No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.
A traffic jam is a collision between free enterprise and socialism. Free enterprise produces automobiles faster than socialism can build roads and road capacity.
The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom. . .
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
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.
The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.
Society exists for the benefit of its members - not the members for the benefit of society.
Dependence leads to subservience.
The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.
Capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge.
The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
No man has ever ruled other men for their own good.
Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.
I wear the chain I forged in life. . . . I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
I don't agree with the libertarians. I want my security first. I'll deal with all the details after that.
Of all the tyrannies on human kind the worst is that which persecutes the mind.
The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance, eternal patience with the vacuous blather occasionally expressed from behind the shield of free speech.
I'm not for pretending that bad stuff doesn't exist, and a passion for justice and truth is a libertarian trait. But the idea of liberty should also reveal new forms of beauty in the world, astonishing evidence of order without dictate, lovely examples of innovation without planning, and other magical things. Surely these deserve some attention too.
I'd describe myself as a sexual libertarian - but I'm not a libertine. "To each his own" is my motto.