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1 " Society is a voluntary scheme of mutual benefit. The state is a compulsory scheme of mutual exploitation. "
― , The Pith of Life: Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty
2 " Governments represent their citizens in the same way as parasites represent their hosts. "
3 " To claim that one can be happy without being free is to prove that one has no idea what happiness means. "
4 " A slave believes that the law should define the scope of liberty. A free person believes that liberty should define the scope of the law. "
5 " The only common good is the common liberty to pursue individual goods. "
6 " Politics is an endless, borderless war against individual liberty. "
7 " Patience is the ability to enjoy the calm of boredom. "
8 " An anarchist is someone who rejects the curious notion that crimes become virtues as they grow in size. "
9 " It takes abstract thinking to see how greed can lead to prosperity, but it takes wishful thinking to claim that violence can lead to charity. "
10 " Bad economics teaches that computers can design markets. Good economics teaches that markets can design computers. "
11 " A foolish environmentalist wants to save nature from the greed of the market by exposing it to the tragedy of the commons. A smart environmentalist wants to save nature from the tragedy of the commons by exposing it to the greed of the market. "
12 " Abolitionism was a movement to end private slavery. Libertarianism is a movement to end private and public slavery. "
13 " Whenever one feels like saying “the money that billionaire spent on his fleet of yachts could have been used better by the "public sector”“, one should ask oneself when was the last time one heard of a billionaire buying an army of tanks and a set of nuclear weapons. "
14 " It takes a common thug to commit injustice, but it takes an exceptional thug to call it "social justice". "
15 " Perhaps the most flagrant testimony to the intellectual shallowness of statism is that the typical statist believes that the fantastically hypothetical threat of a corporation monopolizing the supply of water is a devastating objection to libertarianism, but the painfully real threat of a state methodically exterminating tens of millions of individuals is not a devastating objection to statism. "
16 " Entrepreneurs make profits by serving the needy. Politicians make profits by creating the needy. "
17 " An entrepreneur is someone who sees a gain from trade where others see a tradeoff. "
18 " Civilization is the process of substituting liberty for power. "
19 " Expressing fear that cheap foreign labor will “steal” one’s job is the most disarmingly honest admission of professional incompetence. "