88 Great Libertarian Quotes

Following is our list of great libertarian quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about libertarian party.

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Famous Great Libertarian Quotes

Government is best which governs least — Thomas Paine

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. — Barry Goldwater

That government is best which governs least. — Henry David Thoreau

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. — Kim Stanley Robinson

The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all. — H. L. Mencken

But I'm very libertarian in the sense that I believe in small government and, as a general rule, I don't believe in imposing values upon people. — Stephen Harper

I think very fundamentally to being Libertarian is not having a social agenda. I accept who you are and the life that you live as long as your life does not adversely affect mine. — Gary Johnson

Liberals want the government to be your Mommy. Conservatives want government to be your Daddy. Libertarians want it to treat you like an adult. — Andre Marrou

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

Libertarians recognize the difference between adults and children, as well as differences between normal adults and adults who are insane or mentally hindered or retarded. — Tom G. Palmer

The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity. — Martin Van Buren

The first maxim of a man who loves liberty, should be never to grant to rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly and indispensably necessary for the safety and well being of society. — Richard Henry Lee

Individual liberty depends upon keeping government under control. — Ronald Reagan

[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. — John Rawls

Liberty, Humanity, Justice, Equality - Susan B. Anthony

Liberty, Humanity, Justice, Equality — Susan B. Anthony

Short Great Libertarian Quotes

  • There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises. — Paul Krugman
  • Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy. — Jose Marti
  • I contend that the strongest of all governments is that which is most free. — John Tyler
  • An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. — Eugene McCarthy
  • Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. — Lord Acton
  • You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. — Clarence Darrow
  • Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others. — William Allen White
  • Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved. — Aristotle
Great libertarian quote Silence is a source of great strength.
Silence is a source of great strength.

Libertarian Quotes

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas. — Joseph Stalin

Education is a weapon the effect of which is determined by the hands which wield it, by who is to be struck down. — Joseph Stalin

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. - Antonin Scalia

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. — Antonin Scalia

Great libertarian quote Make today so awesome, yesterday gets jealous.
Make today so awesome, yesterday gets jealous.

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

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong. - Voltaire

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong. — Voltaire

Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry. — Unknown Author

Great libertarian quote Great minds discuss ideas.Average minds discuss events.Small minds discuss people.
Great minds discuss ideas.Average minds discuss events.Small minds discuss people.

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

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. — Edward R. Murrow

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. — Booker T. Washington

Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you. — Benjamin Franklin

Libertarian Party Quotes

The government was set to protect man from criminals, and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. — Ayn Rand

Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots. — John Adams

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. — George Washington

Great libertarian quote Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.

[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government. — Patrick Henry

Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does. — James Carriger Paine

Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence. — Tom C. Clark

Great libertarian quote Acknowledge all of your small victories. They will eventually add up to something great.
Acknowledge all of your small victories. They will eventually add up to something great.

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt. — Mahatma Gandhi

What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else. — Tom Clancy

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

When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free. — Tom Robbins

People Writing About Great Libertarian

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine
quotes on tyranny, freedom and democracy

497 6157
Read quotes by Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater
quotes on extremism

116 1443
Read quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau
quotes on nature, civil disobedience and solitude

2697 19655
Read quotes by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson
quotes on life, leadership and climate change

44 95
Read quotes by H. L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken
quotes on government, elections and death

913 7279
Read quotes by Stephen Harper

Stephen Harper
quotes on religion, truth and socialism

123 771

More Great Libertarian Quotes

Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man. — Walter E. Williams

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. — G. Gordon Liddy

How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four. — Gloria Steinem

Great libertarian quote You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.

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

Foreign aid goes from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. — Rand Paul

Great libertarian quote Failure is a great teacher, and, if you are open to it, ever
Failure is a great teacher, and, if you are open to it, every mistake has a lesson to offer.

War is the Health of the State. — Randolph Bourne

Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. — Allan H. Meltzer

When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all. — William O. Douglas

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false. — Paul Johnson

The standard of living of the common man is higher in those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy entrepreneurs. — Ludwig von Mises

He who controls the past controls the future. — Lao Tzu

The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State. — Murray Rothbard

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

The liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop. — Alexander Herzen

Instead of a bumbling and inefficient tool of society, the radical [libertarian] sees the State itself, in its very nature, as coercive, exploitative, parasitic, and hence profoundly antisocial. The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress. — Murray Rothbard

There's no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom. — Barry Goldwater

For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. — Thomas Jefferson

Gravity. It's not just a good idea; it's the law! — Adam Savage

Most of the presidential candidates' economic packages involve 'tax breaks,' which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money. — Dave Barry

The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. — Winston Churchill

I am a Libertarian Republican in the Goldwater style. — Roger Stone

Poverty is the greatest cause of terrorism. — S. Azmat Hassan

The Constitution: it's not just a good idea, it's the law. — Michael Badnarik

Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics. — Albert Camus

America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation. — Henry Steele Commager

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom... — Ronald Reagan

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. — P. J. O'Rourke

Decriminalization would take the profit out of drugs and greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the drug-related violence that is currently plaguing our streets. — Kurt Schmoke

Private enterprise creates; government destroys. That is the great economic lesson of our times and all times. — Llewellyn Rockwell

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

No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. — Roger Brooke Taney

Where was the libertarian right during the great struggles for individual liberty in America in the last half-century? The libertarian movement has been conspicuously absent from the campaigns for civil rights for nonwhites, women, gays and lesbians. — Michael Lind

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

One of the great weaknesses of standard libertarian theory is that it tends to push too hard by elevating presumptions into absolutes. — Richard Allen Epstein

Unfortunately, people expect a Russian opposition politician to be a manic libertarian who thinks the oligarchs are great, who isn't interested in the problems of retirees and who believes the invisible hand of the market will resolve everything. — Alexei Navalny

'Tis true that governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys a share of protection should pay out of his estate his proportion of the maintenance of it. — John Locke

Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International and which were best understood and most strongly held by the libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance. — Rudolf Rocker

Republicans ought to propose conservative answers to the concerns that are uppermost on most voters’ minds. The libertarian-populist method seems to be to start with the solutions and then to imagine that voters have the relevant concerns. And while many of the proposed solutions have great potential appeal to conservative voters, few would do much to expand their ranks. — Ramesh Ponnuru

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

It is incumbent on a great nation to remain confident, if it wishes to remain free. We need not be ignorant to real threats to our safety, against which we must remain vigilant. We need only to banish to the ash heap of history the notion that we ought to be ruled by our fears and those who use them to enhance their own power. — Ron Paul

In contrast, markets - oft mythologized as "natural" are the most unnatural things going. Libertarians will tell you "market laws are laws of nature", what baloney. Markets - and the other great modernist cornucopian tools - are magnificent wealth generating machines, built ad-hoc, through trial and error, constantly fine-tuned and refined, tinkered, adjusted. — David Brin

The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies. — H. L. Mencken

In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms—from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy.’ . . . We are in a deadly race between politics and technology. . . . The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism. — Peter Thiel

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