Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin
The socialists believe in two things which are absolutely different and perhaps even contradictory: freedom and organization.
- Elie Halevy
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
- Adam Smith
The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.
- Hilaire Belloc
What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.
- F. Hoelderlin
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Lord Acton
There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of the existing totalitarian systems are not accidental by-products but phenomena which totalitarianism is sooner or later to produce. Just as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure. It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful in a society tending toward totalitarianism. Who does not see this has not yet grasped the full width of the gulf which separates totalitarianism from a liberal regime, the utter difference between the whole moral atmosphere under collectivism and the essentially individualist Western civilization.
- F. A. Hayek
Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but one which can be found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith and who are acclaimed as intellectual leaders even in countries still under a liberal regime.
- F. A. Hayek
Since men are born tabula rasa, both cognitively and morally, a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that, he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized.
- Ayn Rand
From Ayn Rand to bushy anarchists there is an occasional agreement on means called libertarianism, which is a faith in laissez-faire politics/economics...How to hate your government on principle.
- SB, the last whole earth catalogue
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.
- Mark Twain
Ninety-five percent of anything is crap.
- Sturgeon's Law
