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Pro-liberty and anti-liberty quotes

1. Pro-liberty
2. Anti-liberty

Pro-liberty

John Quincy ADAMS on U.S. foreign policy

"[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom."
-- John Quincy Adams, Speech before the House of Representatives, July 4, 1821; quoted in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Editors), The Idea of America (Les Belles Lettres, 2003), p. 237.

ANONYMOUS GOLD MINER's wooden post during California gold rush, c. 1849

"All and everybody, this is my claim, fifty feet on the gulch, cordin to Clear Creek District Law, backed up by shotgun amendments."
-- Quoted in John Umbeck, "Might Makes Rights: A Theory of the Formation and Initial Distribution of Property Rights", Economic Inquiry, Vol. 19 (January 1981), p. 50; from C. Shinn, Land Laws of Mining Districts (John Hopkins University Press, 1984), p. 558.

William BLACKSTONE on vindicating our rights

"And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated and attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self preservation and defense."
-- Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 17th edition, 1966, Vol. 1., Chap.1).

Russel BOUCHARD on the French Canadian tradition to keep and bear arms

"Les armes à feu, celles d'épaule plus spécifiquement, ont acquis une certaine noblesse dans l'histoire canadienne, car elles ont assuré, sans conteste, la poursuite de l'exploitation et de la mise en valeur d'un territoire sauvage, vaste et jusqu'alors inviolé. De 1534 jusqu'ˆ 1979 (!), leur importance ne se dément pas; elles dépassent, en fait, le niveau de simple objet d'utilité quotidienne, pour devenir un véritable phénomène de civilisation. De tout temps et de tout horizon, le Canadien a été placé directement en contact avec les armes à feu et il est difficile de l'imaginer autrement. Encore aujourd'hui d'ailleurs, ce symbole de liberté reste intimement lié aux grands espaces et ˆ la tolérance de la société. Il singularise l'Amérique d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. Ici en Nouvelle-France, plaisons-nous à le répéter, ce ne sont pas uniquement l'armée et la noblesse qui ont la possibilité et le privilège de pouvoir porter des armes. La coutume canadienne plusieurs fois séculaire reconnaît à ous le droit légal et moral d'acquérir une arme à feu en vue d'une utilisation libre et non contraignante."
Firearms, especially long guns, occupy a noble place in Canadian history since they are no doubt responsible for the exploitation of a vast and wild territory that had long remained untouched. From 1534 until 1979 (!), the importance of firearms remained uncontested. More than a simple tool of everyday life, they became truly a phenomenon of civilization. At all times and whoever he was, the Canadian was directly in contact with firearms, and he cannot be imagined otherwise. Even today, this symbol of liberty remains intimately related to wide, open spaces, and to a tolerant society. It is the distinctive mark of today's and yesterday's America. Here, in New France, let's repeat it, it is not only soldiers and nobles who have the possibility or privilege to bear arms. Century-old Canadian customs recognize equally to everybody the legal and moral right to acquire a firearm and to use it freely and noncoercively.
-- Russel Bouchard, Les armes à feu en Nouvelle-France (Montréal: Éditions du Septentrion, 1999), p. 11.

Randolph BOURNE on war

"War is the health of the State."
-- Randolph Bourne, The State (1918), available at http://www.slip.net/~knabb/CF/bourne.htm.

James BOVARD on democracy

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
-- James Bovard, Lost Rights. The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin's Press: New York, 1994), p. 333.
Buy Lost Rights. The Destruction of American Liberty at Amazon.com.
By the same author, see also Freedom in Chains : The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press: New York, 2000).

Geoffrey BRENNAN and James BUCHANAN on do-goodism

"Tax limits, or fiscal constraints generally, can be expected to curb government's appetites to the extent that the utility function of governmental decision makers contains arguments for privately enjoyable 'creature comforts,' for final end items of consumption. Such constraints become much less effective, and may well be evaded, if the motive force behind governmental action is 'do-goodism.' The licentious sinners we can control; the saintly ascetics may destroy us."
-- Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, The Power to Tax : Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 166; available at http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv9Contents.html (visited January 29, 2003).

James BUCHANAN on anarchy

James BUCHANAN on God and the State

Edmund BURKE on oppressive do-goodism

"The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another."
-- Edmund Burke, quoted by Lord Acton in Lectures on the French Revolution (London: 1910), in J. Rufus Fears (Ed.), Selected Writings of Lord Acton, Vol. 1: Essays in the History of Liberty (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1985), p. 206.

Richard CARTWRIGHT on the rights of individuals in Canada

"I think that every true reformer, every real friend of liberty, will agree with me in saying that if we must erect safeguards, they should be rather for the security of the individual than of the mass, and that our chiefest care must be to train the majority to respect the rights of the minority, to prevent the claims of the few from being trampled under foot by the caprice or passion of the many."
-- Richard Cartwright in the Legislative Assembly, Canada, March 9, 1865; reproduced in Janet Ajzenstat, Paul Romney, Ian
Gentles, and William D. Gairdner (Eds.), Canada's Founding Debates (Toronto: Stoddart, 1999), p. 19.

CATO on what is liberty

"By Liberty I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private Actions and Property."
-- Thomas Gordon, Letter 62 (1722) of Cato's Letters (1720-1723), quoted by Ronald Hamowy, "Cato's Letters, John Locke, and the Republican Paradigm", in Edward J. Harpham (Ed.), John Locke's Two Treatises of Government:  New Interpretations (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), p. 157.
Buy Cato's Letters at Amazon.com.

Benjamin CONSTANT on ancient and modern liberty

"Demandez-vous d'abord, Messieurs, ce que de nos jours un Anglais, un Français, un habitant des États-Unis de l'Amérique, entendent par le mot de liberté?
C'est pour chacun le droit de n'être soumis qu'aux lois, de ne pouvoir ni être arrêté, ni détenu, ni mis àmort, ni maltraité d'aucune manière, par l'effet de la volonté arbitraire d'un ou de plusieurs individus. C'est pour chacun le droit de dire son opinion, de choisir son industrie et de l'exercer; de disposer de sa propriété, d'en abuser même; d'aller, de venir, sans en obtenir la permission, et sans rendre compte de ses motifs ou de ses démarches. C'est, pour chacun, le droit de se réunir à d'autres individus, soit pour conférer sur ses intérêts, soit pour professer le culte que lui et ses associés préfèrent, soit simplement pour remplir ses jours et ses heures d'une manière plus conforme à ses inclinations, à ses fantaisies. Enfin, c'est le droit, pour chacun, d'influer sur l'administration du gouvernement, soit par la nomination de tous ou de certains fonctionnaires, soit par des représentations, des pétitions, des demandes, que l'autorité est plus ou moins obligée de prendre en considération. Comparez maintenant cette liberté à celle des anciens."
Celle-ci consistait à exercer collectivement, mais directement, plusieurs parties de la souveraineté tout entière, à délibérer, sur la place publique, de la guerre et de la paix, à conclure avec les étrangers des traités d'alliance, à voter les lois, à prononcer les jugements, à examiner les comptes, les actes, la gestion des magistrats, à les faire comparaître devant tout un peuple, à les mettre en accusation, à les condamner ou à les absoudre; mais en même temps que c'était là ce que les anciens nommaient liberté, ils admettaient, comme compatible avec cette liberté collective, l'assujettissement complet de l'individu à l'autorité de l'ensemble."
First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a citizen of the United States of America understand today by the word 'liberty'.
For each of them it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death of maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is the right of everyone to express their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to dispose of property, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone's right to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the religion which they or their associates prefer, or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is more compatible with their inclinations or whims. Finally, it is everyone's right to exercise some influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed. Now compare this liberty with that of the ancients.
The latter consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community.
-- Benjamin Constant, "De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes" (1819), in De la liberté chez les Modernes (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1980), pp. 494-495; English translation: "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns" (1819), in Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, Edited by Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 310-311.
Buy Political Writings at Amazon.com.
ƒcrits politiques en vente chez Amazon France.

Benjamin CONSTANT on obedience to unjust laws

"No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being..."
-- Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1810) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), p. 401-402.

Benjamin CONSTANT on the effects of arbitrary power

"Thus arbitrary power will have divided men of superior intelligence into two groups: the former will be seditious, the latter corrupt..."
-- Benjamin Constant, The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (1814), reprinted in Political Writings, translated and edited by Bancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 126. Later editions than the 1814 one had "despotism" instead of "abitrary power."

Benjamin CONSTANT on the presumption of innocence

"It is a misfortune that we offer the guilty the chance of impunity, but it is not nearly as bad as delivering the good man to the vengeance of the oppressor."
-- Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1810) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), p. 160.

Voltairine DE CLEYRE on the highjacking of the American Revolution

"The revolution is ... the blow dealt ... agains the counter force of tyranny, which has never entirely recovered from the blow, but which from then till now has gone on remolding and regrappling the instruments of governmental power, that the Revolution sought to shape and hold as defenses of liberty."
-- Voltairine de Cleyre, "Anarchism and American Traditions," Mother Earth, 1909; reproduced in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Eds.), The Idea of America (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), p. 223.

Anthony DE JASAY on the redistributive state

"In the process of helping some (perhaps most) people to more utility and justice, the sate imposes on civil society a system of interdictions and commands."
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State (Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1985), p. 123.
Buy The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction franaise en vente chez Amazon France.

Anthony DE JASAY on the addictive state

"People who live in states have as a rule never experienced the state of nature and vice-versa, and have no practical possibility of moving from the one to the other ... On what grounds, then, do people form hypotheses about the relative merits of state and state of nature? ... My contention here is that preferences for political arrangements of society are to a large extent produced by these very arrangements, so that political institutions are either addictive like some drugs, or allergy-inducing like some others, or both, for they may be one thing for some people and the other for others."
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State (Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1985), p. 18 and 20.
Buy The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction franaise en vente chez Amazon France.

Anthony DE JASAY on limiting the state

"Self-imposed limits on sovereign power can disarm mistrust, but provide no guarantee of liberty and property beyond those afforded by the balance between state and private force."
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State [1985] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), p. 205.
Buy The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction franaise en vente chez Amazon France.

Anthony DE JASAY on overruled individual preferences

"... the smaller is the domain where choices among alternatives are made collectively, the smaller will be the probability that any individual's preference gets overruled."
-- Anthony de Jasay, Against Politics: On Government, Anarchy, and Order (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 49.

Anthony DE JASAY on the democratic state's drift to totalitarianism

"Having gathered all power to itself, [the State] has become the sole focus of all conflict, and it must construct totalitarian defences to match its total exposure."
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State [1985] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), p. 287.
Buy The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction franaise en vente chez Amazon France.

Anthony DE JASAY on the partial state

“When the state cannot please everybody, it will choose whom it had better please.”
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State [1985] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), p. 103.
Buy The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction franaise en vente chez Amazon France.

Bertrand DE JOUVENEL on democracy

"La démocracie, telle que nous l'avons pratiquée, centralisatrice, réglementeuse et absolutiste, apparaît donc comme la période d'incubation de la tyrannie."
Democracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making, absolutist shape which we have given to it is, it is clear, the time of tyranny's incubation.
-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance [1945] (Paris: Hachette, 1972), p. 36; English translation: On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), p. 15.
Du Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance en vente chez Amazon France.
Available in English at Amazon.com.

Bertrand DE JOUVENEL on income redistribution

"The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State."
-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution [1952] (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1990), p. 72.
Buy The Ethics of Redistribution at Amazon.com.

Bertrand DE JOUVENEL on petty and big tyrannies

" La croissance de son autorité [l'autorité de l'État] apparaît aux individus bien moins comme une entreprise continuelle contre leur liberté que comme un effort destructeur des dominations auxquelles ils sont assujettis. [...] Où est le terme? [...] C'est la pleine liberté de chacun à l'égard de toutes autorités familiales et sociales, payée d'une entière soumission à l'État."
The growth of its authority [the state's authority] strikes private individuals as being not so much a continual encroachment of their liberty as an attempt to put down the various petty tyrannies to which they have been subjected. ... Where will it end? ... In each man's absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the state.
-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance [1945] (Paris: Hachette, 1972), pp. 271 and 279; English translation: On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), pp. 143 and 187.
Du Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance en vente chez Amazon France.
Available in English at Amazon.com.

Bertrand DE JOUVENEL on the debasement of the electors

Bertrand DE JOUVENEL on the democratic police

"Aucun roi n'a disposé d'une police comparable ˆ celle des démocraties modernes."
No absolute monarch ever had at his disposal a police force comparable to those of modern democracies.
-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance [1945] (Paris: Hachette, 1972), p. 49; English translation: On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), p. 23.

Estienne DE LA BOÉTIE on tyrants' favorites

"Mais c'est plaisir de considerer qu'est ce qui leur revient de ce grand tourment, et le bien quils peuvent attendre de leur peine et de leur miserable vie. Volontiers le peuple du mal quil souffre, n'en accuse point le tiran, mais ceux qui le gouvernent: ceus la les peuples, les nations, tout le monde a l'envi iusques aus paisans, iusques aus laboureurs ils scavent leurs noms, ils dechifrent leurs vices, ils amassent sur eus mille vilenies, mille maudissons; toutes leurs oraisons, tous leurs veus sont contre ceus la; tous leurs mal heurs, toutes les pestes, toutes les famines ils les leur reprochent; et si quelque fois il leur font par apparence quelque honneur, lors mesmes ils les maugreent en leur coeur, et les ont en horreur plus estrange que les bestes sauvages. Voila la gloire, voila lhonneur quils recoivent de leur service envers les gens, desquels quand chacun auroit une piece de leur corps, ils ne seroient pas ancore, ce leur semble, assés satisffaits, ni a demi saoulés de leur peine, mais certes ancore apres quils sont morts, ceus qui viennent apres ne sont jamais si paresseus que le nom de ces mangepeuples ne soit noirci de l'encre de mille plumes, et leur reputation deschirée dans mille livres, et les os mesmes par maniere de dire trainés par la postérité, les punissans ancore apres leur mort de leur meschante vie."
However, there is satisfaction in examining what they get out of all this torment, what advantage they derive from all the trouble of their wretched existence. Actually the people never blame the tyrant for the evils they suffer, but they do place responsibility on those who influence him; peoples, nations, all compete with one another, even the peasants, even the tillers of the soil, in mentioning the names of the favorites, in analyzing their vices, and heaping upon them a thousand insults, a thousand obscenities, a thousand maledictions. All their prayers, all their vows are directed against these persons; they hold them accountable for all their misfortunes, their pestilences, their famines; and if at times they show them outward respect, at those very moments they are fuming in their hearts and hold them in greater horror than wild beasts. This is the glory and honor heaped upon influential favorites for their services by people who, if they could tear apart their living bodies, would still clamor for more, only half satiated by the agony they might behold. For even when the favorites are dead those who live after are never too lazy to blacken the names of these people-eaters with the ink of a thousand pens, tear their reputations into bits in a thousand books, and drag, so to speak, their bones past posterity, forever punishing them after their death for their wicked lives.
-- Estienne de la Boétie, Discours de la servitude volontaire (1574-1576), in Oeuvres complètes d'Estienne de la Boétie, Vol. 1, William Blake and Co. Edit., 1991, p. 96; English translation: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.
Discours de la servitude volontaire en vente chez Amazon France.
Available in English at Amazon.com, with an introduction by Murray Rothbard.

Alexis DE TOCQUEVILLE on citizens under future democratic states

"Au-dessus de ceux-là s'élève un pouvoir immense et tutélaire, qui se charge seul d'assurer leur jouissance et de veiller sur leur sort. Il est absolu, prévoyant, régulier et doux. Il ressemblerait à la puissance paternelle si, comme elle, il avait pour objet de préparer les hommes à l'âge viril; mais il ne cherche, au contraire, qu'à les fixer irrévocablement dans l'enfance; il aime que les citoyens se réjouissent pourvu qu'ils ne songent qu'à se réjouir. Il travaille volontiers à leur bonheur; mais il veut en être l'unique agent et le seul arbitre; il pourvoit à leur sécurité, prévoit et assure leurs besoins, facilite leurs plaisirs, conduit leurs principales affaires, dirige leur industrie, règle leurs successions, divise leurs héritages; que ne peut-il leur ôter entièrement le trouble de penser et la peine de vivre ?"
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, De la dŽmocratie en Amérique, Vol. 2 (1840), Part 5, Chap. 6 (Paris: Laffont, 1986), p. 648; English translation reproduced in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Eds.), The Idea of America (Belles Lettres, 2003), p. 84.

Alexis DE TOCQUEVILLE on democratic despotism

"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1899), Chap. 6; available at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm (visited December 22, 2002).

Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE on the tyranny of the majority

"Quand donc je refuse d'obéir à une loi injuste, je ne dénie point àla majorité le droit de commander; j'en appelle seulement de la souveraineté du peuple à la souveraineté du genre humain.
Il y a des gens qui n'ont pas craint de dire qu'un peuple, dans les objets qui n'intéressaient que lui-même, ne pouvait sortir entièrement des limites de la justice et de la raison, et qu'ainsi on ne devait pas craindre de donner tout pouvoir à la majorité qui le représente. Mais c'est là un langage d'esclave."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, Livre I [1835], Partie 2, Chapitre 7, section 2.
De la Démocratie en Amérique en vente chez Amazon France.
Available in English at Amazon.com.

Frederick DOUGLASS, on freedom to travel for free men

"Any one having a white face, and being so disposed, could stop us, and subject us to examination. ... When I get there [in Pennsylvania], I shall not be required to have a pass; I can travel without being disturbed."
-- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself [1845] (Toronto: New American Library, 1968), p. 77 and 93-94.
Buy Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave et Amazon.com.
Also available in French at Amazon.fr.

Frederick DOUGLASS, on life and liberty

"... and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty."
-- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself [1845] (Toronto: New American Library, 1968), p. 103.
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Also available in English at Amazon.fr.

Frederick DOUGLASS, on mistrust for the state

"Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother."
-- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself [1845] (Toronto: New American Library, 1968), p. 106.
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Also available in English at Amazon.fr.

Émile FAGUET on classical liberalism and anarchism

"[U]n anarchiste est un libéral intransigeant."
An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal.
-- ƒmile Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvime sicle, Vol. 1 (Paris: SociŽtŽ Franaise d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, c. 1898), p. 226.

Benjamin FRANKLIN on security and liberty

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, quoted in Suzy Platt, Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (Barnes and Noble, 1993), p. 201.

David FRIEDMAN on firearms, dissuasion and crime

"Suppose one little old lady in ten carries a gun. Suppose that one in ten of those, if attacked by a mugger, succeeds in killing the mugger instead of being killed by him -- or shooting herself in the foot. On average, the mugger is much more likely to win the encounter than the little old lady. But -- also on average -- every hundred muggings produces one dead mugger. At those odds, mugging is an unprofitable business -- not many little old ladies carry enough money to justify one chance in a hundred of being killed getting it. The number of muggers declines drastically, not because they have all been killed but because they have, rationally, sought safer professions."
-- David Friedman, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (New York: Harper, 1996), p. 299.
Buy Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life at Amazon.com.

Milton FRIEDMAN on tolerance towards a small or large state

"If, for example, existing government intervention is minor, we shall attach a smaller weight to the negative effect of additional government intervention. This is an important reason why many earlier liberals, like Henry Simons, writing at a time when government was small by todayÕs standards, were willing to have government undertake activities that todayÕs liberals would not accept now that government has become so overgrown."
-- Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 32.

Martin GILBERT about heroin at the time of Churchill's childwood

"'Poor old man,' Mrs Everest wrote, 'have you tried the heroin I got you -- get a bottle of Elliman's embrocation & rub your face when you go to bed & tie your sock up over your face, after rubbing for 1/4 of an hour, try it and I am sure it will do you good.'"
-- Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London: Heinemann, 1991), p. 27.

Martin GILBERT about Winston Churchill's childhood and guns

"That autumn [1890, when Churchill was 15] he began to smoke, provoking further criticism. 'Darling Winston,' his mother wrote in September, 'I hope you will try & not smoke. If only you knew how foolish & how silly you look doing it you would give it up, at least for a few years.' There was to be an inducement to giving up smoking. 'I will get Papa to get you a gun and a pony.' Churchill deferred to his mother's advice. He would give up smoking 'at any rate for six months'. ... 'The two brothers [Churchill and his younger borther] have been happy as kings riding and shooting', Lady Randolph wrote..."
-- Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London: Heinemann, 1991), pp. 25 and 28.

Friedrich HAYEK on classical liberalism and superior individuals

"The [classical] liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people -- he is not an egalitarian -- but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are."
-- Friedrich Hayek, "Why I Am Not a Conservative," postcript to The Constitution of Liberty [1960] (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972), p. 402.
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Friedrich HAYEK on do-gooders

"It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil."
-- F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 146.

Friedrich HAYEK on the limitation of power

"[I]t is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary."
-- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), p. 71.

Friedrich HAYEK on the rule of law and asking permissions

"It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today."
-- F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 208.

Friedrich HAYEK on value to society

" But though the concepton of a 'value to society' is sometimes carelessly used even by economists, there is strictly no such thing and the expression implies the same sort of anthropomorphism or personification of society as the term 'social justice'. Services can have value only to particular people (or an organization), and any particular service will have very different values for different members of the same society. To regard them differently is to treat society not as a spontaneous order of free men but as an organization whose members are all made to serve a single hierarchy of ends. This would necessarily be a totalitarian system in which personal freedom would be absent."
-- F.A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 75-76.

Stephen HALBROOK on Nazi gun controls

"Such questions have never been discussed in scholarly publications because the Nazi laws, policies, and practices have never been adequately documented. The record establishes that a well-meaning liberal republic would enact a gun control act that would later be highly useful to a dictatorship."
-- Stephen P.Halbrook, "Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews, Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2000), pp. 483-535; available at http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/article-nazilaw.pdf.
By this author, see That Every Man Be Armed : The Evolution of a Constitutional Right and Target Switzerland : Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II. Available at Amazon.com.

Friedrich HAYEK on the Good Society

Patrick HENRY on liberty and resistance

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!."
-- Patrick Henry, Speech of March 23, 1775, reproduced at www.law.ou.edu/hist/henry.html.

Auberon HERBERT on restricting liberty to combat terrorism

"If we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishments, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings -- as in one country they propose to do -- in our House of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes, request them, as at Vienna, and I think now at Paris also, to be good enough to leave their greatcoats in the vestibules ... I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time."
-- Auberon Herbert, "The Ethics of Dynamite", Contemporary Review, May 1894; reproduced in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays by Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1978), p. 226.
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Auberon HERBERT on unlimited democracy

"And what sort of philosophical doctrine is this -- that numbers confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others. ... How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed. ... It is not possible to suppose, without absurdity, than a man should have no rights over his own body and mind, and yet have a 1/10,000,000th share in unlimited rights over all other bodies and minds?"
-- Auberon Herbert, "The Ethics of Dynamite", Contemporary Review, May 1894; reproduced in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays by Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1978), pp. 202-203.
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Auberon HERBERT on state dependency

"If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves."
-- Auberon Herbert, "State Education: A Help or Hindrance", Fornightly Review, July 1880; reproduced in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays by Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1978), p. 77.
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Auberon HERBERT on taxes

"... every tax or rate, forcibly taken from an unwilling person, is immoral and oppressive."
-- Auberon Herbert, "The Principles of Voluntaryism" [1897], reproduced in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays by Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1978), p. 393.
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Thomas JEFFERSON on necessary revolutions

"God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion ... what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. ... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Smith, November 13, 1787; reproduced in Thomas Jefferson, Writings (The Library of America, 1984), p. 911.

Thomas JEFFERSON on the spirit of resistance

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787; reproduced in Thomas Jefferson, Writings (The Library of America, 1984), p. 889-890.

Claire JOLY et al., on women self-defense

"Les femmes sont tout à fait compétentes pour assurer leur légitime défense, pourvu que la loi ne les transforme pas en criminelles si elles emploient des moyens efficaces à cette fin."
Women are quite able to see to their own defence, as long as the law does not transform them into criminals if they take effective measures to do so.
-- Claire Joly, Marie Latourelle, Maryse Martin, and Karen Selick, "Testostérone et contrôle des armes" , Le Devoir, February 19, 1999, p. A-11; reproduced on this site in the original French version, and in an English translation.

George JONAS on civil disobedience against Canadian gun control

"The issue isn't gun control but state control -- obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok. ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties."
-- George Jonas, "The Issue Isn't Gun Control but State Control", National Post, July 23, 2003, p. A-15.

John Maynard KEYNES on free trade before the First World War

"The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth … he could at the same time and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprise of any quarter of the world … he could secure forthwith, if he wished, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality…"
-- John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1919), p. 11.

Steven LANDSBURG on policy wonks and economics

"Et pour tuer le temps, en attendant la mort,
Je fume au nez des dieux de fines cigarettes."
And to kill time while awaiting death,
I smoke slender cigarettes thumbing my nose to the gods.
-- Jules Laforgue, "La cigarette" (1880), quoted by Richard Klein, Cigarettes are Sublime (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 57-58; French translation: De la cigarette... (Paris: Seghers, 1995).
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Wilfrid LAURIER on rebellion

John LOCKE on religious, and other kinds of, toleration

"The Care therefore of every man's Soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself. But what if he neglect the Care of his Soul? I answer, What if he neglects the Care of his Health, or of his Estate, which things are nearlier related to the Government of the Magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express Law, That such an one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the Goods and Health of Subjects be not injured by the Fraud and Violence of others; they do not guard them from the Negligence or Ill-husbandry of the Possessors themselves."
-- John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration [1689], Edited and Introduced by James H. Tully (Hacklett Publishing Company, 1983), p. 35.
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John LOCKE on self-defense

"If the innocent honest Man must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors."
-- John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government [1690], #228 (Lasslet Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 465.
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John LOCKE on the right of revolution

"... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience ... [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society."
... quand les lŽgislateurs s'efforcent de ravir et de dŽtruire les choses qui appartiennent en propre au peuple, ou de le rŽduire dans l'esclavage, sous un pouvoir arbitraire, ils se mettent dans l'Žtat de guerre avec le peuple qui, ds lors, est absous et exempt de toute sorte d'obŽissance ˆ leur Žgard, et a le droit de recourir ˆ ce commun refuge que Dieu a destinŽ pour tous les hommes, contre la force et la violence. [...] [Le pouvoir] est dŽvolu au peuple qui a le droit de reprendre sa libertŽ originaire, et par l'Žtablissement d'une nouvelle autoritŽ lŽgislative, tel qu'il jugera ˆ propos, de pourvoir ˆ sa propre conservation et ˆ sa propre sžretŽ, qui est la fin qu'on se propose quand on forme une sociŽtŽ politique.
-- John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government [1690], #222 (Lasslet Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 460-461; French translation by David Mazel (1691): TraitŽ de gouvernement civil (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1984), pp. 348-349.
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John LOTT on the dissuasive effect of concealed guns

"If the rest of the country had adopted right-to-carry concealed-handgun provisions in 1992, about 1,500 murders and 4,000 rapes would have been avoided."
-- John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 159.
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Also available in English at Amazon France.

LUCAN on swords and slavery

"Ignorantque datos, ne quisquam serviat, enses."
And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man from slavery.
-- Lucanus (A.D. 39-65), De Bello Civili (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1988), IV, 579, p. 216.

James MADISON on dangers from abroad

"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or apprehended, from abroad."
-- James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798; reproduced in Jack N. Rakove (Ed.), James Madison: Writings (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1999), p. 588.

James MADISON (or perhaps Alexander HAMILTON) on mutable and abstruse legislation

"The internal effects of a mutable policy are [...] calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow."
-- "Federalist" # 62, in The Federalist (Indianapolis: Modern Library and National Foundation for Education in American Citizenship, n.d.), p. 406.

Joyce MALCOLM on the English liberty to keep and bear arms

"It was during the eighteenth century -- a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances within the English constitution -- that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate check on tyranny."
-- Joyce Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 128.
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Joyce MALCOLM on the importance of the right to keep and bear arms for the ordinary citizen

"The right of ordinary citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his government."
-- Joyce Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. IX.
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Patrick McGOOWAN ("The Prisoner") on numbering people

"I am not a number, I am a free man!"
-- Number Six, The Prisoner, 1968, the famous TV series.
Available at Amazon.com for zone 1: Set 1 (DVDs), Set 1 (VHS), complete collection (DVDs).
Version franaise en vente chez Amazon France (zone 2): complete collection (DVDs).

John Stuart MILL on individual sovereignty

"Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 9.
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John MILTON on freedom of speech

"... when a City shall be as it were besieged and blocked about, her navigable river infested, inroads and incursions round, defiance and battle oft rumoured to be marching up even to her walls and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly taken up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before discoursed or written of ..."
-- John Milton, Aeropagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England (1644), available at http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1209&Itemid=99999999.

Ludvig von MISES on economists and power

"It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well-founded, the more they hate him."
-- Ludwig von Mises, Human Action. A Treatise on Economics (1949), Third Revised Edition (San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1963), p. 67.
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Ludvig von MISES on the oppression of the majority

"Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state."
-- Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism. The Classical Tradition (1927), Fourth American Edition (Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996), p. 59, available at http://www.mises.org/liberal.asp.
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Charles MURRAY on libertarianism

"We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government."
-- Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), p. xi.

Albert Jay NOCK, on blind allegiance to the State

"It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. ... it does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance."
-- Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State, c. 1935 (Delavan: Hallberg, 1983), p. 34.
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Robert NOZICK on socialism

"The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults."
-- Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p.163.

Mancur OLSON on insurance against autocracy in Italian city-states

George ORWELL on Newspeak

Georges ORWELL on the importance of common peoples having guns

"In such a force, cooperation among different parts of society would replace the traditional reliance on upper-class leadership, and a large, well-armed popular militia would act as a sort of insurance policy against government tyranny at home. At the end of an article on the Home Guard in Tribune, Orwell wrote: '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.'"
-- Michael Shelden, Orwell: The Authorized Biography (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), p. 328.
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George ORWELL on the orators of the Party

George ORWELL on women

"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents to the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy."
-- George Orwell, 1984 (1949) (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1987), p. 12.

Georges PALANTE on individualism

" L'individualisme est une doctrine qui, au lieu de subordonner l'individu à la collectivité, pose en principe que l'individu a sa fin en lui-même; qu'en fait et en droit il possède une valeur propre et une existence autonome, et que l'idéal social est le plus complet affranchissement de l'individu. L'individualisme ainsi compris est la même chose que ce qu'on appelle encore la philosophie sociale libertaire."
-- Georges Palante, L'individualisme aristocratique, Paris, Belles Lettres, 1995, pp. 135-136.
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James PATERSON on the right of each to carry arms

"... in all countries where personal freedom is valued, however much each individual may rely on legal redress, the right of each to carry arms -- and these the best and the sharpest -- for his own protection in case of extremity, is a right of nature indelible and irrepressible, and the more it is sought to be repressed the more it will recur."
-- James Paterson, Commentaries on the Liberty of the Subject and the Laws of England Relating to the Security of the Person, (London, 1877), Vol. 1, p. 441; quoted in Joyce Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms. The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 169-170.
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Georges RIPERT on invasive legislation

"L'homme vivant sous la servitude des lois prend sans s'en douter une âme d'esclave."
The man who lives under the servitude of laws takes, without being aware of it, the soul of a slave.
-- Georges Ripert, Le Déclin du Droit. Etude sur la législation contemporaine (Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1949), p. 94.
Le Déclin du Droit. Etude sur la législation contemporaine en vente chez Amazon France.

Georges RIPERT on legal tyranny

"En présence d'une aussi étroite réglementation, l'homme peut-il encore se dire libre pour cette raison que la tyrannie qu'il subit est celle de la loi? Sans doute l