Favorite Quotes

Here are my favorite quotes.

POEMS

"We rode on the winds of the rising storm,
We ran to the sounds of the thunder,
We danced among the lightning bolts,
and tore the world asunder."

WHAT IS LIBERTARIANISM?

"Libertarianism - The radical notion that other people are not your property."

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim." – L. Neil Smith

"Libertarianism is a philosophy. The basic premise of libertarianism is that each individual should be free to do as he or she pleases so long as he or she does not harm others. In the libertarian view, societies and governments infringe on individual liberties whenever they tax wealth, create penalties for victimless crimes, or otherwise attempt to control or regulate individual conduct which harms or benefits no one except the individual who engages in it." – definition written by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service during the process of granting the Advocates for Self-Government status as a nonprofit educational organization

"Libertarianism is, as the name implies, the belief in liberty. Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life – as long as he simply respects the same right of others to do the same." -- Sharon Harris, President, Advocates for Self-Government

LIBERTARIANISM

"Saying that we can't survive without the government, is like saying that animals can't survive without farms." - Chris Reid

"Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, 'See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.'" - Harry Browne

"It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." – Charles A. Beard

"The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it." - George Orwell

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." - George Orwell

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." George Orwell, 1946

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ― George Orwell, from 1984

"History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents…. A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets." - Ludwig von Mises

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." - F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

"Creating employment’s a straightforward craft
When the nation’s at war, and there’s a draft
If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet
We’d have full employment and nothing to eat

"Jobs are a means, not the ends in themselves
people work to live better, to put food on the shelves
real growth means production of what people demand
That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan

"I don’t want to do nothing, there’s plenty to do
The question I ponder is who plans for whom?
Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many, not by the few." - Keynes vs. Hayek Second Round

"No one rules, if no one obeys."

"I used to think government was a necessary evil, but I've changed my mind. It isn't necessary."

"Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying."

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."

“Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.” ― Frédéric Bastiat

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” ― Frédéric Bastiat

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” ― Frédéric Bastiat

“As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose--that it may violate property instead of protecting it--then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.” ― Frédéric Bastiat

“Law is solely the organization of the individual right of self-defense which existed before law was formalized. Law is justice.” ― Frédéric Bastiat

“The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending hisacquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protected and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.” ― Frédéric Bastiat

“In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder — is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?” ― Frédéric Bastiat

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain." - Frédéric Bastiat

"The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them." - Frédéric Bastiat

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frédéric Bastiat

“Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism.
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil in itself, but also a fertile source for further evils, for it invites reprisals. If such a law is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.” - Frédéric Bastiat

"It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion — whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government — at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty." - Frédéric Bastiat

"To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt." - Mikhail Bakunin

"Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes." - Alexander Haig

"An Old World revolution is only a movement around a motionless center; it never breaks out of the circle. Firm in the center is belief in Authority." - Rose Wilder Lane

"Very few men have ever known that men are free. Among this earth's population now, few know that fact. For six thousand years at least, a majority has generally believed in pagan gods. A pagan god, whatever it is called, is an Authority which (men believe) controls the energy, the acts, and therefore the fate of all individuals. The pagan view of the universe is that it is static, motionless, limited, and controlled by an Authority. The pagan view of man is that all individuals are, and by their nature should and must be, controlled by some Authority outside themselves.
Everyone has this belief when he is very young. A chick can scratch as soon as it is dry from the shell, and a fish emerging from the egg can swim, but a baby must be spanked before he can breathe, and then he can not control the little energy that he has. For a long time, he will kick himself in the eye when he is only trying to taste his toes to find out what they are. He is hungry, and he can not get food. He is uncomfortable, and he can not turn over. Food, warmth, comfort, cleanliness, everything he wants and must have, come from a power outside himself, enormously stronger than he. And this power actually does control the conditions of his life. It does not control his energy — did you ever try to stop a
baby's squawling when he merely wanted to squawl? — but doubtless he feels that it does. He wants food; it feeds him. He tries to lift himself up, and it lifts him. When this great power outside himself coincides with his own energy, and does what he wants to do, it must seem to him that it controls his energy. When it does with him what he does not want done, he knows that he is powerless to resist it.
If a baby were able to control his energy in thinking and speaking, any baby would say that experience proves the existence of a Great Power that controls babies.
Men do not remain babies all their lives. They grow up. A time comes when every normal man is a responsible human being. His energy creates a part of the whole human world of his time. He is free; he is self-controlling and responsible, because he generates his energy and controls it. No one and nothing else can control it. Nevertheless, during some six thousand years of the Old World's history, a majority of men have believed that some Authority controlled them. In all that time, human energies have never worked efficiently enough to get from this earth a reliable food supply." - Rose Wilder Lane from The Discovery of Freedom

"Human beings are fighters by nature. Living is a tough job; only good fighters can do it. Like it or lump it, this planet is no safe place for any living creature. Living is fighting for life, and when anyone does not know this fact, someone else is doing his fighting for him." - Rose Wilder Lane

"It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen." - George MacDonald

"The truth cannot be vilified."

"Truth is the most powerful weapon against injustice."

"The biggest criminals write the rules that make their crimes legal."

"Americans think their danger is terrorists. They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution.... The terrorists are not anything like the threat we face from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism.... The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown" - Paul Craig Roberts

"Sociopaths see everyone they do not identify with as ants."

"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies."

"A lie can travel half way round the world while the truth is putting on it's shoes."

"You can't reason people out of beliefs they weren't reasoned into." - Stefan Molyneux

"War is organized murder, and nothing else." Harry Patch, last surviving soldier of WWI.

"What I can conclude today, five years later, is that we were no better than any other occupying force, whether the British in Boston 1773 or the Soviets in Afghanistan 1979." - Corporal Alexander Hill (Ramadi, Iraq September 2007 - April 2008)

“The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals." - Edward Abbey

"The state operates in a legal vacuum. There exists no contract between the state and its citizens." - Hans Hoppe.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Before you can break out of prison, you must first realize you're locked up."

"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." - Robert LeFevre

"A limited government is a contradiction in terms." - Robert LeFevre

"If men are good, you don't need government; if men are evil or ambivalent, you don't dare have one." - Robert LeFevre

"An anarchist is anyone who believes in less government than you do." - Robert LeFevre

"Show me the government that does not infringe upon anyone's rights, and I will no longer call myself an anarchist." - Jacob Halbrooks

"America is a two party state. That of socialists and neoconservatives. While one instigates the other pacifies. Neither are your friend."

"There comes a time when a woman needs to stop thinking about her looks and focus her energies on raising her children. This time comes at the moment of conception. A child needs a role model, not a supermodel." - Astrid Alauda

"Television is an anesthetic for the pain of the modern world." - Astrid Alauda

"The revolution will not be televised."

"There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven." - Robert Green Ingersoll

"If you have to use threats to force freedom onto people... then it's not freedom."

“Anarchists insist that without government as we know it — that is, government that lacks the explicit, individual, voluntary consent of every adult subject to its authority — people would devise reasonably effective ways to keep order and peace and facilitate productive cooperation. Those who oppose anarchism and support government as we know it think differently. My friend Bryan Morton has effectively summarized their view of how anarchism would work: “soon it’s utter chaos and mayhem. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!” Thus, it would seem that a rather wide gulf separates the anarchists and their intellectual opponents.” - Robert Higgs

“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a Great Leap Forward that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.” - Robert Higgs

"Liberty is not the daughter but the mother of order." - Proudhon

"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." - Proudhon

"A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure." - Hugh Kingsmill

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter." - Ayn Rand

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

“A government with all this mass of favours to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement.”

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." Commisioner Pravin Lal, Alpha Centauri (Computer Game)

"Competition and capitalism are hated to-day because of their tendency to destroy poverty and privilege." -William Hutt

"Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense." - Robert A. Heinlein

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

"Politics is the blind leading the clueless."

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it." - John Emerich Edward Dalberg (Lord Acton) [found in an appendix from a collection of Acton's essays (published posthumously), to the Bishop Creighton Acton]

"Politics n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." - H.L. Mencken

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant" - Charles de Gaulle

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them." - H.L. Mencken

"Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." - H.L. Mencken

"Elections are futures markets in stolen property." - H.L. Mencken

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." – H.L. Mencken

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken

"Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I’ve told the kids in the ghettos that violence won’t solve their problems, but then they ask me, and rightly so; "Why does the government use massive doses of violence to bring about the change it wants in the world?" After this I knew that I could no longer speak against the violence in the ghettos without also speaking against the violence of my government." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."
-Thomas Paine, 1776

"He who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave." - Sir William Drummond

"Don't steal, the government hates competition." - Ron Paul

"[government] Laws are like cobwebs, the small flies get stuck, but the great break through."

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop

"I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you have earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else's money." - Thomas Sowell

"Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic." - Thomas Sowell

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” - Thomas Sowell

"I am so old that I can remember when liberals were liberal — instead of being intolerant of anything and anybody that is not politically correct." - Thomas Sowell

"If you truly believe in the brotherhood of man, then you must believe that blacks are just as capable of being racists as whites are." - Thomas Sowell

"How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?" - Thomas Sowell

"People who believe in evolution in biology often believe in creationism in government. In other words, they believe that the universe and all the creatures in it could have evolved spontaneously, but that the economy is too complicated to operate without being directed by politicians." - Thomas Sowell

(Or rather they must believe that the economy is so simple that even a politician could plan it.)

"The threat behind every statute; every parking ticket, every speeding ticket, every moving "violation", any "infraction" the state levels against you is the threat to murder you for non-compliance."

"There is no law so trivial that police will not murder you to enforce it."

"Taxation is theft. Government is slavery."

"Democracy is the suggestion box for slaves." - Stefan Molyneux

"People cannot be reasoned out of beliefs they weren't reasoned into."

"My concern with "Why don't you move to Somalia, then?" isn't with Somalia so much as... Why should I? Why shouldn't I stay right here where I am and try to make HERE better? Why all this, "love it or leave it" stuff? How do we look at blacks in the 60s who demanded they be treated better? Do we look back on them and say, "No, you silly negros, if you don't love it here, why don't you go back to Africa?" Of course not. We applaud them as heroes and visionaries and call them courageous and noble. But we're the bad guys. We aren't demanding that you provide for our children's college education. We're not demanding that you hire us for jobs before others because of the color of our skin. We're not demanding that your tax dollars be spent on us... we just want to live in peace. And for that, we get, "Why don't you just get out!?" Yup. That's an awesome attitude." - Erin Leland

"The man who does not read, has no advantage over the man who cannot."

"A concept of human nature that holds that people are unfit to rule themselves, but are somehow fit to rule over others, is patently absurd."
Indeed, but the creators of democracy have never considered themselves to be equal to other humans. They've always thought of their subjects as inferior and stupid, and of themselves as some kind of an elite. Remember that quote by Churchill?

"Abusus non tollit usum."
(Abuse does not take away proper use. I think of this every time I hear of gun confiscation.)

"If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you." - William E. Simon

"Society thrives on trade simply because trade makes specialization possible, and specialization increases output, and increased output reduces the cost in toil for the satisfactions men live by. That being so, the market place is a most humane institution." - Frank Chodorov

"Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in an almost imperceptible manner by the depreciation of their circulating currency, through its excessive quantity." - Copernicus

"A person‘s right to a job is as specious as his boss‘ right to success in business. There is no right to a minimum wage, just as there is no right to success in self-employment." - Rex Curry

"Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips, but few in their mind." - Dante Alighieri

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." ― Albert Camus.

"The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interest." - Milton Friedman

"The task of government in this enlightened time does not extend to actually dealing with problems. Solving problems might put bureaucrats out of work. No, the task of government is to make it look as though problems have been solved, while continuing to keep the maximum number of consultants and bureaucrats employed dealing with them." - Bob Emmers

"Always remember the difference between economic power and political power: You can refuse to hire someone‘s services or buy his products in the private sector and go somewhere else instead. In the public sector, though, if you refuse to accept a politician‘s or bureaucrat‘s product or services you go to jail. Ultimately, after all, all regulations are observed and all taxes are paid at gunpoint." - Rick Gaber

"Every day, IRS agents levy liens on homes, bank accounts, and businesses; they confiscate cars, furniture, boats, and other personal property without the constitutional protections of due notice, hearing, and due process. If a person forcibly resists, government agents kill him for resisting arrest." - Jacob Hornberger

"By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments—that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity." - John Hospers

“I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” - Charles Dickens
As an aside, I've realized that though it wasn't conceived this way, this quote perfectly describes Statists. Except that they also force others to wear their chains.

"So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."

"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.'" - Marcus Tullius Cicero

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

"There are a thousand striking at the root of evil to one who is planting a different tree."

"Whoever controls the image and information of the past determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls the information and images of the present determines how those same people will view the past."

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."

"Everything is upside down today:
Media distorts information
Bankers destroy wealth
Medicine destroys health
Law destroys justice
Religion destroys spirituality"

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." - Marcus Aurelius

"When I hear someone talking about political solutions, I know I am not listening to a serious person." - George Carlin

"While opposing any and all private or group aggression against the rights of person and property, the libertarian sees that throughout history and into the present day, there has been one central, dominant, and overriding aggressor upon all of these rights: the State. In contrast to all other thinkers, left, right, or in-between, the libertarian refuses to give the State the moral sanction to commit actions that almost everyone agrees would be immoral, illegal, and criminal if committed by any person or group in society. The libertarian, in short, insists on applying the general moral law to everyone, and makes no special exemptions for any person or group. But if we look at the State naked, as it were, we see that it is universally allowed, and even encouraged, to commit all the acts which even nonlibertarians concede are reprehensible crimes. The State habitually commits mass murder, which it calls "war", or sometimes "suppression of subversion"; the State engages in enslavement into its military forces, which it calls "conscription"; and it lives and has its being in the practice of forcible theft, which it calls "taxation." The libertarian insists that whether or not such practices are supported by the majority of the population is not germane to their nature: that, regardless of popular sanction, War is Mass Murder, Conscription is Slavery, and Taxation is Robbery. The libertarian, in short, is almost completely the child in the fable, pointing out insistently that the emperor has no clothes." - Murray Rothbard

"If you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place." - Murray Rothbard

"The word politics comes from poly, as in many, and ticks, as in blood-sucking parasites."

"The First Amendment wasn’t written so that you can talk about the weather."

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever."
That's what'll happen if the mass psychosis known as Statism doesn't abate.

"Indoctrination begins at an early age. If the subject is guided by installed concepts and social structuring he or she will have the pathways to free thought blocked, putting a halt to eureka moments and leaps of insight."

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul." – George Bernard Shaw

"America needs fewer laws, not more prisons." – James Bovard

"The only reason why any government wants "gun control" is because they want to do things they'll get shot for!"

"War is just one more big government program." – Joseph Sobran

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." – John Adams (1814)

“The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.” - Charles Bukowski

"No matter who you vote for, the government always wins."

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”
- John Adams

(Now apply that to the hundreds of thousands of innocent marijuana smokers caged. Do not be surprised that so many have no respect for the law, for how can the law be respected if victimless non-crimes are justifications for locking up innocent people?)

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." – Thomas B. Reed (1886)

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

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

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." – Mark Twain (1866)

"I never gave a damn about a man who could only spell a word one way." - Mark Twain

“In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, Brave, Hated, and Scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him. For then it costs nothing to be a Patriot.” - Mark Twain

"The Constitution... has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." - Lysander Spooner

"A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years." - Lysander Spooner

"If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized." - Lysander Spooner

"If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them." - Lysander Spooner

"The Conspiracy Theory of Society... [is] a typical result of the secularization of a religious superstition. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups – sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from – such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists." - Karl Popper

"Let not his mode of raising cash seem strange,
Although he fleeced the flags of every nation,
For into a prime minister but change
His title, and 'tis nothing but taxation."
- Lord Byron

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." – Robert A. Heinlein

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty." – Thomas Jefferson

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." - Thomas Jefferson

"No generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of it's own existence." - Thomas Jefferson

"The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." - Thomas Jefferson

"Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry." - Thomas Jefferson

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it." - Thomas Jefferson

"I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude... The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the disposition of public money. We are endeavoring to reduce the government to the practice of rigid economy to avoid burdening the people." - Thomas Jefferson

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson

"All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party." - Mao Tse Tung

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State." - Heinrich Himmler

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them..." - Richard Henry Lee

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." - Dalai Lama

"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun." - Patrick Henry

"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self defense." - John Adams

"Gun bans disarm victims, putting them at the mercy of murderers or terrorists who think nothing of breaking the gun laws." - Michael Badnarik

"Arms are the only true badge of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave." - Andrew Fletcher

"Let us look and see, then, how they manage their concerns - they for whose cause we are to labour, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic." - Max Stirner

"This year will go down in history for the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." - Adolph Hitler

"There is no news. There is only the truth of the signal. What I see. And, there's the puppet theater the Parliament jesters foist on the somnambulant public." - Mr. Universe from Serenity.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!" - Samuel Adams

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." – Goethe

"When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence." – Gary Lloyd

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." - C.S. Lewis

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." – Barry Goldwater (1964)

"The power to tax is the power to destroy." – John Marshall

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

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

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." – Justice Learned Hand

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." – Thomas Jefferson (1781)

"Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." - George Orwell, 1984

"People who give away their power always give it to the wrong people, because no one honest would ever accept it." - Daniel Mackler

"It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself." – Justice Casey Percell

"You can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone."

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller

"If you love somebody, send a drone to flatten their house. If they still love you, they are yours forever. If not, they just hate your freedoms." - Finn Krogstad

"I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights." – Abraham Lincoln

"Here's your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute – often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is." – Charley Reese (1998)

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

"The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." – Samuel Adams

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." – Mahatma Gandhi

"There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself." – P.J. O'Rourke (1993)

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

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." – Herbert Spencer (1891)

"All socialism involves slavery." -- Herbert Spencer

"Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others." – William Allen White

"We don't need the internet, the first amendment was only designed to apply to instruments available at the time, such as pens, tongues, and the movable type printing press."

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction." - Oscar Wilde

"A government is a body of people, usually, notably, ungoverned." - Firefly

"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time." – Justice George Sutherland (1938)

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?" – Thomas Jefferson (1801)

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." – Thomas Jefferson

"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father‘s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." - Thomas Jefferson

"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the state, am the people.'... Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Even great spirits have only their five-fingers' breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"It isn’t a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state’s goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government’s propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They’ll fasten the chains to their own ankles. H.L. Mencken once said that the state doesn’t just want to make you obey. It tries to make you want to obey. And that’s one thing the government schools do very well." - Lew Rockwell

"The reason why the myth of the rule of law has survived for 100 years despite the knowledge of its falsity is that it is too valuable a tool to relinquish. The myth of impersonal government is simply the most effective means of social control available to the state." - John Hasnas

"The people who are horrified by the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it have not accepted the very elementary psychological fact that people (all people, of every age) remember the things that are important to them - the things they need to know - and forget the rest." - Daniel Quinn

"Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers." - Aldous Huxley

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwelldid not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” - Neil Postman

"Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual ... who ... can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"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 D. Boaz (1997)

"If Pro is the opposite of Con. What is the opposite of Progress?"

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.” - George Orwell

"You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out."

"The difference between a Socialist and a Communist is that the Socialist doesn't have all the guns yet."

CONFORMISM

"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road." - Voltaire
I wonder though, if it is a man's upbringing that makes him so.

"Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers." - Mignon McLaughlin, 1960

"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." - J.K. Galbraith

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. " - Mark Twain

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"If you don't control your mind, someone else will." - John Allston

"Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions."

"You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note." - Doug Floyd

"A "Normal" person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. You know, "Each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out gray." - Alan Sherman

"When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong, they taught me different was wrong." - Ani Difranco

PREPAREDNESS

"Better sweat in training than bleed in battle."

"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail."

"Pray for the best, prepare for the rest."

"If you’re not always prepared, you’re never prepared."

"The future belongs to those who prepare for it today."

"Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

"I don't have hobbies, I'm developing a robust post-apocalyptic skill set."

The 7 P's of preparedness: "Prior planning and preparation prevent piss poor performance."

"You don't train until you get it right, you train until you can't get it wrong."

ECONOMICS

"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." - Murray Rothbard

"In the land of the lotus-eaters there is no action. Action arises only from need, from dissatisfaction. It is purposeful striving towards something. Its ultimate end is always to get rid of a condition which is conceived to be deficient—to fulfill a need, to achieve satisfaction, to increase happiness." - Ludwig von Mises

"Action is an attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one. We call such a willfully induced alteration an exchange." - Ludwig von Mises

"The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events." - Ludwig von Mises

"The consumers suffer when the laws of the country prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities. What made some enterprises develop into “big business” was precisely their success in filling best the demand of the masses." - Ludwig von Mises

"There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties." - Ludwig von Mises

"Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household. He is fully confident that this trend will prevail also in the future. He simply calls it the “American way of life” and does not give serious thought to the question of what made this continuous improvement in the supply of material goods possible." - Ludwig von Mises

"It is a purposeful distortion of facts to blame the age of [classical] liberalism for an alleged materialism. The nineteenth century was not only a century of unprecedented improvement in technical methods of production and in the material well-being of the masses. It did much more than extend the average length of human life. Its scientific and artistic accomplishments are imperishable. It was an age of immortal musicians, writers, poets, painters, and sculptors; it revolutionized philosophy, economics, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. And, for the first time in history, it made the great works and the great thoughts accessible to the common man." - Ludwig von Mises

"Only to bureaucrats can the idea occur that establishing new offices, promulgating new decrees, and increasing the number of government employees alone can be described as positive and beneficial measures." - Ludwig von Mises

"The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm; it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity." - Ludwig von Mises

"Monetary policy today is guided by little more than government fiat—by the calculations, often mistaken economic theories, and whims of central bankers or, even worse, politicians. Under such a regime, inflation of three or four percent annually has come to be viewed as a stellar monetary performance. However, under a more sound monetary system—i.e., a gold standard—such increases in the general price level would be seen as wildly inflationary." - Raymond Keating

“Prices are not levers that set value; they are metrics that reflect value.”

"There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right." - Elinor Ostrom

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators."

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John Maynard Keynes. This quote is particularly ironic when you realize that Keynes was an underconsumptionist and inflationist. He knew what he was advocating - most of his followers do not.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!" - Andrew Jackson on the Second Central Bank of the United States.

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."

"The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations."

"Who wants good people in government? Good people should be in the private sector. Helping us out, helping themselves out in the private sector. We want schmoes in government. We want people who can’t find the doorknob. Why waste productive people, as well as looting the taxpayer?” - Murray Rothbard

"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime." - Albert Einstein, 1947

PROCRASTINATION

"Tomorrow never comes – it’s always today."

"Failure seldom stops you, what stops you is the fear of failure."

"When was the last time you did something that might embarrass you?"

"The only real failure in life is the failure to try."

"It's not that we don't dare do things because they are difficult; rather, they are difficult because we don't dare do them."

"What is not started today, is never finished tomorrow."

"Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal."

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” - Winston Churchill

CONSPIRACIES

Authors here have been added - because these people ought to know what they're talking about first hand.

"The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists." - J. Edgar Hoover

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States —in the fields of commerce and manufacturing—are afraid of somebody. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” - Woodrow Wilson

Despite these warnings, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. A few years later he wrote: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." - Woodrow Wilson

"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." - Woodrow Wilson

"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure." - Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, 1936

"5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly." The fifth plank of the Communist Manifesto.

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.” - David Rockefeller

“Today, America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the world government.” - Henry Kissinger (Bilderburg Conference 1991 Evians, France)

“Naturally the common people don't want war… but after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…all you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” Herman Goering (One of Hitler's top men, during the Nuremberg Trials)

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator." - Adolph Hitler
(Ah, the "I'm not a vicious dictator ruling over you, I'm just a humble servant of God" excuse for tyranny.)

"The easiest way to gain control of the population is to carry out acts of terror. The public will clamor for such laws if the personal security is threatened." - Joseph Stalin

"Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why would we let them have ideas?" - Joseph Stalin

"Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." - Joseph Stalin

"To conquer a nation, first disarm its citizens." - Hitler

"We must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a World Government, patterned after our Own Government with a legislature, executive and judiciary and police." - Walter Cronkite

"By the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions." - Bill Clinton

"The real rulers of Washington are Invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes." - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible Government which like a giant Octopus, sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states, and nation. - John F. Hylan - Mayor NYC 1918-1925

"The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business. These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection." John F. Hylan (Mayor of NYC 1918-1925)
The names of the people behind the scenes may have changed. Their influence has not.

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know that a financial element in the large centers has owned the Government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson." - FDR to Col. E. Mandell House 11/21/1933

"The Technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by elite, unrestrained by traditional values." - Zbigniew Brezhinsky , Advisor to 5 U.S. Presidents

“…in early times, it was easier to control a million people, literally it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill a million people. Today, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people. It is easier to kill than to control….” - Zbigniew Brzezinski

"Give me control of a Nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." - Mayer Amschel Bauer (Rothschild)

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the NY Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings, and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop OUR PLAN for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a World Government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual ELITE and World Bankers is surely preferable to the national auto - determination practiced in past centuries." - David Rockefeller, June 1991

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." - David Rockefeller, Memoirs, 2002

"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." - Henry Ford

"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation." - Prince Philip

RELIGION

"Going to church makes you a Christian as much as standing in a garage makes you a car."

"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."

"Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them." — Hypatia of Alexandria

"Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact." — Carl Sagan

"I don't want to believe, I want to know." — Carl Sagan

"Religion doesn't give you answers. It just stops you from asking questions."

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"If religious people could be reasoned with - there would be no religious people."

PSYCHOLOGY

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." - Frederick Douglass

MISC. WISDOM

"The sage battles his own ego. The fool battles everyone else's." - Sufi Proverb

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." - Greek proverb.

"The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms." - Muriel Rukeyser

"Me, a vegetarian? My set of teeth came with canines."

"Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people."

"It is ludicrous to blame modern diseases on ancient foods." — Peter Cleave

"Worry is a down payment on a problem you may never have."

"If you aren't cheating ... you aren't trying hard enough."

"What right has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so little evidence that it will do them any good?" — Philip Handler

“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.” - G.K. Chesterton

"If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson

"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." — Lazarus Long

"I always wondered why somebody didn't do something about that. Then I realized - I am somebody."

"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it." — Arabic Proverb

"Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction." - Kenichi Ohmae

"When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending." — Thich Nhat Hahn

"There are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment." — Gerald Kersh

"Not all those who wander are lost." — J.R.R. Tolkien

"Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses." — Plato

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."

"Good people don't need laws to tell them to act responsibly, and bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato

"Laws do not curb the lawless. After all, that's why we call them 'lawless.'" -- Joel Miller

"I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail, than to attempt to do nothing and succeed." — Robert H Schuller

“When there is money in your hand and not in your heart, it will not harm you even if it is a lot; and when it is in your heart, it will harm you even if there is none in your hands.” — Ibn ul-Qayyim

"The pain of caring is greater than the perceived safety of apathy. Caring's pain will be rewarded, apathy is itself a punishment." — Usama Canon

"I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strangely, I am ungrateful to these teachers” - Khalil Gibran

I have included a great number of quotes by Epictetus, a stoic philosopher, because hard times are coming, and his wisdom will prove valuable to any who can integrate it into their approach to disaster preparedness.

"No man is free who is not master of himself." - Epictetus

"Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit." - Epictetus
(This runs counter to the mantra of "taking out anger" on something, since all that does is habitualize it.)

"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them." - Epictetus

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are"- anais nin

"Every dark emotion has a value and purpose. There are no negative emotions; there are only negative attitudes towards emotions we don’t like and can’t tolerate, and the negative consequences of denying them."

"The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going." - Epictetus

"The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best." - Epictetus

"Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant." - Epictetus

"It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." - Epictetus

"We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." - Epictetus

"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." - Epictetus

"It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting." - Epictetus

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." - Epictetus

"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus

"When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger." - Epictetus

"The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things." - Epictetus

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants." - Epictetus

"Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens." - Epictetus

"All religions must be tolerated... for every man must get to heaven in his own way." - Epictetus

"To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete." - Epictetus

"Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope." - Epictetus

"If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it." - Epictetus

"It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows." - Epictetus

"If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please." - Epictetus

"The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests." - Epictetus

"Practice yourself in little things, and then proceed to greater." - Epictetus

"Control thy passions lest they take vengeance on thee." - Epictetus

"Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world." - Epictetus

"Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?" - Epictetus

"The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear."

"The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes." - Jonathan Swift (just for some thoughtful counterweight)

"Sometimes you have to give up on people. Not because you don't care, but because they don't."

"I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

"People are like stain glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."

"Giving up is what kills people. Those who refuse to give up are entitled to trample upon humanity." - This one's from Hellsing, the Anime. Context is important.

"Life's hard. It's harder if you're stupid."

"My neighbors like this song so much they keep throwing rocks at my window so they can hear it better."

"We're all self-made... but only the successful will admit it."

"Try not to screw up so bad they name the screw up after you."

"The world is a book. Those who don’t travel read only a page."

"A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking."

"What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul."

"The greatest of happiness is to transform one’s feelings into actions."

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” – John A. Shedd

"Don't get caught in the trap of justifying yourself to others."

"Sometimes we put up walls. Not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to knock them down."

"Every day is a new beginning. Take a deep breath and start again."

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations."

"Farewell, and may the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."

"Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand."

"Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews." - Hajo Meyer

"No matter who you are, no matter what greatness you've achieved in your life or what gifts you've given to the rest of humanity, if you criticize Israel, you must expect to become persona non grata. You should expect an utter onslaught of attacks ..." Susan Abulhawa

"I know they had some weird plan involving giant mutant spider-sheep that were supposed to shit out bulletproof vests by the truckload, but I don't know if that ever panned out."

"A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control." - Jordan Peterson

“You can’t truly call yourself “peaceful” unless you’re capable of great violence, if you’re not capable of violence you’re not peaceful, you’re harmless.”

"You won't rise to the occasion, you'll fall back to your level of training."

"Through action, a man becomes a Hero. Through death, a Hero becomes a Legend. Through time, a Legend becomes a Myth. And by learning from the Myth, a Man takes action."

Soldier: "Sir, we're surrounded!"
Sergeant: "Good. That means we can shoot in every direction."

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.” - John Lennon

"When someone angers you, they control you."

"Beware the quiet man. For while others speak, he watches. And while others act, he plans. And when they finally rest… he strikes."

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A. Heinlein

"Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say." - Snowden

“He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.” - Mises

"Logic dictates that if pro-gun people and gun owners in general were as violent as anti-gunners purport us to be, there wouldn't be any anti-gun people left."

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.” - Sophie Scholl

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." - Morpheus, The Matrix

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

----

More will be added in due time. I have large lists of favorite quotes that need sorting through, and new ones are discovered every week.