Top 143 Libertarians Quotes & Sayings

[L]et me point out that libertarians defend a tradition of liberty that is the fruit of thousands of years of human history.

Libertarians love their children at least as much as the Democrats and the Republicans, probably more.

I'm as radical as libertarians come.

I think libertarians need somebody who can articulate getting from A to Z. But you know, if G is achievable, how about it? Let's get there!

The debate in the Republican Party needs to be between libertarians and conservatives.

I'm tired of people thinking that Libertarians don't have morality- that they don't have values. that's a lot of hogwash. Libertarians are the ONLY politicians with values.

What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights.

The real boneheads are the libertarians.

There are libertarians who are survivalists, who live in the middle of nowhere and who are ready for the world to end. And then there are pragmatists, and I would consider myself to be a pretty pragmatic person.

If you tell most people what libertarians think, they immediately assume that you cannot mean it all the way, that you're really just taking a position for argument's sake.

The civil libertarians among us would rather defend the constitution than protect our nation's security.

In any society, order is the first need of all. Liberty and justice may be established only after order is tolerably secure. But the libertarians give primacy to an abstract liberty. Conservatives, knowing that "liberty inheres in some sensible object," are aware that true freedom can be found only within the framework of a social order, such as the constitutional order of these United States. In exalting an absolute and indefinable "liberty" at the expense of order, the libertarians imperil the very freedoms they praise.

The problem is that Americans use the state as a moral compass. For libertarians, it is often frustrating to explain that advocating the decriminalization of x is not synonymous with endorsing x.

Despite massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their romantic concept of capitalism, which, freed from government interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the lowest prices.

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

I think that most people are natural libertarians.

Libertarians are learning to their sorrow that big businessmen cannot necessarily be relied upon to be their allies in the battle against extension of governmental encroachments.

Like academic Marxists, who are their sisters under the skin, libertarians are far more interested in an ideal world than in the one where ordinary humans live.

I am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody. Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians. I’ll work with Martians. If — and the if is critical — they're willing to cut spending and reduce the debt.

I think there are plenty of Libertarians that are socially conservative.

Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, and independents all agree on only one thing - our national politicians are bought.

A lot of libertarians and ultra-capitalists like to put out this idea that competition makes for better creativity. But it's just because we don't see all the creativity that's been crushed.

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason whatever; nor will a libertarian advocate the initiation of force, or delegate it to anyone else. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.

John Stuart Mill believed that the only acceptable reason for government to limit a person's liberty was to prevent him from causing unacceptable harm to others. Mill was not a libertarian, but many libertarians are quick to cite this principle when arguing against a regulation that they oppose. And I believe most thoughtful libertarians are prepared to embrace something fairly close to Mill's harm principle. But accepting that principle implies accepting many of the institutions of the modern welfare state that libertarians have vigorously opposed in the past, such as safety regulation.

Libertarians are not the brightest lights in the candelabra, a fact that is evident from the alternatives they tend to offer to public prevention of private abuses. For example: if you don’t like working a hundred hours a week for twenty-five cents a day, then find another employer! It is obvious to intelligent people, if not libertarians, that more generous employers will price themselves out of a market whose standards are set by the most rapacious.

Libertarians are believers in small government who really mean it -- no excuses, no exceptions. [For Libertarians], the excesses of government are their best recruiters.

Libertarians should say, 'I love this country too much to take away votes from the Republican'

Libertarians are conservatives who still get high.

We did not become libertarians because we are altruists.

He [Louis Brandais] did believe in the states famously as laboratories of democracy, to use that resonant phrase that Tea Party and conservative libertarians have embraced today because he loves state experimentation.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

I don't agree with the libertarians. I want my security first. I'll deal with all the details after that.

Libertarians typically argue that particular obligations, at least under normal circumstances, must be created by consent; they cannot be unilaterally imposed by others.

When I'm asked where libertarians fit on the left-right spectrum, I say we don't. We're above the line.

I'm a libertarian. I think a lot of people are libertarians and are afraid to admit it - or don't know.

We have a responsibility to give people opportunities to do what they can do. It's a fundamental tenet of democratic society. Libertarians who believe in a completely minimalist state, and don't feel we have that responsibility, are harming humanity.

I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

Silicon Valley is a great place for Bitcoin, since everyone understands computers, and there are lots of libertarians running around.

Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts.

I really didn't know much about the Libertarians. I knew they were for less government and more individual freedom. I liked that.

My current novel, Pallas, is all about that culture war - in fact it's been called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Sagebrush Rebellion - and yet what I hear all too often from libertarians is that they don't read fiction.

Many of the ex-hippies who started companies like Apple, or the early online bulletin boards dedicated to organic food and following the Grateful Dead, were an odd combination of liberals and libertarians.

I am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody: Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians - I'll work with Martians if - and the if is critical - they're willing to cut spending and reduce the debt.

Some libertarians succeed by re-inventing the wheel. Most libertarians fail by re-inventing the flat tire.

The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong.

Many people, improperly, lump together libertarians and the Tea Parties. That's really wrong. Many of the libertarians are physicists, and many of the Tea Party people don't bathe. There's really not much in common there!

Libertarians believe consenting adults have the right to do whatever they choose, except band together.

The best thing you can say about libertarians is that because their views derive from abstract theory, they tend to be highly principled and rigorous in their logic.

The Tea Party emerged from a laudably grassroots base: libertarians, fervent Constitutionalists, and ordinary people alarmed at the suppression of liberties, whether by George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises.

Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.

Libertarians recognize the inevitable pluralism of the modern world and for that reason assert that individual liberty is at least part of the common good.

I'm not sitting in judgment on whether or not libertarians can participate in a political process whose very nature they oppose.

I don't speak for all Libertarians any more than Sean Penn speaks for all Democrats.

Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can't have perfection in a world of limited resources.

The Libertarians, of whom I'm rather fond, are running Harry Browne. Libertarians are, just as they claim, principled and consistent - they believe in individual liberty. Commendable as they are, and despite their reliability as allies in civil liberties struggles, you may notice that Libertarians sometimes prove that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and that there is a difference between logic and wisdom.

Libertarians are liberals who like markets.

The minimum that most minimalists want leaves in place just the institutions who protect their interests. That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Libertarians are incapable of being a racist, because racism is a collectivist idea.

Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats.