Quotes
From LibertyActivism
| Quotes by author | by topic |
| Author | Text | Source | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Murray N. Rothbard | [I]t should be emphasized that economic theory does not "assume" full employment. Economics, in fact, "assumes" nothing. The whole discussion of alleged "assumptions" reflects the bias of the epistemology of physics, where "assumptions" are made without originally knowing their validity and are eventually tested to see whether or not their consequents are correct. The economist does not "assume"; he knows. He concludes on the basis of logical deduction from self-evident axioms, i.e., axioms that are either logically or empirically incontrovertible. | Man, Economy, and State (p. 582) | economics |
| John Stuart Mill | A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government... it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. | education, despotism | |
| Murray N. Rothbard | It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. | economics, ignorance | |
| Barack Obama | No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or if police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there, and now is the time for that style of governance to end. | Speaking in Ghana | democracy, tyranny, economics, taxation, business, government |
| Ludwig von Mises | The sphere of the "economic" is plainly the same as the sphere of the rational: and the sphere of the "purely economic" is nothing but the sphere in which money calculation is possible. | Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (p. 108) | economics, money |
| Ludwig von Mises | War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. | Speaking of WW1 | war, prosperity |
| George Bernard Shaw | The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. | Everybody's Political What's What? (ch. 30) | theft, government |
| Frederic Bastiat | A treatise has without doubt an incontestable superiority. But it requires to be read, meditated, and understood. It addresses itself to the select few. Its mission is first to fix attention, and then to enlarge the circle of acquired knowledge. A work that undertakes the refutation of vulgar prejudices, cannot have so high an aim. It aspires only to clear the way for the steps of Truth; to prepare the minds of men to receive her; to rectify public opinion, and to snatch from unworthy hands dangerous weapons they misuse. | Economic Sophisms - First Series (Pg. 300) | truth |
| Frederic Bastiat | What does it profit us that a great man, even a God, should promulgate moral laws, if the minds of men, steeped in error, will constantly mistake vice for virtue, and virtue for vice? | Economic Sophisms - First Series (Pg. 301) | ignorance, virtue, vice |
| Frederic Bastiat | To rob the public, it is necessary to deceive them. To deceive them, it is necessary to persuade them that they are robbed for their own advantage, and to induce them to accept in exchange for their property, imaginary services, and often worse. Hence spring Sophisms in all their varieties. Then, since Force is held in check, Sophistry is no longer only an evil; it is the genius of evil, and requires a check in its turn. This check must be the enlightenment of the public, which must be rendered more subtle than the subtle, as it is already stronger than the strong. | Economic Sophisms - First Series (Pg. 304) | theft, deception, taxation |
| Frederic Bastiat | Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. | Essays on Political Economy | government |
| Frederic Bastiat | On a false path there is always inconsistency; if this were not so, mankind would be destroyed. We have never seen and never shall see a false principle carried out completely. I have said elsewhere: Absurdity is the limit of inconsistency. I should like to add: It is also its proof. | What is seen and What is not seen (1.165) | government, freedom, liberalism |
| Frederic Bastiat | The State applies itself to loading everybody's brain with prejudices, and everybody's heart with sentiments favorable to the spirit of disorder, war, and hatred; so that, when a doctrine of order, peace, and comity presents itself, it is in vain that it has clearness and truth on its side; it cannot gain admittance. | What Is Money? | money |
| Frederic Bastiat | I will tell you. 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. | What Is Money? | education, monopoly |
| Frederic Bastiat | Workmen, laborers, destitute and suffering classes, will you improve your condition? You will not succeed by strife, insurrection, hatred, and error. But there are three things that always result in benefit and blessing to every community and to every individual who helps to compose it; and these things are -- peace, liberty and security. | Capital and Interest | capital, interest, peace, liberty, security |
| Frederic Bastiat | Have you never asked yourself whether these heavy burdens on which you found your argument for a prohibitory system are not caused by that very system? If commerce where free, what use would you have for your great standing armies and powerful navies? | Our Products Are Burdened With Taxes | free market |
| Pierre-Joseph Proudhon | The foundation stone of my system is the availability of free credit. If I am mistaken in this, Socialism is a vain dream. | Capital and Interest by Federic Bastiat | socialism, money, credit |
| Thomas Paine | He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. | Dissertation on First Principles of Government (Pg. 277) | oppression, liberty |
| James Madison | With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted. | letter to James Robertson | general welfare, Constitution |
| James Madison | 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.... | letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 | money, power, general welfare, Constitution, Congress |
| James Madison | I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. (In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object.) | 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794) | Constitution, Congress |
| Thomas Jefferson | Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. | Congress, Constitution | |
| Samuel Adams | It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men. | freedom | |
| Franklin Pierce | I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve the measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded. | 1854 veto of a measure to help the mentally ill | money, Congress, charity |
| Patrick Henry | Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. | speech to the Virginia Convention, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775 | liberty, death, slavery |
| Erich Mühsam | Those who comfortably acquiesce and say 'we cannot change things' shamefully desecrate human dignity and all the gifts of their own hearts and brain. For they renounce without a struggle every use of their ability to overthrow man-made institutions and governments and to replace them with new ones. | 1910-1924 (trans. Diaries) (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994) ISBN 3423190302 | defeatism, revolution |
| George Washington | If we talk of obliging men to serve their country, we are sure to hear a fellow mumble over the words liberty and property a thousand times. | speaking of those who resisted militia draft to attack the French for the Ohio Company | liberty, property, draft, militia |
| Benjamin Tucker | To directly enforce equality of material well-being is meddlesome, invasive and offensive, but to directly enforce equality of liberty is simply protective and defensive. The latter is negative, and aims only to prevent the establishment of artificial inequalities; the former is positive, and aims at direct and active abolition of natural inequalities. | equality, liberty | |
| Benjamin Tucker | "How are we to remove the injustice of allowing one man to enjoy what another has earned?" I do not expect it ever to be removed altogether. But I believe that for every dollar that would be enjoyed by tax-dodgers under Anarchy, a thousand dollars are now enjoyed by men who have got possession of the earnings of others through special industrial, commercial, and financial privileges granted them by authority in violation of a free market. | free market, injustice, privilege | |
| Benjamin Tucker | If the cost principle of value cannot be realized otherwise than by compulsion, then it had better not be realized. | value, compulsion | |
| Martin Luther King Jr. | On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. | cowardice, expediency, vanity, conscience | |
| Thomas Paine | Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general Favor; a long Habit of not thinking a Thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raise at first a formidable outcry in defence of Custom. But the Tumult soon subsides. Time makes more Converts than Reason. | Common Sense | liberty, right, wrong |
| Ludwig von Mises | Everything that happens in the social world in our time is the result of ideas. Good things and bad things. What is needed is to fight bad ideas. We must oppose the confiscation of property, the control of prices, inflation, and all those evils from which we suffer. | inflation, property, good, bad, ideas | |
| Henry Ford | It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. | money, banking | |
| Asiba Tupahache | It's difficult for some of us to think of doing for self. Some of us are very dependent on government agencies and bureaucracies and find it hard to believe we can do anything without permission. | No More Prisons, William Upski Wimsatt ISBN 1-59376-205-4 | independence, liberty, freedom |
| Judge Alex Kozinski | The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. | Silveira v. Lockyer, Ninth Circuit Court | Second Amendment, guns, tyranny |
