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1. “Nothing ever comes to one that is worth having except as a result
of hard work.”
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–
Booker T. Washington
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| 2. “I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can
gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the
business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and
whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto
death.” |
–
Thomas Paine
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| 3. “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because
men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life,
liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws
in the first place.” |
–
Frédéric Bastiat
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| 4. “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which
requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are
other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of
esteem and confidence.” |
–
James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 55
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| 5. “When we see men of worth we should think of
equaling them. When we see men of contrary character we should turn
inward and examine ourselves.” |
–
Confucius
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| 6. “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s
opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great
man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness
the independence of solitude.” |
–
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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| 7. “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes
real happiness. It is not obtained through self-gratification but
through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” |
–
Helen Keller
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| 8. “The roots of true achievement lie in the will to
become the best that you can become.” |
–
Harold Taylor
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| 9. “What is to become of an independent statesman, one
who will bow the knee to no idol, who will worship nothing as a
divinity but truth, virtue, and his country? I will tell you; he will
be regarded more by posterity than those who worship hounds and horses;
and although he will not make his own fortune, he will make the fortune
of his country.” |
–
John Adams
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| 10. “It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence
in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our
rights; that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism; free
government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is
jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to
bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our
Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther,
our confidence may go.” |
–
Thomas Jefferson
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| 11. “In the end agreement that planning is necessary,
together with the inability of the democratic assembly to agree on a
particular plan, must strengthen the demand that the government, or
some single individual, should be given powers to act on their own
responsibility. It becomes more and more the accepted belief that, if
one wants to get things done, the responsible director of affairs must
be freed from the fetters of democratic procedure.” |
–
Friedrich A. Hayek, Freedom and the Economic System,
1938
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| 12. “We don’t have a First Amendment so that we can
talk about the weather. We have the First Amendment so that we can say
very controversial things.” |
–
Ron Paul
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| 13. “However [political parties] may now and then
answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things
to become potent engines by which, cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled
men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for
themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very
engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” |
–
George Washington, in his 1796 farewell address
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| 14. “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government
and
report the facts.”
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–
Will Rogers
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| 15. “It's pretty sad to think that many of today's
so-called Patriots
would have been considered yesteryear's Loyalists. There is a big
difference between loving liberty and seeking a just master.” |
–
John Monds, 2010 Libertarian candidate for Governor of Georgia
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| 16. “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter
one's thoughts
and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of
tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.” |
–
Frederick Douglass
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| 17. “I think what people often overlook about the way
the
regulatory state works is that it’s a way to implement public policy
without paying for it… You can get businesses to do the things that you
want them to do and it never actually shows up on the books. We spend
about $1.7 trillion a year in regulatory compliance costs for American
businesses. That’s more than businesses pay in corporate income taxes.
It’s more than all corporate profits in America put together. And, it’s
a really nice, kind of low-cost way to get your agenda put out with A)
not having to have a vote in Congress over it, B) never having to
answer to the voters for it, or C) ever having to put it on the books
and pay for it.” |
–
Kevin Williamson, deputy managing editor National Review
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| 18. “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences
attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree
of it.” |
–
Thomas Jefferson
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| 19. “The urge to save humanity is always a false front
for the urge to rule it.” |
–
H.L. Mencken
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| 20. “It is only when the people become ignorant and
corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable
of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment,
and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing
instruments of their own debasement and ruin.”
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–
James Monroe
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| 21. “The statesman who would attempt to direct private
people in
what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load
himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority
which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and
which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had
folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.” |
–
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations
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| 22. “Limiting ballot access is something that we would
expect from
Third World dictators and despots, not freely elected officials in the
State of Ohio.” |
–
Michael Johnston, Libertarian Party of Ohio Vice Chair
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| 23. “[T]hose within government, spending the money
stolen from us, share in no profit when they work efficiently, nor
suffer any losses for their bad decisions. Their self-interest is in
doing what's absolutely necessary for keeping their programs alive and,
hence, staying employed.”
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–
Chuck Dahmer
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| 24. “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s
opinions; it
is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who
in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence
of solitude.” |
–
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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| 25. “It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which
is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people
consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to
have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining
in this state of ignorance.” |
–
Murray N. Rothbard
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| 26. “This is the tendency of all human governments. A
departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second
for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere
automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and
suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt.
Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” |
–
Thomas Jefferson
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| 27. “An unjust law is itself a species of violence.
Arrest for its breach is more so.” |
–
Mohandas K. Gandhi
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| 28. “One can only hope, now that the Occupy protesters
have experienced the government’s police state first hand, they will be
a little more understanding of those of us who do not wish to unleash
it on the economy.” |
–
Becky Chandler
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| 29. “I want to put it out of my power, or that of my
successors, to do mischief.” |
–
William Penn
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| 30. “Even if it were desirable, America is not strong
enough to
police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the
blessings of liberty will be replaced by coercion and tyranny at home.
Our Christian ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and
guns. Persuasion and example are the methods taught by the Carpenter of
Nazareth, and if we believe in Christianity we should try to advance
our ideals by his methods. We cannot practice might and force abroad
and retain freedom at home. We cannot talk world cooperation and
practice power politics.” |
–
Howard Buffett
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| 31. “When the American government conscripts a boy to
go 10,000
miles to the jungles of Asia without a declaration of war by Congress
(as required by the Constitution) what freedom is safe at home? Surely,
profits of U.S. Steel or your private property are not more sacred than
a young man’s right to life.” |
–
Howard Buffett
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| 32. “The mania for giving the Government power to
meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to
cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that
are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger
that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which
is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness
of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when
hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born
and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity
from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek
future admission to paradise.” |
–
Samuel Clemens (a.k.a., Mark Twain)
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| 33. “Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs,
confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of
this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the
socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.” |
– Frédéric Bastiat
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