c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
In my city we spent $1.6 billion on a new ticketing system for the trains. We replaced paper tickets with smartcards and now they can tell where people get on and off. So, question: how is that worth $1.6 billion?People say it’s the government being incompetent, and ok. But this is happening all over. All the transit networks are getting smartcards, the grocery stores are taking your name, the airports are getting face recognition cameras. Those cameras, they don’t work when people try to avoid them. Like, they can be fooled by glasses. We KNOW they’re ineffective as anti-terrorism devices, but we still keep installing them.All of this stuff—the smartcards, the ID systems, the “anti-congestion” car-tracking tech—all of it is terrible at what it’s officially supposed to do. It’s only good for tracking the rest of us, the 99.9% who just use the smartcard or whatever and let ourselves be tracked because it’s easier.I’m not a privacy nut, and I don’t care that much if these organizations want to know where I go and what I buy. But what bothers me is how HARD they’re all working for that data, how much money they’re spending, and how they never admit that’s what they want. It means that information must be really valuable for some reason, and I just wonder to who and why.
— Max Barry, Lexicon
Are you telling me that now the government is going after attorneys? They’re going to put every attorney for everyone they think is a bad guy in jail?
— Kenneth Eade, The Spy Files
Human thought and human caring go on in one brain and one heart at a time. Groups are necessary. Regulations are necessary. Government, I would hope limited government, is necessary. But it all starts with the individual. Everything that is accomplished starts with one person, even if the group steps in and helps; it’s still one brain and one heart at a time.
— Dan Groat, A Punctual Paymaster
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
— H.L. Mencken
It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader. Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing 'compassion' for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.
— Thomas Sowell
We (libertarians) find just as many things to rip on the left as we do on the right. People on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person to us.
— Trey Parker
There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.
— Albert Jay Nock
When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.
— Marquis De Lafayette
It may sound peculiar coming from an old punk rocker, but I strongly believe that governmental policies are the only viable way to administer our long-term success as a species. I guess you could say that my attitude of 'fuck the government' is still intact. But it's more a criticism of lousy government than a statement of nihilism. The truth is, when it comes to environmental protection, the government is the best way to enact a new social awareness by establishing laws by which industries have to abide.
— Greg Graffin
As there was no form of government common to the peoples thus segregated, nor tie of language, history, habit or belief, they were called a Republic.
— Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
— Thomas Jefferson
An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Government is there to do only what the private sector won’t, can’t, or shouldn’t do.
— Phil Valentine, The Conservative's Handbook: Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z
Now our modern politics are full of a noisy forgetfulness; forgetfulness that the production of this [man's] happy and conscious life is after all the aim of all complexities and compromises. We talk of nothing but useful men and working institutions; that is, we only think of the chickens as things that will lay more eggs.
— G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
It always amazes me how people in Europe and the United States can be so indifferent to the speeches of their chancellor or president, for these worlds from the top can be a wind sock for what might happen next.
— Paul Rusesabagina
The only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in
— Harper Lee
Borrowing other people’s culture and adopting other people’s way of life does destroy nation’s self-respect which is the greatest asset a true citizen can enjoy more than food and clothes, more than all amenities and more than military glory. You can adopt a system of government and a way of life, but can you adopt the past history, travail and tradition out of which that system of government and a way of life were evolved? Can we adopt King Charles, King John, Magna Carta and civil wars and Cromwell as our own? They can always say “We evolved a system and a way of life”, but we must always sing in refrain, “We borrowed them”. Adopting a culture is not the same as adopting the use of a gadget. It is like tying other peoples’ mangoes to your tree, while plucking and throwing away your own. How absurd!
— Manasa Rao
I have no faith in the USA corporate government systems of protection of public health and safety.
— Steven Magee, Health Forensics
A non government sites has been launched by Rajeev Kumar and I am the founder of the jobinos.in websites. I collect latest various Govt jobs vacancy opening news from Newspaper,Magazines,Govt employment Agency and other third party sources, this would be by online or off line.
— Rajeev
The government wields a heavy hand, which is often used in an underhanded way.
— Kenneth Eade, The Spy Files
We need to show the Congress that our Government is no longer on sale to the highest bidder. It belongs to the voters.
— Kenneth Eade, Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel
The Government goes after the little guys, not their own.
— Kenneth Eade, Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel
The fact that corporations constitute what amounts to the governing class today evidences the fact that we are no longer a representative republic; that we are a most ruled people, under the ceaseless control of a government that is for and by the corporations, can no longer be denied. The implications are immense: a transformation of not only our economic but our political organization is necessary.
— Matthew P. Holbert
The USA government encourages gun ownership at the same time as they have allowed environmental radiation levels to become ridiculously high powered and this continues to increase annually. It will be interesting to see where this government experiment eventually takes the USA!
— Steven Magee, Electrical Forensics
The more laws and restrictions there are,The poorer people become....The more rules and regulations,The more thieves and robbers.
— Lao Tzu
Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.
— Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government
Copyright: a system of monopoly privilege over the expression of ideas that enables government to stop consumer-friendly economic development and reward uncompetitive and legally privileged elites to fleece the public through surreptitious use of coercion.
— Jeffrey Tucker
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
— G.K. Chesterton
Unless you have a free press in your country, there is no need to buy newspapers and there is no need to watch the news because there is no need to listen to the lies! And you already have one real information: You are being deceived by the people you are governed! This is an enough information for you!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The name of the regime where media is on the side of the government is undoubtedly fascism, a regime of the sick minds where freedoms are drowned in the cold waters of oppressions!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
It is blasphemy to call tyrants and oppressors, God’s ministers. They are more properly the messengers of Satan to buffet us. No rulers are properly God’s ministers, but such as are just, ruling in the fear of God
— Jonathan  Mayhew
But that’s part of what makes America wonderful, is we always had this nagging dissatisfaction that spurs us on. That’s how we ended up going west, that’s how we--“I’m tired of all these people back east; if I go west, there’s going to be my own land and I’m not going to have to put up with this nonsense, and I’m going to start my own thing, and I’ve got my homestead.” ...It is true, though, that that restlessness and that dissatisfaction which has helped us go to the moon and create the Internet and build the Transcontinental Railroad and build our land-grant colleges, that those things, born of dissatisfaction, we can very rapidly then take for granted and not tend to and not defend, and not understand how precious these things are.
— Barack Obama
Brent had a love-hate relationship with the Government. He hated what it had become over the years and loved to make an issue about it.
— Kenneth Eade, Absolute Intolerance
In her mind, her actions were treason to the false federation, but loyalty to the real United States of America, the one created by a document she had memorized. The real document was set on fire by what the news called "petty arsons" when the National Archives burned down. Bev knew better—she knew who was behind the destruction of the country's most important document. It was more than a document, it was a symbol—a symbol of freedom from tyranny, and one the Federal Government could no longer afford to abide by.
— Jennifer Arnett, Divided: A Short Story
The USA legal system is designed to enrich lawyers, protect the government and corporations, and shaft the general public.
— Steven Magee
It’s all about truth,” he said. “We don’t trust governments because they don’t tell us the truth. They make every story sound like it’s good news, even when it’s not. Those who are in power sing their own praises. Those who aren’t in power criticise those that are. And no-one tells the whole truth. That’s why we look for conspiracies. We know we are being lied to. We just don’t know what they are lying to us about.
— Will Once, Global Domination for Beginners
To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his master's will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate, to his mind, its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness.
— Frederick Douglass
Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.
— Gustave de Molinari
Once you understand the economics of the Austrian School and the philosophy of liberty in the tradition of Rothbard, you never look at anything – not the state, the media, the central bank, the political class, nothing – the same way again.
— Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
Governments stand because people sit; if people stand, governments will sit!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.
— Henry Grady Weaver, The Mainspring of Human Progress
Equality cannot be imagined outside of tyranny.
— Charles Forbes René de Montalembert
The big question about the American depression is not whether war with Germany and Japan ended it. It is why the Depression lasted until that war. From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great.
— Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
If a country is not governed well, all sort of disasters will become a routine of that country!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
To be sure, I am not speaking about Christian equality, whose real name is equity; but about this democratic and social equality, which is nothing but the canonization of envy and the chimera of jealous ineptitude. This equality was never anything but a mask which could not become reality without the abolition of all merit and virtue.
— Charles Forbes René de Montalembert
We often blame our government for their lack of responsibility, socially and politically. We forget that that is only a result of the societal irresponsibility in general.
— Sunday Adelaja
Some people are good only because they are afraid of punishment. These justify why we need government
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
People do not necessarily know what they are doing, because our ability to comprehend even matters that concern us directly is limited – or, in the jargon, we have ‘bounded rationality’. The world is very complex and our ability to deal with it is severely limited. Therefore, we need to, and usually do, deliberately restrict our freedom of choice in order to reduce the complexity of problems we have to face. Often, government regulation works, especially in complex areas like the modern financial market, not because the government has superior knowledge but because it restricts choices and thus the complexity of the problems at hand, thereby reducing the possibility that things may go wrong.
— Chang Ha-Joon
Our government, media houses, schools, must focus on creating a new culture in our society.
— Sunday Adelaja
Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men.
— Auberon Herbert
Set men up to rule their fellow-men, to treat them as mere soulless material with which they may deal as they please, and the consequence is that you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion, trickery and violence, a mere scrambling ground for the strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous.
— Auberon Herbert
The biggest criminals that I have met in life are working for the government. They make mass murderers look like amateurs.
— Steven Magee
The law is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish.
— Frédéric Bastiat
It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.
— Karl Hess
If you think that you are living in a stupid country, you can be sure that you are being governed by the most stupid people!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
It's amazing the amount of anger, hostility and hatred some people show towards those of us who want to leave them in freedom. Hysterically, some statists characterize that as the voluntaryists trying to "force" their views on everyone else. "You're oppressing me, by leaving me alone, and wanting me to leave you alone!" Meanwhile, they wildly cheer when some politician promises to extort and control them. Go figure.
— Larken Rose
The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny.
— Calvin Coolidge
On a far-flung parcel of government land situated somewhere in the vast reaches of parched American western desert sits an abandoned and long forgotten government facility known as Lost Cactus. That is what the shadowy agency ~ that operates there to this day ~ wants everyone from presidents on down to John Q. Public to believe.
— John    Hopkins, Lost Cactus: The First Treasury
If a media is not criticizing the government, then that media is not a media but just a clown of the government!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.
— Eugene J. McCarthy
If political authority is not limited, the division of powers, ordinarily the guarantee of freedom, becomes a danger and a scourge.
— Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it?
— Harriett Beecher-Stowe
USA corporations are legally regulated by laws which their managers know are rarely enforced. This criminal activity is what the USA government calls: Deregulation.
— Steven Magee
The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.
— Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
Having been privileged to consult and speak in parliaments and to the governments of some of the leading countries in the world, it would be a waste if I don’t contribute my quota and do my best to help rescue my continent from that backwardness and darkness that Africa is largely agonizing in at present.
— Sunday Adelaja
Bureaucracy: A contentious rumble toward the establishment of authoritarian rule.
— Albert Thomas Bifarelli
We're Killers On The Keyboard
— Cyndi Williams Barnier, Murder in Twos and Threes
The only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that it's government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in. The only thing in America that is still unique in this tired world is that a man can go as far as his brains will take him or he can go to hell if he wants to, but it won't be that way much longer.
— Harper Lee
If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.
— Lysander Spooner
Every socialist is a disguised dictator.
— Ludwig von Mises
Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people’s natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they — the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate — are themselves the government.
— Robert Higgs
When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you.
— Frank Chodorov
The way to a landowner's heart was to tax gently.
— Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
The USA government sure do like their propaganda feeds! Unfortunately, too much propaganda does create the scenario where no one believes anything that they say. It's just like Pinocchio.
— Steven Magee
Commerce tends toward rewarding inclusion, broadness, and liberality. Tribal loyalties, ethnic and religious bigotries, and irrational prejudices are bad for business. The merchant class has been conventionally distrusted by tribalist leaders -- from the ancient to the modern world -- precisely because merchantcraft tends to break down barriers between groups.
— Jeffrey Tucker
No cop on earth would call his badge a government identification document. Cops don’t work for the government. Not in their minds. They work for their department. For each other. For the whole worldwide brotherhood. For the city, just maybe, at the very best. But not the government. They hate the government. The government is their worst enemy, at every level. National, county, local, no one understands cops and everyone makes their lives more and more miserable with an endless stream of bullshit. A cop wouldn’t use the word.
— Lee Child, Personal
A man who doesn’t detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government in earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Governments represent their citizens in the same way as parasites represent their hosts.
— Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski, The Pith of Life: Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty
Of course, no government official will ever tell you that the cities may be making the people in them ill.
— Steven Magee, Health Forensics
On a basic level, he had seen first-hand how his government used the element of fear to accomplish its objectives; the same element of fear that had been used as an excuse to engage its huge war machine in conflicts for the profits of America’s oligarchy.
— Kenneth Eade
Well, banks are the biggest mafia, you know, except for the government of course.
— Kenneth Eade, Predatory Kill
A nation of philosophers [might have no need for the steadiness of venerable institutions], but a nation of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato.
— Madison, James
The USA government states that the New Mexico Trinity nuclear bomb site is still highly radioactive and 'harmless'. It is interesting to note in the era of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) that it is USA government policy that radio frequency (RF) and electricity are also 'harmless'.
— Steven Magee
People who know God truly change the life of their nation, and not the government.
— Sunday Adelaja
the government tends to act like a corporation treating the public as its consumers rather than its citizens
— Fairclough Norman
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
I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
— Frederick Douglass
Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
— Friedrich A. Hayek
In particular, the State has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly over police and military services, the provision of law, judicial decision-making, the mint and the power to create money, unused land ("the public domain"), streets and highways, rivers and coastal waters, and the means of delivering mail...the State relies on control of the levers of propaganda to persuade its subjects to obey or even exalt their rulers.
— Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty
Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the one, since the initiation of force is wrong (and the assent of even the most overwhelming majority can never make it morally permissible). Opinions—even majority opinions—neither create truth nor alter facts. A lynch mob is democracy in action. So much for mob rule.
— Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty
Republics never survive, for their people do not like freedom but prefer to be led and guided and flattered and seduced into slavery by a benevolent, or not so, benevolent despot. They want to worship Caesar. So, American republicanism will inevitably die and become a democracy, and then decline, as Aristotle said into a despotism.
— Taylor Caldwell, Captains and the Kings
Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen.
— Frédéric Bastiat
Without anarchy, there would be chaos.
— Jeffrey Tucker
When I argue with devout statists, sometimes other voluntaryists tell me that I'm wasting my time, opining that a particular statist is never going to "get it." I often respond by saying that that's rarely my intention. Most of the time, when I argue with statists, the goal is for ME to learn more about the mentality and psychology of authoritarian indoctrination, and to hopefully help any SPECTATORS--whether statist or anarchist--learn something from the exchange. (Both of those goals can be achieved even if the statist continues to be a lunk-headed dupe.) Earlier today, a funny but possibly profound analogy came to mind about this:When I argue with "true believer" devout statists, I'm not being a doctor trying to heal an ailing patient; I'm being a coroner, doing an AUTOPSY on a patient who is already beyond any hope of saving, in the hopes that I, and anyone observing, may learn more about the "disease" of statism, in order to better understand the nature of it, and possibly prevent others from experiencing a similar fate.
— Larken Rose
The first people to get the new money are the counterfeiters, which they use to buy various goods and services. The second receivers of the new money are the retailers who sell those goods to the counterfeiters. And on and on the new money ripples out through the system, going from one pocket or till to another. As it does so, there is an immediate redistribution effect. For first the counterfeiters, then the retailers, etc. have new money and monetary income they use to bid up goods and services, increasing their demand and raising the prices of the goods that they purchase. But as prices of goods begin to rise in response to the higher quantity of money, those who haven't yet received the new money find the prices of the goods they buy have gone up, while their own selling prices or incomes have not risen. In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (e.g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money at all.
— Murray N. Rothbard
Liberty is no less a blessing because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.
— Lucretia Mott
In their passion for sameness, the tyrants made themselves more and more powerful. All others grew correspondingly weaker and weaker. New bureaus and directorates, odd ministries, leaped into existence for the most improbable purposes. These became the citadels of a new aristocracy, rulers who kept the giant wheel of government careening along, spreading destruction, violence, and chaos wherever they touched.
— Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment
The instant that any government obtains a monetary printing press, it becomes a deeply dishonest government, empowered to rob people by stealth. A government with the power to print money knows no limits.
— Jeffrey Tucker
Self-government is our right," [Roger Casement] declared. "A thing born in us at birth; a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself - than the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers, or to love our kind. . . . Where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labours. . . then surely it is braver, a saner and a truer thing, to be a rebel . . . than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.
— Adam Hochschild
Recall that the minimum wage was initially conceived as a method to exclude undesirables from the workforce.
— Jeffrey Tucker
Ultimately, all arguments against markets are arguments against anarchy. Marx understood this much, at least.
— Jeffrey Tucker
The country he had left thirty years ago had been a realistic place. There were political realities there, then and now, that precluded blind faith, that discouraged one from thinking that everything, always, would work out fairly and equitably. But he had come to believe such things in the United States. Things had worked out. Difficulties had been overcome. He had worked hard and achieved success. The machinery of government functioned.
— Dave Eggers, Zeitoun
There is in all of us a strong disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so that many falsely derive all justice from law. It is sufficient, then, for the law to order and sanction plunder, that it may appear to many consciences just and sacred. Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly—“You are a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis upon which society rests.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
Governments from the top fail as often as those from the bottom; and every great failure brings a sad social reaction, thousands and millions of helpless men laying down their lives in the unhappy process. Why may not statesmen study the past and avoid such catastrophes?"Delivered in his capacity as the American Ambassador to Germany, on October 12, 1933, in a speech to the Berlin branch of the American Chamber of Commerce, quoted in Erik Larson's book, In the Garden of Beasts.
— William E. Dodd
It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.
— Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs
It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.
— Alexis de Tocqueville
What makes anyone think that government officials are even trying to protect us? A government is not analogous to a hired security guard. Governments do not come into existence as social service organizations or as private firms seeking to please consumers in a competitive market. Instead, they are born in conquest and nourished by plunder. They are, in short, well-armed gangs intent on organized crime. Yes, rulers have sometimes come to recognize the prudence of protecting the herd they are milking and even of improving its ‘infrastructure’ until the day they decide to slaughter the young bulls, but the idea that government officials seek to promote my interests or yours is little more than propaganda—unless, of course, you happen to belong to the class of privileged tax eaters who give significant support to the government and therefore receive in return a share of the loot.
— Robert Higgs
The man who is not permitted to own is owned.
— George Santayana
While liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when these consenting adults engage in trade or exchange, the liberals step in to harass, cripple, restrict, or prohibit that trade. And yet both the consenting sexual activity and the trade are similar expressions of liberty in action.
— Murray N. Rothbard
When the state itself is held to the same moral standards as everyone else, it dies. And that's a wonderful thing.
— Jeffrey Tucker
I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.
— Murray N. Rothbard
Where there is commerce there is peace.
— Jeffrey Tucker
People are more willing to support the exercise of authority over themselves when they believe it to be an objective, neutral feature of the natural world. This was the idea behind the concept of the divine right of kings. By making the king appear to be an integral part of God's plan for the world rather than an ordinary human being dominating his fellows by brute force, the public could be more easily persuaded to bow to his authority. However, when the doctrine of divine right became discredited, a replacement was needed to ensure that the public did not view political authority as merely the exercise of naked power. That replacement is the concept of the rule of law.
— John Hasnas
Whenever a government feels the need of promising peace and prosperity to its citizens by means of a proclamation, it is time to be on guard and expect the opposite.
— Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina
There are two and only two ways that any economy can be organized. One is by freedom and voluntary choice—the way of the market. The other is by force and dictation—the way of the State.
— Murray N. Rothbard
Many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later, --oftener sooner than late,-- is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
If you have a really good ideas, one thing you dont need is a fucking gun. An iPad is a kind of a cool thing. They don't need to threaten you with fines to get you to buy one do they? The moment the government says they're gonna force you to do something, you know its a bad idea. If someone invites you on a date with chloroform, an old sofa, and a windowless van, it's not a date.So, the fact that ObamaCare, welfare state, military industrial complex, public schools - you name it. The fact that it has to be imposed at gunpoint is a clue that it's shit. Recognize that when there is a gun to your face, there is not a very advantageous human being on the other end.
— Stefan Molyneux
The very term ‘public utility’ … is an absurd one. Every good is useful ‘to the public,’ and almost every good … may be considered ‘necessary.’ Any designation of a few industries as ‘public utilities’ is completely arbitrary and unjustified.
— Murray N. Rothbard
Keep your head down, Edward. Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.
— Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey
The history of our country has taught us, above all, the virtue of patience. It will be many generations before we can have the conditions we seek.
— Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros
Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is so prodigal of it's favors to those called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it could not subsist? But after the public has reaped all the advantage of their service, and they come to be oppressed with age, sickness, and want, all their labours and the good they have done is forgotten, and all the recompense given them is that they are left to die in great misery.
— Thomas More
He who steals a belt buckle pays with his life
—  he who steals a state gets to be a feudal lord.
Simon was still trying to work out how Shadowhunter government and also Shadowhunter family trees worked. They all seemed to be related to each other and it was very disturbing.
— Cassandra Clare, Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy
No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire.
— Lysander Spooner
I wonder how many such men in America would know that Communism, the New Deal, Fascism, Nazism, are merely so-many trade-names for collectivist Statism, like the trade-names for tooth-pastes which are all exactly alike except for the flavouring.
— Albert Jay Nock
The most dangerous diminutions of freedom come from those who are convinced of their moral rectitude.
— Daniel Hannan
They who employ force by proxy are as much responsible for that force as though they employed it themselves.
— Herbert Spencer
In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.
— Albert Jay Nock
Statism ends with an eye roll.
— Stefan Molyneux
Principles are meant to serve people, not people serving to uphold the principle, while harming the people.
— Shannon L. Alder
Here is a principle to use in all aspects of economics and policy. When you find a good or service that is in huge demand but the supply is so limited to the point that the price goes up and up, look for the regulation that is causing it. This applies regardless of the sector, whether transportation, gas, education, food, beer, or daycare. There is something in the way that is preventing the market from working as it should. If you look carefully enough, you will find the hand of the state making the mess in question.
— Jeffrey Tucker
Having a Constitutional political party is a little like telling a car-jacker, "You're not allowed to do what you're doing! And if you don't stop it right now, we are going to ask you to order yourself to be nice! And if that doesn't work, we are going to try to elect a new car-jacker, who we hope will tell himself not to steal our cars! ... But at least we're not like those silly utopian anarchist kooks out there who refuse to work within the system for change! Those crazy people say there should be NO car-jackers at all!
— Larken Rose
When people are free to choose, they choose freedom
— Margaret Thatcher, The Collected Speeches of Margaret Thatcher
Government cannot be religious and self-assertive at the same time. Religious experience needs a spontaneity which laws inevitably suppress. And you cannot govern without laws. Your laws eventually must replace morality, replace conscience, replace even the religion by which you think to govern. Sacred ritual must spring from praise and holy yearnings which hammer out a significant morality. Government, on the other hand, is a cultural organism particularly attractive to doubts, questions and contentions. I see the day coming when ceremony must take the place of faith and symbolism replaces morality.
— Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. Hence, the less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favourable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the same way that central banking nearly wrecked the world and created one calamity after another, bitcoin can save the world one transaction at a time.It is time for a new beginning.
— Jeffrey Tucker
…so that’s why I’m pleased to announce my endorsement of Sarah Palin for President in 2016: because you know that whoever gets elected is going to fuck you over. So why not vote for somebody that you actually want to get fucked by?
— Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Indecision Now! A Libertarian Rage
In effect, the poor person is a rich person left to fend for him or herself, without the support of institutions that help the person to take 'good' decisions.
— Daniel     Cohen
Democracy changes its opinions from time to time, philosophy doesn't.
— Amit Kalantri
Social entrepreneurship represents the opportunity to redefine the role of government.
— Robert Hacker
Government should be a floor upon which the good of the people flourishes, not a ceiling upon which people bump their heads!
— Todd Stocker
Humanity degenerating into one huge interconnected endlessly fragmenting fleshy sub-Reddit of weird fetishes and fucking doge memes, with the government periodically digging for information they can flog to advertisers and overseas power brokers to kill time and boost the coffers between illegal wars and cumming toxic jizz into the atmosphere.
— Stefan Mohamed, Stuff
Apparently these new rulers of the world did not indulge in any drinking or smoking to soften their moods when they met, which Menelaus knew to be a big mistake. The Congress of the United States, back before the Disunion, always met sober, and look at what had come of that.
— John C. Wright
Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.
— Edward L. Bernays
Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.
— Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this--that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.
— Lysander Spooner
A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.
— Ayn Rand
Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people.
— Robert Higgs
Authority that can not be questioned is tyranny" Terry Pratchett: A Slip of the Keyboard
— Hank Quense
Fascism is when corporations become the government.
— Bill Maher
The whole idea of government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.
— P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
This gentleman evidently belonged to the category of those people who wish the Government to interfere in everything, even in their daily quarrels with their wives.
— Nikolai Gogol, The Nose
The fact is, the primary way that Ottawa and Washington deal with Native people is to ignore us. They know that the court system favors the powerful and the wealthy and the influential, and that, if we buy into the notion of an impartial justice system, tribes and bands can be forced through a long, convoluted, and expensive process designed to wear us down and bankrupt our economies.Be good. Play by our rules. Don't cause a disturbance.
— Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
— P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
Good governance is about nothing more or less than creating happiness. It really is that simple.
— Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Flashes of Thought
The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.
— Ludwig von Mises
Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
— P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
The demoralization that the debase­ment of the currency left in its wake played a major role in bring­ing Adolf Hitler into power in 1933.
— Henry Hazlitt
Darks drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow approaching nearer and nearer, was spreading little by little over men, over things, over ideas; a shadow which came from indignations and from systems. All that had been hurriedly stifled was stirring and fermenting. Sometimes the conscious of the honest man caught its breath, there was so much confusion in that air in which sophisms were mingled with truths. Minds trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of the storm. The electric tension was so great that at certain moments any chance-comer, thought unknown, flashed out. Then the twilight darkness fell again. At intervals, deep and sullen mutterings enabled men to judge of the amount of lightning in the cloud.
— Victor Hugo