Quotes

“[Liberty] is, for each individual, the right to express one’s opinion, to choose one’s occupation and pursue it; to dispose of one’s property—even to misuse it; and to come and go without needing permission or having to account for one’s motives or actions.”

“The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step-by-step into socialism.”

“The most urgent thing is not that the State should teach, but that it should allow teaching. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly on education.”

“One of the crimes of tyranny is to force talent to degrade itself.”

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing [...] you may know that your society is doomed.”

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

“The libertarian sees the State as a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called ‘taxation’ and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around.”

“Instead of government of the people, by the people, for the people, we now have a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats.”

“Peoples who, in order to enjoy the freedom that suits them, resort to the representative system, must exercise active and constant oversight of their representatives.”

“[The law] cannot organize work, education, religion, without disorganizing Justice.”

“There is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program.”

“Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers pass the direction of production activities into the hands of those who are best fit to serve them.”

“Excessive taxation leads to the subversion of justice, the deterioration of morals, and the destruction of individual liberty.”

“There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.”

“The best of all financial plans is to spend little, and the best of all taxes is the smallest.”

“Resolve to serve no more, and you are free.”

“Let us pray that the authorities remain within their bounds. Let them confine themselves to being just; we will take care of being happy.”

“The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. It lies coldly, too; and this lie crawls from its mouth: I, the state, am the people.”

“It is easy to be conspicuously ‘compassionate’ if others are being forced to pay the cost.”

“Every advocate of the welfare state and of planning is a potential dictator.”

“The State is the great fiction through which everyone strives to live at everyone else's expense.”