Here’s a nice collection of quotes in support of liberty (and some humorous ones against it). This page will be updated from time to time.
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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” -Thomas Paine
“A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.” -Ayn Rand
“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” -Ayn Rand
“A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” -Lysander Spooner
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” -Lysander Spooner
“Our constitutions purport to be established by ‘the people,’ and, in theory, ‘all the people’ consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of ‘the people’ exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.” -Lysander Spooner
“And the so-called sovereigns, in these different governments, are simply the heads, or chiefs, of different bands of robbers and murderers.” -Lysander Spooner
“Vices are not crimes.” -Lysander Spooner
“The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.” -David Friedman
“Liberals tend to hold the bribe-giver as somehow more reprehensible, as in some way ‘corrupting’ the taker. In that way they deny the free will and the responsibility of each individual for his own actions.” -Murray Rothbard
“The character of an institution, no less than of an individual, is revealed through actions, not words.” -Wendy McElroy
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.” -Thomas Jefferson
“[Y]a mom u bastads dont cu[t] the prophet or ill com down there and nok the jewish shit out of u white bastad fuk u[.]” -Comment from an irate LessGovernment.com reader
“Most terrorist attacks against the American people occur in the halls of the congress and in the White House, and they occur every day.” -Eugene Casey
“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.” -George Benard Shaw
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” -John Adams
“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.” -Thomas Reed
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” -Thomas Jefferson
“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” -Mark Twain
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” -Mark Twain
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Benjamin Franklin
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.” -Jacob Hornberger
“I do not challenge the dedication and sincerity of those who disagree with the freedom philosophy and confidently promote government solutions for all our ills. I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas.” -Ron Paul
“The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.” -William Safire
“Truth is not determined by majority vote.” -Doug Gwyn
“Any president that lies to the American people should have to resign.” -Bill Clinton
“If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.” -Bill Clinton
“Unless a good deed is voluntary, it has no moral significance.” -Everett Martin
“Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.” -Guy de Maupassant
“All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says.” -Walter Wriston
“An anarchist is anyone who believes in less government than you do.” -Robert LeFevre
“You don’t need a treaty to have free trade.” -Murray Rothbard
“Public schools are government-established, politician- and bureaucrat-controlled, fully politicized, taxpayer-supported, authoritarian socialist institutions. In fact, the public-school system is one of the purest examples of socialism existing in America.” -Thomas L. Johnson
“In our government-controlled schools we are taught that Lincoln was our greatest president because his war ended slavery and saved the Union. As usual, the other side of the story – the side that reflects poorly on the government – somehow gets lost.” -Richard J. Maybury
“Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects.” -Tolstoy
“Terrorism is a direct response to the crimes our government has committed against foreigners (besides which, the actual terrorists are within our own government).” -Gore Vidal
“If you believe that it’s the U.S. government’s responsibility to invade a country solely to liberate that country’s downtrodden people, then you must accept perpetual global war.” -Claire Wolfe
“A great many laws in a country, like many physicians, is a sign of malady.” -Voltaire
“The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.” -Johann von Schiller
“If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” -Helen Keller
“Politicians can’t give us anything without depriving us of something else. Government is not a god. Every dime they spend must first be taken from someone else.” -Gary Asmus
“Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” -Mark Twain
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” -Groucho Marx
“Everything government touches turns to crap.” -Ringo Starr
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.” -Max Stirner
“An armed society is a polite society.” -Robert Heinlein
“Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.” -Will Rogers
“Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA – ordinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the State.” -Heinrich Himmler
“The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.” -Ron Paul
“Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.” -Harry Browne
“Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production.” -Ludwig von Mises
“There’s never been a good government.” -Emma Goldman
“The desire to rule is the mother of heresies.” -St. John Chrysostom
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” -Edward Murrow
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -C.S. Lewis
“Maybe I just need to buy a red book and embrace the commie cunts with no moral values. Or the fascists are quite attractive in their fish-headed garb. Or not. Kill them ALL and let [insert deity name of choice] sort them out. I embrace life and advocate utter death for the undeserving. Unless they’re willing to dig the ditches for the enjoyment of the elite. Unenforced by law of course. Some of us are just more enlightened than others, and the slavering masses will never understand that, mired as they are in their own unjustifiable mudpits of entitlement. Anger never ceases, but don’t blame the angry; blame those who generously provide fodder for the fueling of righteous anger on a daily basis. Learn to swim.” -Tzar (while drunk)
“Whoever wrote that is an amazing dickhead. Sided with the socialists? What does that even mean?” -Tzar (In response to Kim du Toit’s bashing of Ron Paul.)
“Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” -Pat Robertson
“Individualist feminism, or ifeminism, advocates the equal treatment of men and women as individuals under just law. The core principle of individualist feminism is that all human beings have a moral and legal claim to their own persons and property. It is sometimes called libertarian feminism.” -Ifeminists FAQ
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” -Emma Goldman
“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?” -Patrick Henry
“I’m a patriot in the truest sense of the word.” -Al Sharpton
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” -George Orwell
“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.” -George Orwell
“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns; why should we let them have ideas?” -Joseph Stalin
“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.” -V (V for Vendetta)
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” -V (V for Vendetta)
“Certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable.” -V (V for Vendetta)
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” -George Washington
“Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.” -George W. Bush
“Communities don’t have rights. Only individuals in the community have rights.” -Michael Badnarik
“I am opposed to any individual taxes until we eliminate all of the unconstitutional agencies, and I suspect we wouldn’t need a tax after that.” -Michael Badnarik
“When we were at peace, Democrats wanted to raise taxes. Now there’s a war, so Democrats want to raise taxes. When there was a surplus, Democrats wanted to raise taxes. Now that there is a mild recession, Democrats want to raise taxes.” -Ann Coulter
“‘What’s the big deal?’ readers may ask. ‘We’re only talking about a french fry.’ Well, viewed from one perspective, words are only ‘puffs of air,’ but that doesn’t diminish the importance of free speech. The idea of government micro-managing personal choice and freedom down to the level of a french fry is a very big deal.” -Wendy McElroy
“That’s toolism at its most nauseating.” -Tzar (After someone referred to George W. Bush as “a decent and kind husband and father” who was “not going to take [9-11] twiddling his thumbs….”)
“America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.” -James Bovard
“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” -H.L. Mencken
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” -Goethe
“The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.” -Frank Zappa
“Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your government is doing to you.” -Joseph Sobran
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace.” -Milton Friedman
“No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong.” -Walter Williams
“Much of today’s security measures are little more than a panicked response to terrorism and not likely to ever go away because Americans are coming to accept it as normal.” -Walter Williams
“Creating false distinctions between human rights and property rights plays into the hands of Democrat and Republican Party socialists who seek to control our lives. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.” -Walter Williams
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Taxation with representation ain’t so hot either.” -Gerald Barzan
“A democracy is a place where numerous elections are held, at great cost, without issues, and with interchangeable candidates.” -Gore Vidal
“It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.” -Benjamin Franklin
“Form 1040 was chosen by the IRS because for every fifty dollars you earn, you get ten and they get forty.” -Jay Leno
“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.” -Douglas MacArthur
“The majority of Americans get their news and information about what is going on with their government from entities that are licensed by and subject to punishment at the hands of that very government.” -Neal Boortz
“With respect to the words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” -James Madison
“When a majority rules, a minority is ruled.” -Robert Klassen
“To protect us from terrorists, our government treats us like terrorists.” -Hal O’Boyle
“Government failure is always used as an excuse for government expansion. Government thrives on crisis and incompetence.” -Jim Babka
“”The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, at any time, and with utter recklessness.” -Robert Heinlein
“Gentlemen, you see that in the anarchy in which we live, society manages much as before. Take care, if our disputes last too long, that the people do not come to think that they can very easily do without us.” -[attributed to] Benjamin Franklin
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” -Frederic Bastiat
“The government creates the poor so that it can aid the poor, by which I mean it uses the poor as an excuse to make everybody else poorer by filling its coffers — to aid the poor.” -Tzar
“Oh, yeah? Well, unless you have at least $2 million and a nice mansion that was built over bulldozed wilderness preservation land (according to Johan Norberg’s blog), then proletarian Chomsky and Howard Zinn are each richer than you are. Books denouncing commerce are quite a lucrative market.” -legendre007
Bullets change the government more than any vote will, but before you act remember that the mind conquers all. Jeremy Gordon