Libertarians Quotes

We get divided generationally and in other ways – libertarians versus more traditional social conservatives, for example – and we’ve got to provide some flexibility there. But we don’t need to have quite so many litmus tests. We need to have our big picture focused on economic issues.

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

It’s the libertarians who want to reclaim decision-making for themselves. It’s the small government folks who see government as a great Leviathan gobbling up more and more of their treasure and freedoms.

We did not become libertarians because we are altruists.

Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.

While freedom-loving people like libertarians and conservatives wish to provide the illumination of facts and the focus of reason for young people so that they might see and think clearly, those who call themselves progressives favor the classic totalitarian tactic of indoctrination.

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.

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.

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.

Obama is trying to paint us as a caricature, as if we’re some bizarre individualists who are hardcore libertarians. It’s a false dichotomy and intellectually lazy. Of course we believe in government. We think government should do what it does really well, but that it has limits.

Libertarians recognize the difference between adults and children, as well as differences between normal adults and adults who are insane or mentally hindered or retarded.

Libertarians are constantly arguing with each other who is the most pure libertarian and who is most ideologically pure.

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

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.

I don’t think there is a libertarian position on abortion. Maybe if you took a poll of libertarians, it might be that a majority would be pro-choice, but, the libertarian position is to protect the rights of individuals against the use of force and fraud.

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.

What I want is a sort of new political realignment on libertarian/authoritarian lines, and I want a new consensus to emerge of disaffected liberals, classical liberals, dissident minorities like gays, small-state conservatives, libertarians, people who basically want to be left alone.

One of the frequent blind spots for economic libertarians, speaking as one who has personally dealt with this log in the eye, is a tendency to allow principles of how economies work and the beauty of trade to make us ignore perceived threats animating people who value more than just the power to buy and sell.

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

As a political party, the Libertarians have always been more party than political.

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.

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

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

Libertarians regard the state as the Supreme, the eternal, the best organized aggressor against the persons and property of the mass of the public. All states everywhere, whether democratic, dictatorial, or monarchical, whether red, white, blue or brown.

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 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!

I’m as radical as libertarians come.

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.

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.

Well, mutual aid is a very critical and important thing. For a while, I was saying libertarians have no souls, but I promised them I wouldn’t if they hammered home the importance of mutual aid.

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 agree that the two-party system stomps on any kind of competition. A great first step is to open the presidential debates to all qualified candidates, including the Libertarians. If that happens, the Libertarian party will experience unprecedented growth.

Libertarians are essentially what the Republicans were 30 years ago. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. They’d all fit more under the Libertarian label than the modern day Republican label.

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.

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.