Freedom Thinkers

Roy A. Childs

Libertarians themselves should take heart. Our hope lies, as strange as it may seem, not with any remnants from an illusory golden age of individualism, which never existed, but with tomorrow. Our day has not come and gone. It has never existed at all. It is our task to see that it will exist in the future. The choice ...

Frank Chodorov

If we assume that the individual has an indisputable right to life, we must concede that he has a similar right to the enjoyment of the products of his labor. This we call a property right. The absolute right to property follows from the original right to life because one without the other is meaningless; the means to life ...

Richard Cobden

The people of the two nations must be brought into mutual dependence by the supply of each other's wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism of language and race. It is God's own method of producing an entente cordiale, and no other plan is worth a farthing. -- Richard Cobden, Letter to M. ...

Benjamin Constant

First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a French-man, and a citizen of the United States of America understand today by the word 'liberty'. For each of them it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one ...

Jefferson Davis

We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honour and independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that ...

Frederick Douglass

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder ...

Adam Ferguson

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design. -- Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society Adam Ferguson, 1723-1815 History ...

Frank A. Fetter

The main advantage of foreign trade is the same as that of any other exchange. It is hardly necessary to review the explanation here: the increased efficiency of labor when it is applied in the way for which each country is best fitted; the liberation of productive forces for the best uses: the development of special branches of industry ...

Stephen J. Field

The power to commit violence, perpetrate injustice, take private property by force without compensation to the owner, and compel the receipt of promises to pay in place of money, may be exercised, as it often has been, by irresponsible authority, but it cannot be considered as belonging to a government founded upon law.... From the decision of the Court ...

John T. Flynn

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine, and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoidal peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal mines. -- John T. Flynn, As ...

Milton Friedman

Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant relatively little to the wealthy. The rich in Ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing: running servants replaced running water. Television and radio? The Patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the ...

Garet Garrett

We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night: the precise moment does not matter. There was no painted sign to say: 'You are now entering Imperium.' Yet it was a very old road and the voice of history ...

Henry George

If to prevent trade were to stimulate industry and promote prosperity, then the localities where he was most isolated would show the first advances of man. The natural protection to home industry afforded by rugged mountains-chains, by burning deserts, or by seas too wide and tempestuous for the frail bark of the early mariner would have given us the ...

William Ewart Gladstone

National injustice is the surest road to national downfall. -- William Ewart Gladstone, Speech at Plumstead William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) Acton Institute William Gladstone Short Biography Spartacus.net Historic Figures: William Ewart Gladstone BBC William Ewart Gladstones Great Campaigns for Peace and Freedom by Jim Powell Foundation for Economic Education William Ewart Gladstone by James Bryce BlackMask.com

Bettina Bien Greaves

Where there is life there is hope. And the liberal free traders live, are speaking up, using every opportunity to point out, as Mises did in his many works, that the conflict philosophy is a revolt against rationalism, economics, and utilitarian social philosophy and at the same time a revolt against freedom, democracy, and representative government. War is futile. It ...

Hugo Grotius

I saw in the whole Christian world a license of fighting at which even barbarous nations might blush. Wars were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all, and carried on without any reference of law, Divine or human. -- Hugo Grotius, Prolegomena to the Law of War and Peace Hugo Grotius 1583-1645 Oregon State University Hugo Grotius, ...

Percy L. Greaves

here is no longer a free market in jobs and wage rates. There are now laws on the statute books that grant certain groups of workers the privilege of demanding and getting higher wages than they could and would earn in a free market. The unemployed are no longer permitted to compete and thus reduce the higher than free ...

Gottfried Haberler

The length and severity of depressions depend partly on the magnitude of the 'real' maladjustments, which developed during the preceding boom and partly on the aggravating monetary and credit conditions. -- Gottfried Haberler, Prosperity and Depression Biography of Gottfried Haberler (1901-1995) by Jospeh T. Salerno Ludwig von Mises Institute Biography of Gottfried Haberler by Jospeh T. Salerno History of Economic Thought

John Hancock

The British ministry can read that name without spectacles; let them double their reward. -- John Hancock, on signing The Declaration of Independence John Hancock (1737-1793) USHistory.org John Hancock (1737-1793) ColonialHall.com John Hancock: 1776 President of the Continental Congress JohnHancock.org John Hancock Wikipedia.org

F.A. Harper

It seems that wherever the Welfare State is involved, the moral precept, "Thou shalt not steal," becomes altered to say: "Thou shalt not steal, except for what thou deemest to be a worthy cause, where thou thinkest that thou canst use the loot for a better purpose than wouldst the victim of the theft." -- F.A. Harper The Writings ...