The philosophy of natural law defends the rational dignity of the human individual and his right and duty to criticize by word and deed any existent institution or social structure in terms of those universal moral principles which can be apprehended by the individual intellect alone. — Lord Acton

All men’s impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern. — Frédéric Bastiat

[I]f a man has never consented or agreed to support a government, he breaks no faith in refusing to support it. And if he makes war on it, he does so as an open enemy, and not as a traitor. — Lysander Spooner

[An anarchist] does not wish to abolish government int the sense of collective decisions: what he does wish to abolish is the system by which a decision is enforced upon those who opposed it. — Betrand Russell

In place of laws, we will put contracts [i.e. free agreements]. No more laws voted by a majority, nor even unanimously; each citizen, each town, each industrial union, makes its own laws. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The failure of modern culture lies not in its principle of individualism, not in the idea that moral virtue is the same as the pursuit of self-interest, not in the deterrioration of the meaning of self-interest; not in the fact that people are too much concerned with their self-interest, but that they are not concerned enough with the interest of their real self, not in the fact that they are too selfish, but that they do not love themselves. — Erich Fromm

The truth is that the cause of wars … rest solely in the existence of the state, which is a form of privilege. … Whatever the form it may assume, the State is nothing but organised oppression for the advantage of a privileged minority. — Emma Goldman

If the state granted itself a clothing monopoly, you would probably say libertarians just want to run around naked. — Ryan Faulk

In short, democracy is gang warfare for cowards. — Larken Rose

Anarchy is the glue that holds society together. — Colin Ward

If you can’t trust men to govern themselves, how can you trust them to govern others? — Unknown

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. — Thomas Jefferson

The birthright of man … is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact, and the continued existence of that compact. — Mary Wollstonecraft

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth. — John Locke

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. — John Locke

Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. — Mikhail Bakunin

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket. — Eric Hoffer

Everything done by the state is ultimately done by means of aggression, which is to say violence or the threat of violence against the innocent. The total state is really nothing but the continued extension of these statist means throughout every nook and cranny of economic and social life. — Lew Rockwell

He [Thomas Hobbes] was writing during the English civil war, and his message seemed believable. But, of course, the conflicts in his time were not the result of natural society, but rather over the control of leviathan itself. So his theory of causation was skewed by circumstance, akin to watching a shipwreck and concluding that the natural and universal state of man is drowning. — Lew Rockwell

The goal of both the left and right is that we make our political choices based on these fears. It doesn’t matter so much which package of fear you choose; what matters is that you support a state that purports to keep your nightmare from becoming a reality. — Lew Rockwell

I challenge you to enter into the great struggle of history, and make sure that your days on this earth count for something truly important. It is this struggle that defines our contribution to this world. Freedom is the greatest gift that you can give yourself, and give all of humanity. — Lew Rockwell

Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own. — e.e. cummings

I don’t know. I’m just here to take your money. — Unknown Massachusetts DMV agent

To paraphrase Ayn Rand, the smallest government on earth is self-government. Those who deny self-government cannot claim to be defenders of small government. — Justin Lee

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this — that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. — Lysander Spooner

A government that is ruthless about what it does to other people is also ruthless in what it does to our own people. — Howard Zinn

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience & through rebellion. — Oscar Wilde

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. — Thomas Jefferson

The plans differ; the planners are all alike. — Frédéric Bastiat

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected. — Ghandi

Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend. — William Lloyd Garrison

That forcible government is a moral wrong in itself is enough reason to abolish it, even if market solutions were not an improvement. — Brad Edmonds

Maybe we’re stuck with it. But do we have to worship it? — Joseph Sobran

Liberty is the solution of all social and economic questions. — Joseph Labadie

The social revolution is seriously compromised if it comes through a political revolution. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

In the confrontation between the State and freedom, there can be no middle ground, no safe haven, no neutral corner, nook, or cranny. — Karl Hess

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. — Edward Abbey

Any excuse will serve a tyrant. — Aesop

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

You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. — Malcom X

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it. — Malcolm X

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. — Edward Abbey

If you think voting is gonna set you free, you haven’t been paying attention! — Ernest Hancock

You can use violence to overthrow a violent institution, as long as you accept the fact that there will be another violent institution replacing the first. The solution isn’t to violently attack the state, but rather deny its power over us and live as if it did not exist. Without our support, one day it won’t. — Dustin Archer

Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property. — Frédéric Bastiat

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. — Robert A. Heinlein

[W]e must understand that outside the sphere of parliamentarism, as sterile as it is absorbing, there is another field incomparably vaster, in which our destiny is worked out; that beyond these political phantoms, whose forms capture our imagination, there are the phenomena of social economy, which, by their harmony or discord, produce all the good and ill of society. … Know well that there is nothing more counter-revolutionary than the Government. Whatever liberalism it pretends, whatever name it assumes, the Revolution repudiates it: its fate is to be absorbed in the industrial organization. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable: that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. — Thomas Jefferson, from his original draft of the Declaration of Independence

In all the revolutions, there have always been but two parties opposing each other; that of the people who wish to live by their own labor, and that of those who would live by the labor of others. … Patricians and plebeians, slaves and freemen, guelphs and ghibellines, red roses and white roses, cavaliers and roundheads, liberals and serviles, are only varieties of the same species. — Adolphe Blanqui

All government either starts out as or ends up as a crime syndicate. — G. Edward Griffin

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. — Frederick Douglas

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. — Frederick Douglas

With government, you are either stealing or being stolen from. The power of the state is being used immediately for your benefit, or the power of the state is being used against your benefit. — Justin Lee

For, in all honesty, can it be in any way except in folly that you approach a tyrant, withdrawing further from your liberty and, so to speak, embracing with both hands your servitude? — Etienne de la Boetie

In short, when the point is reached, through big favors or little ones, that large profits or small are obtained under a tyrant, there are found almost as many people to whom tyranny seems advantageous as those to whom liberty would seem desirable. — Etienne de la Boetie

Thus the despot subdues his subjects, some of them by means of others, and thus is he protected by those from whom, if they were decent men, he would have to guard himself; just as, in order to split wood, one has to use a wedge of the wood itself. — Etienne de la Boetie

This is what the government is, has always been, the creator and defender of privilege; the organization of oppression and revenge. To hope that it can ever become anything else is the vainest of delusions. They tell you that Anarchy, the dream of social order without government, is a wild fancy. The wildest dream that ever entered the heart of man is the dream that mankind can ever help itself through an appeal to law, or to come to any order that will not result in slavery wherein there is any excuse for government. — Voltairine de Cleyre

A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. — John Locke

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. — John Locke

Each has freedom to do all that he wills provided that he infringes not the equal freedom of any other.” — Herbert Spencer

THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution …. — The Preamble to the Bill of Rights

Down with the state and its coercive mechanisms of destruction and plunder! May we the free people of planet Earth embrace our inner being. Throw off the chains of despotism, and simply choose to live freely! — John Bush

No man or body of men preaching anarchistic doctrines should be allowed at large any more than if preaching the murder of some specified private individual. Anarchistic speeches, writings, and meetings are essentially seditious and treasonable. — President Theodore Roosevelt, addressing Congress in 1901

[T]he individual is the true reality in life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called “society,” or the “nation,” which is only a collection of individuals. Man, the individual, has always been and, necessarily is the sole source and motive power of evolution and progress. Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against “society,” that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship. — Emma Goldman

[T]he interests of the State and those of the individual differ fundamentally and are antagonistic. The State and the political and economic institutions it supports can exist only by fashioning the individual to their particular purpose; training him to respect “law and order;” teaching him obedience, submission and unquestioning faith in the wisdom and justice of government; above all, loyal service and complete self-sacrifice when the State commands it, as in war. — Emma Goldman

There is only one evil thought: the refusal to think. — Ayn Rand

I know who is going to win every election, the government. — Ernie Hancock

Violence does not produce positive overall results. It is less than a zero-sum game. In government, you are either stealing or being stolen from. The power of the state is being used immediately for your benefit, or the power of the state is being used against your benefit. — Justin Lee

The principle is not that a human being cannot be justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States. — London Spectator editorial, on Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation

The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. Hence I prefer the doctrine of trusteeship. — Ghandi

I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of the progress. — Ghandi

In the ideal State, therefore, there is no political power because there is no State. But the ideal is never fully realized in life. Hence the classical statement of Thoreau that Government is best which governs the least. — Ghandi

As long as people think there is some external cause or source of their own liberty, of their own credibility, of their own courage, of their own integrity, they won’t do the hard work. If you think there is a magic pill that will make you thin, you will never do the hard work of dieting. — Stefan Molyneux

Borders are just the places armies got tired. — Unknown

Give somebody an inch and they will think they’re a ruler. — Unknown

Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. — The Twilight Zone

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. — Vladimir Lenin

People say we are a nation of laws. Well, no, that is ridiculous. That is the propaganda double-speek. What we are is a nation of opinions based on statutes. — Sam Miller

The only solution government ever presents to you is more government. — Anonymous

Think of how much better off the poor would be in a libertarian society since the government didn’t keep making them subsidize the rich. — Justin Lee

Government has pushed people out onto tightrope wires; and all libertarians can think to do is to call for the abolition of safety nets? — Unknown

I believe the state is an illegitimate institution. — John Tierney

You cannot control someone who is not afraid of your violence. — Catherine Bleish

Let’s face the truth: you can’t use the State to abolish the State as the marxists claim. There is no way anyone in a position of power would create a system that would cause them to lose their power. … The State will never truly be an institution for the people but rather for the small elite that sits on top of it. As well, the State is the biggest, most powerful capitalist boss of them all. For the State to tax is the same as the capitalist taking part of the value you produced, or the landlord charging rent. To claim the State can be democratized is like saying a multinational corporation can be democratized. — Julia Riber Pitt

[Robin Hood] is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. — Ayn Rand

Democracy is a travesty of justice. — Justin Lee

Market anarchists see freed markets, under conditions of free competition, as tending to diffuse wealth and dissolve fortunes — with a centrifugal effect on incomes, property-titles, land, and access to capital — rather than concentrating it in the hands of a socioeconomic elite. Market anarchists recognize no de jure limits on the extent or kind of wealth that any one person might amass; but they believe that market and social realities will impose much more rigorous de facto pressures against massive inequalities of wealth than any de jure constraint could achieve. — Charles Johnson

The first attempt to secure individual liberty by constitutions has evidently failed. — F.A. Hayek

As soon as a people can justify government’s ability to raise revenue through force, the people must understand that no differently than a cancer secures it’s blood supply, that beast will use every power it has to maximize and stabilize it’s revenue source. — Chris Howe

There are no solutions, only tradeoffs. — Thomas Sowell

People need to wake up and know the history: government regulation does not “check” the power of the private sector; it enhances it. The more power you give government, the more that the private sector will seek to access that power and use it to their advantage and to the disadvantage of the rest of us. Regulated capitalism inevitably becomes corporatism. And “better people” in government won’t change this. — Steve Horwitz

Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately co-ordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand. — F.A. Hayek

The libertarian is also eminently realistic because he alone understands fully the nature of the State and its thrust for power. It is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian. — Murray Rothbard

In the political system, market failure is the norm. If you think of the political system as a marketplace, we cannot expect individual rationality to produce group-rational results. — David Friedman

Because the primary interventions of the state capitalist system are so deeply embedded, those interventions closer to the surface — state action like minimum wage laws, etc. — are often more easily recognized; the mistake, so often made by well-meaning champions of the working man, is to see these more trivial interventions and take them to prove the state’s backing of labor. The state, though, born out of economic exploitation and class subjugation, has never been anything but a tool of the elite. — David D’Amato

Large corporations are neither passive victims nor passive beneficiaries of the state; they act through the state. Or rather, to a large extent they are the state. It makes about as much sense to separate them from the state, as it would have made to separate the landholding class from the state in Medieval times. — Kevin Carson

It is government protection that causes monopolies to exist. The evidence is all around us. One has to but look at the bailouts and one starts to realize the role government plays in the creation of monopolies. — Szandor Blestman

We don’t really have a free market. We don’t really have free enterprise. — Michael Moore, in response to a question about his movie “Capitalism: A Love Story”

Big business has been a creature of the state from the beginning. And genuinely free markets would operate as dynamite at the foundations of corporate power. — Kevin Carson

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It’s people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages. — Banksy

Market anarchism treats each individual as a sovereign political unit capable of negotiating for and governing herself and thereby destroys the role of master. And without masters, free people can get to work solving problems rather than creating them for profit. — David D’Amato

The Right’s view of government and the Left’s view of big business are both correct. — Robert Anton Wilson

Social democracy treats privilege as normal and leaves it intact — then regulates it to make it bearable to the subordinate classes without altering its fundamental nature as privilege. But most of the positive aspects of the European model simply duplicate what could be achieved by dismantling privilege altogether. — Kevin Carson

The main function of government is to subsidize the operating costs of monopoly and enforce the entry barriers that protect monopolies against competition. — Kevin Carson

Instead of banking on a politician improving our world, my advice? Improve yourself. Be an example to others. Work not on the behalf of a political party, but your community. Put simply, forget the polling booth and head to the soup kitchen. At least then you won’t be complicit in a bloodied, immoral system. — Charles Davis

I think there’s a simple tactic to use. Show them stateless solutions that work. Show them that there is an alternative to business as usual. — Unknown

When the economy is bad, welfare statists say, “We must expand government programs because everyone is hurting.” When the economy is good, they say, “We must expand them because we can finally afford it.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that they wanted to increase people’s dependency on government programs regardless of the reason. — Paul Hsieh

A right is a freedom of action in a social context, such as the freedom of speech.

It is not an automatic claim on a good or service that must be produced by someone else. There is no such thing as a “right” to a car or an appendectomy. Any attempt by the government to guarantee a false “right” to health care can only be done by violating the actual rights of someone. — Paul Hsieh

[Government] attracts the worst kind of men to its ranks, shackles progress, forces its citizens to act against their own judgment, and causes recurring internal and external strife by its coercive existence. In view of all this, the question becomes not, “Who will protect us from aggression?” but “Who will protect us from the governmental “protectors”? — Linda & Morris Tannehill

If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. — Ludwig von Mises

When Buying and Selling are Controlled by Legislation, the First Things to be Bought and Sold are Legislators. — P. J. O’Rourke

The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. — Ayn Rand

Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one’s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love. — Ayn Rand

Democracy is indispensable to socialism. — Vladimir Lenin

I always find it hysterical that the same people that object to giving their fellow man too much freedom on the grounds that they will use this freedom to oppress their fellow man, are the same people that have no objection to giving the majority absolute power of rule as if magically this transforms those same people into benevolent beings. — Gaymon Howard Wright III

There is no “right” to health care. Rights are not entitlements to goods or services produced by others; rather, they are prerogatives to freedom of action, such as the right to free speech, the right to contract, or the right to use one’s property. Any attempt to enforce a so-called “right” to health care necessarily violates the actual rights of those who are forced to provide or pay for that care. — Paul Hsieh

The major difference between the Great Depression and all prior downturns — what made the depression so severe and lengthy—was massive government intervention. Ad hoc intervention bred uncertainty and a lack of confidence. With the government constantly changing the rules, businessmen could not rationally plan for the future because they had no idea what the government was going to do next. As a result, they postponed both new investments and the hiring of additional workers, thereby delaying economic recovery. — Michael Dahlen

Ayn Rand … holds that the mind—human thinking and the resulting intelligence—is the primary source of wealth. The mind, she says, directs not only physical labor but also the organization of production; “natural resources” are merely potential wealth, not actual wealth; and consumer desires are not causes of wealth but results of it. — Richard Salsman

Democracy is simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. — Oscar Wilde

I am an anarchist because I believe there’s no natural right to rule … because I believe the state lacks legitimacy … because I believe the state is unnecessary … because the state tips the scales in favor of privileged elites and against ordinary people … because the state tends to be destructive. — Gary Chartier

That’s just what it does. The state knocks you down, and when you’re lying there on the ground offers to help you up. Only to push you down again. — Unknown

Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money? — Ayn Rand

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It’s people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages. — Banksy

I believe totally in a Capitalist System, I only wish that someone would try it. — Frank Lloyd Wright

No one is more qualified than you are to decide how you live; no one should be able to vote on what you do with your time and your potential unless you invite them to. — Crimethinc

A nation’s productive—and moral, and intellectual—top is the middle class. It is a broad reservoir of energy, it is a country’s motor and lifeblood, which feeds the rest. The common denominator of its members, on their various levels of ability, is: independence. The upper classes are merely a nation’s past; the middle class is its future. — Ayn Rand

The mafia is the state itself. — Andrei Fyodorov

The only way to effectively redistribute wealth is to destroy the incentives to have wealth. — Milton Friedman

So true is it that, in science as elsewhere, we fight for and against not men and things as they are, but for and against the caricatures we make of them. — Joseph Schumpter

If the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. — Benjamin R. Tucker

The faction of organized capital represented by the Democrats is like a farmer who thinks he’ll get more work out of his livestock in the long run by feeding and housing them well and working them in moderation. The business coalition behind the GOP is more like a farmer who thinks he’ll come out ahead by working them to death and replacing them. — Kevin Carson

They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his ‘minimum sustenance’—his food, his clothes, his shelter—with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it—from whom? Blank-out. — Ayn Rand

They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his ‘minimum sustenance’ — his food, his clothes, his shelter — with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it — from whom? Blank-out. — Ayn Rand

The old libertarian saying has it backwards, it should be the visible hand of the market vs. the invisible fist of government. Most people don’t have a clue as to how many regulations, restrictions, controls, and inane statutes are the causes of the problems that they blame the market for. — Eris Pandora

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

If an individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the state. — Benjamin Tucker

An individual responsible to govern himself dare not need a government. An individual not responsible to government himself should dare not be permitted to govern others. — Justin Lee

Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition. — Lord Acton

A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. — Thomas Jefferson

The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation — that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class — that is, for a criminal purpose. — Albert Jay Nock

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear. — Herbert Agar

The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time. — Ayn Rand

There is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. — Ayn Rand

The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that — however bloody — can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave. — Lysander Spooner

If there is a State, then there is domination, and in turn, there is slavery. — Mikhail Bakunin

Whoever denies private property is of necessity an Archist. — Benjamin Tucker

I see present-day society as predominated by a partnership between big government and big business. It is not a completely amicable partnership, because in any partnership like that, each side wants to be the dominant partner. So squabblings between the two are not fake. They are real squabblings. But the significance of the squabbling, I think, is a lot less significant than people have thought. Because just like church and state in the Middle Ages, each side wanted to be the dominant partner. Nevertheless, the alliance between them is pretty crucial. Big government and big business need each other. And so, this oversimplifies a bit, if we think of the Democrats as the part of big government and the Republicans as the party of big business, they are not going to be fundamentally at odds. — Roderick Long

By virtue of exchange, one man’s prosperity is beneficial to all others. — Frederic Bastiat

The individual is what’s best for society. — Joseph Hampel

Negative freedom is just a means of bottom up creation of positive freedom. — Unknown

The injustices and economic crises of capitalism proceed, not from overproduction, but from underconsumption, and from the diversion of labor into unproductive tasks. If all the energy misdirected into bureaucratic and military activities were diverted to socially useful tasks, then there would be no problem in providing plenty for all. — George Woodcock

Tax the rich? Taxes are usually how they got rich — or did you forget this is all about how they own the government in the first place? Abolish the state. It’s the only way. — Brad Spangler

Confiscatory taxation results in checking economic progress and improvement not only by its effect upon capital accumulation. It brings about a general trend toward stagnation and the preservation of business practices which could not last under the competitive conditions of the unhampered market economy. — Ludwig von Mises

A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police. — Ludwig von Mises

The goal of liberalism is the peaceful cooperation of all men. It aims at peace among nations too. When there is private ownership of the means of production everywhere and when laws, the tribunals and the administration treat foreigners and citizens on equal terms, it is of little importance where a country’s frontiers are drawn. … War no longer pays; there is no motive for aggression. … All nations can coexist peacefully…. — Ludwig von Mises

If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. — Ludwig von Mises

A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings. — Ludwig von Mises

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict. — Ludwig von Mises