This is an old list but I’m aiming to add to it. It’s mostly quotes on politics and economics but I’m aiming to expand beyond that too. If you have any great quotes you think might interest me in this regard, please email me or add them in the comments section below. Please provide as much bibliographic information as you can, and if an online source is available please link to it. I might also organize this list alphabetically or by subject when I get the time.
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“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,
with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
— Ayn Rand
“I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“I’m no Ayn Rander! She didn’t go nearly far enough!”
— The Question, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley (2002)
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“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word state (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate!” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1995), p. 63.
“If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and the process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to ‘King George’s council, Winston and his gang’, it would do a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1995), p. 63.
“The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit to it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1995), p. 64.
“All that power that you didn’t like when someone else had it, you decided to keep it. Oh my God, you’re Frodo.” — Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, criticizing Obama on broken promises on civil liberties.
“The destiny of man is an individualistic destiny.” — Merlyn, The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White
“I am an anarchist, like any other sensible person.” — Merlyn, The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White
“All forms of collectivism are mistaken, according to the human skull.” — Merlyn, The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White
“Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves. It is hopeless doing things for people – it is often very dangerous to do things at all — and the only thing worth doing for the race is to increase its stock of ideas. Then, if you make available a larger stock, people are at liberty to help themselves from out of it. By this process the means of improvement is offered, to be accepted or rejected freely, and there is a faint hope of progress in the course of millennia. Such is the business of the philosopher, to open new ideas. It is not his business to impose them on people.” — Merlyn, The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White
“The several species of government vie with each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you please, they are in effect but a despotism.” –Edmund Burke
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” — Inigo Montoya
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” — Murray Rothbard
“It is no crime to be ignorant of philosophy, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be abstruse and of little relevance for life. But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on philosophical subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” — Geoffrey Allan Plauché
“The State is that great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” — Frederic Bastiat
“Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.” — Frédéric Bastiat
“The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.” — Ludwig von Mises
“[T]he crucial question is not, as so many believe, whether property rights should be private or governmental, but rather whether the necessarily ‘private’ owners are legitimate owners or criminals. For ultimately, there is no entity called ‘government’; there are only people forming themselves into groups called ‘governments’ and acting in a ‘governmental’ manner. All property is therefore always ‘private’; the only and critical question is whether it should reside in the hands of criminals or of the proper and legitimate owners.” — Murray Rothbard
“The most absurd public opinion polls are those on taxes. Now, if there is one thing we know about taxes, it is that people do not want to pay them. If they wanted to pay them, there would be no need for taxes. People would gladly figure out how much of their money the government deserves and send it in. And yet we routinely hear about opinion polls that reveal that the public likes the tax level as it is and might even like it higher. Next they will tell us that the public thinks the crime rate is too low, or that the American people would really like to be in more auto accidents.” — Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 281.
“A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms — an expropriating property protector — and will inevitably lead to more taxes and less protection. Even if, as some — classical liberal — statists have proposed, a government limited its activities exclusively to the protection of pre-existing private property rights, the further question of how much security to produce would arise. Motivated (like everyone else) by self-interest and the disutility of labor, but endowed with the unique power to tax, a government agent’s answer will invariably be the same: To maximize expenditures on protection — and almost all of a nation’s wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection — and at the same time to minimize the production of protection.” — Hans-Hermann Hoppe
“The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master in a slave plantation.” — Frank Knight
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with a series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken
“It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favour of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.” — H.L. Mencken
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” — H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant or pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” — H.L. Mencken
“I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.” — H. L. Mencken
“Economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” — Henry Hazlitt
“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” — Mark Twain
“I have often wondered why the sounds of the beating drums do not make the marching soldiers shoot their officers and go home.” — Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)
“Americans have a strange notion that the ordinary laws of economics do not apply to them. So doubtless they will think they are prosperous if the boom starts, and that deficits and indebtedness are merely signs of how prosperous they are.” — Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” — George Orwell
“Libertarianism in One Sentence: Other people are not your property.” — Roderick T. Long
“Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it’s yellow.” — Edmund Burke
“The two-party system is a bad joke on the American people; when it comes to Republicans and Democrats remember they are two sides of the same coin. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil and not an answer to our problems. A vote for a Republican or a Democrat will not fix anything and is a wasted vote.” — Aaron Russo, 2004 Libertarian Presidential Candidate
“The question isn’t who is going to let me, it is who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice.” — Adam Smith
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” — Thomas Sowell
“[W]hat economists should be able to do is to figure out a system that works without shooting people.” — Leonid Hurwicz
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is hacking at the root.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” — Robert Heinlein
“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” — Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
“First, what is it you want us to pay taxes for? Tell me what I get and perhaps I’ll buy it.” — Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
“The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys.” — Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
“In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.” — Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
“That we were slaves I had known all my life – and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren’t bought and sold – but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.” — Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
“But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.” — Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” — Excerpt from the notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love
“The IRS! They’re like the mafia, they can take anything they want!” — Jerry Seinfeld
“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.” — Thomas Jefferson
“He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” — George Orwell
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” — Einstein
“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.” — Einstein
The hardest thing to understand is the income tax.” — Einstein
“Historical experience suggests that policy makers are dense…” — Stephen D. Krasner
“Stupidity is not a very interesting analytic category.” — Stephen D. Krasner
“Diplomacy is the art of letting the other guy have your own way.” — Unknown
“When a gesture of respect is made mandatory, it becomes an act of submission.” — Pete Eyre
“Mathematical equations cannot take into account creative human decisions based on the categories of cause and effect, before and after. What they describe is a timeless world of correlations from which causation is absent. Human intentions play no part in the model, as the model assumes all humans know everything relevant to their situation and can only accept it as a given.” — Gene Callahan
“Mathematical equations can be useful for modeling the result of people following through on previously made plans, for capturing “equilibrium-like” phases of markets. Such a model cannot capture the change of perception in the market, which is the beginning of the creation of a new plan. That is the moment of human choice, as the plan must aim for one goal while setting aside others, and choose some means to achieve that goal while rejecting others. Mathematical economics models the equilibrium-like phases of markets, when no plans are being created or revised.” — Gene Callahan
“But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.” — W. B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven