'm probably a Libertarian, if I had to put myself in any category. But you don't come out and talk about these things, for obvious reasons.
Gary Oldman
#56. I'm not a complete libertarian. There is a proper role in some areas of the government to have rules and regulations - I'm not an anarchist.
Jack Abramoff
#57. The important question is, therefore, not whether anarchy is possible or not, but whether we can so enlarge the scope and influence of libertarian methods that they become the normal way in which human beings organise their society.
Colin Ward
#58. Everyone's goals are the same with very small differences. I mean, the goal of a socialist and the goal of a libertarian are exactly the same. The goals are happiness and security and freedom, and you balance those.
Penn Jillette
#59. In my view, as a country we need to rediscover some of that skepticism about government and revisit that libertarian agenda.
Charles Kennedy
#60. I don't know that the Libertarian Party has an official position on the separation of church and state.
Michael Badnarik
#61. There is a common perception that there are two alternative libertarian positions on immigration: government-controlled borders and open borders. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is only one libertarian position on immigration, and that position is open immigration or open borders.
Jacob G. Hornberger
#62. I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.
Clarence Thomas
#63. I want to gag sometimes when I see who "we" are recommending that people vote for, and not just as a libertarian.
Dave Barry
#65. Ever since Willie Nelson brought rednecks into an alliance with hippies back in the psychedelic '70s, Austin has milked its quirky libertarian spirit for a worldwide bonanza of free publicity.
Douglas Brinkley
#66. Throughout the history of our civilisation, two traditions, two opposed tendencies, have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition, the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition, the authoritarian tradition and the libertarian tradition.
Pyotr Kropotkin
#67. I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering ... I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside ... what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.
Michael Foot
#68. At the center, on the lawn of the courthouse, sat a log manger with a life-size nativity scene cut out of plywood. If an civil libertarian had complained about the nativity being on public property, he would have been hunted down like Santa's reindeer during bow season.
Deborah Smith
#69. My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an
impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian.
Robert Anton Wilson
#70. One of the great weaknesses of standard libertarian theory is that it tends to push too hard by elevating presumptions into absolutes.
Richard Allen Epstein
#71. Maybe it's my libertarian philosophy: but being in government is hard.
John Bolton
#72. I've voted Libertarian as long as I can remember, but I don't really remember much before the Clintons and the Bushes. Those clans made a lot of us bugnutty.
Penn Jillette
#73. It is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate change deniers today.
Naomi Klein
#74. The 'Libertarian' thing was a mistake on my part for saying it, but I am.
Joseph J. Lhota
#75. I get along with Democrats really well, and I think that's something that's unreported. I think it's partly my libertarian tendencies.
Raul Labrador
#76. I am a libertarian with a small 'l' and a Republican with a capital 'R'. And I am a Republican with a capital 'R' on grounds of expediency, not on principle.
Milton Friedman
#79. Were it necessary to bring a majority into a comprehension of the libertarian philosophy, the cause of liberty would be utterly hopeless. Every significant movement in history has been led by one or just a few individuals with a small minority of energetic supporters.
Leonard Read
#80. Tea Party to establishment from social conservative to libertarian, we all - what people want more than anything is they don't just want a fighter. They want someone who fights and wins.
Lindsey Graham
#81. [Being a] conservative also used to involve the concept of people being free to do whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else. Conservatives used to be very libertarian.
Bill Maher
#82. I think very fundamentally to being Libertarian is not having a social agenda. I accept who you are and the life that you live as long as your life does not adversely affect mine.
Gary Johnson
#83. A conservative is a libertarian who has been mugged.
John Stossel
#84. Well, I'm a libertarian conservative, so I believe in limited government/maximum individual freedom.
John Bolton
#85. In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right.
Bryan Caplan
#86. I will represent all of the people of Ohio, regardless of their background. I don't care if you are a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian or a vegetarian, I will be blind to race, religion or any kind of orientation.
Josh Mandel
#87. My parents both defected from communist Hungary and were what most people would today call libertarian. I grew up with a general distaste for taxation and any policy that intruded on our lives.
David Harsanyi
#88. I was brought up as a Republican. But when I realized that at the end of the day there wasn't much difference between a Democrat and Republican, I became a libertarian.
Kurt Russell
#89. A Libertarian society of unfettered individualism spreads its benefits to virtually everyone - not just those who have the resources to seize political power.
Harry Browne
#90. I come to the table from a conservative or libertarian point of view, and I admit that. I'm a commentator. I'm not a journalist or anything else.
Glenn Beck
#91. Certainly the emphasis I place in this chapter on coordination of behavior and cooperation to mutual benefit is something that ought to be very congenial to people in the libertarian tradition.
Robert Nozick
#92. The libertarian must never advocate or prefer a gradual, as opposed to an immediate and rapid, approach to his goal. For by doing so, he undercuts the overriding importance of his own goals and principles. And if he himself values his own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them.
Murray Rothbard
#93. The Libertarian position on immigration is to have, not open borders with no restrictions, but to have controlled borders that allow hard-working people to come into America to help raise their standard of living and improve the American economy.
Michael Badnarik
#94. A Libertarian's just a Democrat whose vote doesn't count. Same thing.
Kenneth Eade
#95. Anywhere in the world, in every oppressive country, time sooner or later comes and libertarian people sing the same song: Goodbye Mr Dictator! This is a universal law, this is a universal song.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#96. I brag on the Democratic Party. We're libertarian on social issues, it's live and let live. Fiscally, we're conservative and responsible, and were environmentally conscious.
Mark Udall
#97. Using a broad brushstroke, I think Libertarian - most of America are socially accepting and fiscally responsible. I'm in that category. I think, broadly speaking, that's a Libertarian. A Libertarian is going to be somebody who's really strong on civil liberties.
Gary Johnson
#98. Some people object to libertarian ideas because there are too many irresponsible people in the world - people who will cause trouble if the government doesn't restrain them.
Harry Browne
#99. It is easier for a political party to attain national ballot status in Russia today than it is for the Libertarian party or the Green party to get on the ballot in, say, Pennsylvania.
Justin Raimondo
#100. What I would like to vote for is a candidate that is socially liberal, a fiscal conservative, broadly libertarian with a small 'l' but sensible and pragmatic and with a chance of winning. That's more or less the empty set.
Tyler Cowen
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
