Ancap Quotes - Page 2

Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen.

Frédéric Bastiat

Without anarchy, there would be chaos.

Jeffrey Tucker

When I argue with devout statists, sometimes other voluntaryists tell me that I'm wasting my time, opining that a particular statist is never going to "get it." I often respond by saying that that's rarely my intention. Most of the time, when I argue with statists, the goal is for ME to learn more about the mentality and psychology of authoritarian indoctrination, and to hopefully help any SPECTATORS--whether statist or anarchist--learn something from the exchange. (Both of those goals can be achieved even if the statist continues to be a lunk-headed dupe.) Earlier today, a funny but possibly profound analogy came to mind about this:When I argue with "true believer" devout statists, I'm not being a doctor trying to heal an ailing patient; I'm being a coroner, doing an AUTOPSY on a patient who is already beyond any hope of saving, in the hopes that I, and anyone observing, may learn more about the "disease" of statism, in order to better understand the nature of it, and possibly prevent others from experiencing a similar fate.

Larken Rose

The first people to get the new money are the counterfeiters, which they use to buy various goods and services. The second receivers of the new money are the retailers who sell those goods to the counterfeiters. And on and on the new money ripples out through the system, going from one pocket or till to another. As it does so, there is an immediate redistribution effect. For first the counterfeiters, then the retailers, etc. have new money and monetary income they use to bid up goods and services, increasing their demand and raising the prices of the goods that they purchase. But as prices of goods begin to rise in response to the higher quantity of money, those who haven't yet received the new money find the prices of the goods they buy have gone up, while their own selling prices or incomes have not risen. In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (e.g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money at all.

Murray N. Rothbard

The instant that any government obtains a monetary printing press, it becomes a deeply dishonest government, empowered to rob people by stealth. A government with the power to print money knows no limits.

Jeffrey Tucker

Recall that the minimum wage was initially conceived as a method to exclude undesirables from the workforce.

Jeffrey Tucker

Ultimately, all arguments against markets are arguments against anarchy. Marx understood this much, at least.

Jeffrey Tucker

If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.

Lysander Spooner

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

Ludwig von Mises

Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people’s natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they — the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate — are themselves the government.

Robert Higgs

When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you.

Frank Chodorov

Equality cannot be imagined outside of tyranny.

Charles Forbes René de Montalembert

To be sure, I am not speaking about Christian equality, whose real name is equity; but about this democratic and social equality, which is nothing but the canonization of envy and the chimera of jealous ineptitude. This equality was never anything but a mask which could not become reality without the abolition of all merit and virtue.

Charles Forbes René de Montalembert

Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men.

Auberon Herbert

Set men up to rule their fellow-men, to treat them as mere soulless material with which they may deal as they please, and the consequence is that you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion, trickery and violence, a mere scrambling ground for the strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous.

Auberon Herbert

The law is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish.

Frédéric Bastiat

It's amazing the amount of anger, hostility and hatred some people show towards those of us who want to leave them in freedom. Hysterically, some statists characterize that as the voluntaryists trying to "force" their views on everyone else. "You're oppressing me, by leaving me alone, and wanting me to leave you alone!" Meanwhile, they wildly cheer when some politician promises to extort and control them. Go figure.

Larken Rose

Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.

Ludwig von Mises

Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.

Gustave de Molinari

Once you understand the economics of the Austrian School and the philosophy of liberty in the tradition of Rothbard, you never look at anything – not the state, the media, the central bank, the political class, nothing – the same way again.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader. Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing 'compassion' for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.

Thomas Sowell

We (libertarians) find just as many things to rip on the left as we do on the right. People on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person to us.

Trey Parker

There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.

Albert Jay Nock

A libertarian is somebody who believes, of course, in personal liberty. And liberty is a personal thing; it is not collective. You don’t gain liberty because you belong to a group. So we don’t talk about women’s rights or gay rights or anything else. Everybody has an absolute equal right as an individual, and it comes to them naturally.

Ron Paul

Socialism, or communism as it is sometimes called, is merely a secular religion, where the State becomes a god.

Stefan Molyneux

The earliest use of writing was strictly commercial and economic, not political or bureaucratic. It was trade, entrepreneurship, and stewardship of private property, not politics, "public education" or the creation of national mythology that allowed humankind to transition from prehistory to history. Just as trade, entrepreneurship, and stewardship of private property have always been on the forefront of civilization's advancement, so were they also the driving force behind civilization's emergence.

Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

When you go with first principles, a giant light goes off in what you think is a city and turns out to be an insane asylum.

Stefan Molyneux

Government should never be able to do anything you can't do. If you can't steal from your neighbor, you can't send the government to steal for you.

Ron Paul

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims—as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force—he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious; reason, to him, is a means of deception; he feels that men possess some power more potent than reason—and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men’s means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.

Ayn Rand

The idea that the government has services or goods that they can pass on is a complete farce. Governments have nothing. They can’t create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept.

Ron Paul

Price controls almost invariably produce black markets, where prices are not only higher than the legally permitted prices, but also higher than they would be in a free market, since the legal risks must also be compensated. While small-scale black markets may function in secrecy, large-scale black markets usually require bribes to officials to look the other way.

Thomas Sowell

There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, this thinking goes. Economics is a matter of acquiring and allocating, not creating. This was the view of the world’s smartest people, all top philosophers and not stupid people, for many thousands of years before the age of the enlightenment. It still is.

Jeffrey Tucker

Growing economies are built by billions of actors behaving according to their own interests, coordinated through institutions that no one in particular created.Realizing this requires humility, a trait that is in short supply among would-be dictators, politicians, and bureaucrats, which is precisely why these groups are the proven enemies of prosperity in all times and places.

Jeffrey Tucker

What ranks above all else for economic and political reconstruction is a radical change of ideologies. Economic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.

Ludwig von Mises

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man's devotion to political illusion and self-destruction.

Robert Higgs

The overwhelming tendency of markets is to bring people together, break down prejudices, persuade people of the need to cooperate regardless of class, race, religion, sex/gender, and physical ability. The same is obviously and especially true of sexual orientation. It is the market that rewards people who put aside their biases and seek gains through trade. This is why states devoted to racialist and hateful policies always resort to violence in control of the marketplace.

Jeffrey Tucker

Conflict is not unavoidable. However, it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

Friedrich A. Hayek

If government played by the same rules as the rest of us, it would cease to be government.

Sheldon Richman

Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government.

Murray N. Rothbard

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same.

Ayn Rand

A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration.

Robert Higgs

Collectivism is the "philosophy" of every cockroach and sewer rat: "If I want it, I must need it, and if I need it, I have a right to it, and if I have a right to it, it doesn't matter what I have to do to get it." Thefact that such an inherently animalistic, short-sighted, anti-humanviewpoint is now painted by some as compassionate and "progressive" does not make it any more sane, or any less dangerous.

Larken Rose

Monopoly is a market, or part of a market, reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force by the government, or with the sanction of the government. Monopoly exists insofar as the freedom of competition is violated, with the freedom of competition being understood as the absence of the initiation of physical force as the preventive of competition. Where there is no initiation of physical force to violate the freedom of competition, there is no monopoly. The freedom of competition is violated only insofar as individuals are excluded from markets or parts of markets by means of the initiation of physical force. Monopoly is thus a market or part of a market reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force. It is thus something imposed upon the market from without—by the government. (Private individuals—gangsters—can initiate force to reserve markets only if the government allows it and thereby sanctions it.)Thus, monopoly is not something which emerges from the normal operation of the economic system, and which the government must control.

George Reisman

Irony: Taking a 170-year-old envy-based "philosophy," which has led to the murder of several hundred million human beings and the oppression of billions more, and calling it "progressive".

Larken Rose

When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.

Ayn Rand

There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Even the richest person, provided the riches comes from mutually beneficial exchange, does not need to give anything "back" to the community, because this person took nothing out of the community. Indeed, the reverse is true: Enterprises give to the community. Their owners take huge risks, and front the money for investment, precisely with the goal of serving others. Their riches are signs that they have achieved their aims.

Jeffrey Tucker

When people encounter the free market and they recoil or react negatively to it, they're merely confessing that voluntaryism, trade and negotiation are foreign and threatening to them, which tells you everything about how tragically they were raised.

Stefan Molyneux

Vengeance against predators is meals on wheels.

Stefan Molyneux

The essential quality of a market system, contrary to popular thinking, is not that it promotes greed; but rather, that it renders greed harmless.

Israel M. Kirzner

If you're rational you don't get to believe whatever you want to believe.

Michael Huemer

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

Penn Jillette

If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.

Lysander Spooner

Free markets are the real people's revolution.

Jeffrey Tucker

There is not the slightest analogy between playing games and the conduct of business within a market society. The card player wins money by outsmarting his antagonist. The businessman makes money by supplying customers with goods they want to acquire.

Ludwig von Mises

Man has rights because they are natural rights. They are grounded in the nature of man: the individual's capacity for conscious choice, the necessity for him to use his mind and energy to adopt goals and values, to find out about the world, to pursue his ends in order to survive and prosper, his capacity and need to communicate and interact with other human beings and to participate in the division of labor.

Murray N. Rothbard

Nearly all libertarians were once conservatives or progressives or independent statists of some stripe. But scarcely any conservatives, progressives, or independent statists were once libertarians. This asymmetry in the direction of ideological migration is interesting and perhaps informative.

Robert Higgs

Why anarchy? Because anything less would be uncivilized.

Jeffrey Tucker

To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself.

Auberon Herbert

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Ancap Quotes - Page 2

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