Quotes About Libertarianism

#1. Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.

Neil Peart

#2. The opposite of Nazi is neither Republican nor Democrat, conservative or liberal. Totalitarianism's diametric opposite of is Libertarianism.

A.E. Samaan

#3. The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community.

David Boaz

#4. Many rabble-rousers for libertarianism, liberty and freedom are unwitting pawns of controllers they have never even considered.

Bryant McGill

#5. Global libertarianism would be a borderless world society.

Bryant McGill

#6. Abolitionism was a movement to end private slavery. Libertarianism is a movement to end private and public slavery.

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

#7. Libertarianism is "cultish," say the sophisticates. Of course, there's nothing cultish at all about allegiance to the state, with its flags, its songs, its mass murders, its little children saluting and paying homage to pictures of their dear leaders on the wall, etc.

Thomas E. Woods Jr.

#8. Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left - which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right-which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism.

Karl Hess

#9. Libertarianism is supposed to be all about principles, but what it's really about is political expedience. It's basically a corporate front, masked as a philosophy.

Jane Mayer

#10. I think self-destructiveness is given a really bad rap. I think it can also mean self-reflection and poetic sensiblity. It can mean empathy, hedonism, a libertarianism.

Courtney Love

#11. A favorite Wired icon for the information feedback loop, a dragon curling in a circle to swallow its own tail, could become more apt as a symbol of the timeless libertarian paradox: Monopoly verging on feudalism emerges from unregulated competition to bite libertarianism in the posterior.

Jedediah Purdy

#12. My fear is that people associate Rand Paul's social conservatism with libertarianism, when it's not.

Gary Johnson

#13. Libertarianism and communism are equally crazy in opposite ways. Libertarians believe that it is possible to privatize everything without anarchy, while communists believe that it is possible to socialize everything without tyranny.

Michael Lind

#14. Let's be clear: unless I have profoundly misunderstood its position, I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ.

Iain Banks

#15. Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.

Iain Banks

#16. No left wing parties have any respect for liberal economic values; and most centre and right wing parties merely promote a paternalistic stateism. Does it thus fall to the self-reliant students of the ruggedly individualist philosophy of magick to champion a certain measured libertarianism ?

Peter J. Carroll

#17. Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism - and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part - must rest on absolutism and deny relativism.

Murray Rothbard

#18. I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.

Ronald Reagan

#19. In the future, people will blame the Eighties for all societal ills in the same way that people have previously blamed the Sixties. The various Thatcherite Big Bangs - monetarism, deregulation, libertarianism - have been working their way through the culture ever since.

Peter York

#20. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal

Murray N. Rothbard

#21. Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

P. J. O'Rourke

#22. Few things are more commonly misunderstood than the nature and meaning of theocracy. It is commonly assumed to be a dictatorial rule by self-appointed men who claim to rule for God. In reality, theocracy in Biblical law is the closest thing to a radical libertarianism that can be had.

R.J. Rushdoony

#23. To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.

Robert Anton Wilson

#24. My contact with [Cato] was strange. They're ideologues, like Trotskyites. All questions must be seen and solved within the true faith of libertarianism, the idea of minimal government. And like Trotskyites, the guys from Cato can talk you to death.

Nat Hentoff

#25. I guess libertarianism is always considered so weird and fringe that people assume that you're in the closet if you don't go around talking about it.

Dave Barry

#26. I have no evidence that libertarianism leads to a better life. I just think it is morally right.

Penn Jillette

#27. The goal of libertarianism is not to permit people to be free, but to make them realize that they don't need anyone's permission to be free.

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

#28. No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that's just why it remains on the ideological fringe - because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.

Ross Douthat

#29. Koch's youthful idealism about libertarianism had largely devolved into a rationale for corporate self-interest.

John Charles Chasteen

#30. Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of '68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath.

Terry Eagleton

#31. Libertarianism is the enemy of all racism.

Ron Paul

#32. The many woes that afflict out nation are rooted in the morally bankrupt paradigms of socialism, interventionism, and empire that have held our nation in their grip for decades and that the only real solution to such woes is libertarianism.

Jacob G. Hornberger

#33. Libertarianism is a theory of politics that is so compelling that once you have absorbed it, it becomes the lens through which you end up understanding all economic and political events.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#34. The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#35. Very few tyrants argued for the slavery of the masses. Instead, they argued for their right to protect the people from themselves.

A.E. Samaan

#36. The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.

Frederic Bastiat

#37. When you vote, you play Russian Roulette with a magazine fed pistol.

Tom Wallace

#38. If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

Mikhail Bakunin

#39. It seriously irks me when people mistake Ron Paul for a libertarian. The man is as much a libertarian as Barack Obama is a liberal.

Michel Templet

#40. Capitalism is not a form of government. Capitalism is a symptom of freedom. It is the result of individual rights, which include property rights.

A.E. Samaan

#41. Despots are elected and deposed.
Laws are passed and repealed.
Nations rise and fall.
Individual liberty is eternal.

A.E. Samaan

#42. To eliminate statism is not to physically subdue the rulers, but to mentally liberate the ruled.

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

#43. When poverty declines, the need for government declines, which is why expecting government to solve poverty is like expecting a tobacco company to mount an aggressive anti-smoking campaign.

Stefan Molyneux

#44. Regulated" rights are not rights. They are niceties and platitudes intended to keep the populace thinking their individual autonomy is respected by their government.

A.E. Samaan

#45. Capitalists desire purchasing power. Socialists lust for the power to plan society. Which is worse?

A.E. Samaan

#46. Even Adam Smith's "invisible hand" occasionally needs a slap on the wrist.

Bill Mech

#47. That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Kim Stanley Robinson

#48. I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

Robert Frost

#49. If you require force to promote your ideal, there is something wrong with your ideal.

J.S.B. Morse

#50. The sadist desires to command and control. The masochist desires to be freed from the burdens of liberty. That is Socialism.

A.E. Samaan

#51. Legislating morality grows big government immensely, and helps fashion the noose the government will use to ultimately hang you by.

A.E. Samaan

#52. Socialists eat their children. The poets, artists, and radicals are murdered first once statists come into power. Statists abhor free thinking.

A.E. Samaan

#53. The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants.

Herbert Spencer

#54. Socialism is "group-think." How uninformed in history do you have to be to advocate for "group-think"??

A.E. Samaan

#55. Big government = oligarchy.
Simple equation.
Big government = loss of representation.

A.E. Samaan

#56. There are those that want freedom from individual responsibility, and then there are those that want individual liberty. "Freedom" and "liberty" no longer mean what they used to. A desire for dependence has been made fashionably desirable.

A.E. Samaan

#57. We Libertarians believe in "Limited Government" precisely because we believe in unlimited liberty. Reduce one, and you decrease the other.

A.E. Samaan

#58. Civil Wars happen when the victimized are armed. Genocide happens when they are not.

A.E. Samaan

#59. People are naturally born as Libertarians till governments and oppressive societies force them to adopt their ideologies and their ways.

Hany Ghoraba

#60. It's freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences and/or ridicule.

A.E. Samaan

#61. A "centrally planned economy" by definition discourages and despises participation by the masses. It's a bureaucratic oligarchy.

A.E. Samaan

#62. Centralization is an abomination! Decentralize everything! Leave nothing to the central planners.

A.E. Samaan

#63. I was once a statist, and then I researched The Holocaust. I am now a Libertarian.

A.E. Samaan

#64. Every unnecessary law helps fashion the noose we will ultimately be hung by.

A.E. Samaan

#65. No man owns me. All man can do is practice the timeless, criminal art of threatening to separate my soul from her physical host.

Tiffany Madison

#66. More dangerous than bayonets and cannon are the weapons of the mind.

Ludwig Von Mises

#67. Centrally planned economies are upended by out of control population. Their escape valve is eugenics.

A.E. Samaan

#68. Funny, I don't particularly care for either "laws" or "order". Liberty is messy. Freedom yields imperfect results.

A.E. Samaan

#69. Sadly enough, individual liberty remains the ideal of revolutionary thinkers even in the 21st Century.

A.E. Samaan

#70. Every command slaps liberty in the face.

Mikhail Bakunin

#71. Communism is what happens when Socialists realize that they want complete control over every aspect of human life.

A.E. Samaan

#72. American Progressives have declared war on the sanctity and autonomy of the individual.

A.E. Samaan

#73. Making universal prosperity a right is the surest way to universal poverty.

J.S.B. Morse

#74. The people in charge can always justify doing terrible things in the name of the greater good. A slaughter here, a little torture there. It becomes moral to do things that would be immoral if an ordinary individual did 'em.

Joe Hill

#75. A privileging of individual rights over group goods can lead to serious problems, as we've seen with the antivaccination movement.

Emily Matchar

#76. Individual liberty may be unable to solve every social problem, but collective violence is unable to solve any social problem.

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

#77. Art should be for sale. The artist should not.

A.E. Samaan

#78. There is no law, there is only conjecture. The Progressive ethos changes the law's meaning according to fad and fashion.

A.E. Samaan

#79. Socialism, or communism as it is sometimes called, is merely a secular religion, where the State becomes a god.

Stefan Molyneux

#80. All Socialism is Democratic Socialism. Socialist nations take away civil liberties by referendum.

A.E. Samaan

#81. The real American ideal of cool which is building businesses, protecting freedom at home and abroad, taking responsibility for your actions, and leaving other people alone to live as they damn well please.

Greg Gutfeld

#82. Liberty isn't everything. I just allows everything to happen.

A.E. Samaan

#83. [Judith Warner:] Our neurotic quest to perfect the mechanics of mothering can be interpreted as an effort to do on an individual level what we've stopped trying to do on a society-wide one.

Emily Matchar

#84. Living someone else's dream is truly a nightmare. None should forfeit their life's aspirations to toil for the goals of another. Unity of purpose is a sentence. Collectivism is a crime; theft of individual worth.

A.E. Samaan

#85. I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

Christopher Hitchens

#86. The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

George Orwell

#87. Health care and education are too important NOT to be left to the free market.

Kevin D. Williamson

#88. You either limit the government, or you limit the scope of your life. Why is the government that precious to you in the first place?

A.E. Samaan

#89. Support for the arts
merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!

Robert A. Heinlein

#90. Defy the central planners. Upend their designs for your life. Be a staunch individualist. Stand on your rights.

A.E. Samaan

#91. Our Supreme Court is not a court of law. It is a court of conjecture and political fad.

A.E. Samaan

#92. It is infinitely better to rely on the pursuit of economic interest by landowners or street companies than to depend on the dubious "altruism" of bureaucrats and government officials.

Murray N. Rothbard

#93. The product of scientific achievements should be for sale. The scientist should not.

A.E. Samaan

#94. Workers of the world unite????
How'bout.... Staunch individualists disperse!!!

A.E. Samaan

#95. When enough people realize that they are slaves but don't have to be, revolutions happen.

J.S.B. Morse

#96. [A] great embarrassing fact ... haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft.

David Graeber

#97. The desire to engineer humanity is a sign of a mind warped by megalomania and lust for power.

A.E. Samaan

#98. Eugenics has always been the escape valve of single payer socialized medicine. Havelock Ellis was writing about them as one and the same prior to the fin-de-siecle. Culling out of control population growth and the economic drain of the incurably sick has always been a part of socialized medicine.

A.E. Samaan

#99. If one prevents a man from working for the good of society while at the same time providing for the satisfaction of his own needs, then only one way remains open to him: to make himself richer and others poorer by the violent oppression and spoliation of his fellow men.

Ludwig Von Mises

#100. And yet, strange to say, now that the truth [of natural selection] is recognized by most cultivated people ... now more than ever, in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further the survival of the unfittest.

Herbert Spencer