The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion. It is not the struggle of the many against the few but of minorities – sometimes of a minority of but one man – against the majority. – Ludwig Von Mises
I see history as centrally a race and conflict between “social power” – the productive consequence of voluntary interactions among men – and state power. In those eras of history when liberty – social power – has managed to race ahead of state power and control, the country and even mankind have flourished. In those eras when state power has managed to catch up with or surpass social power, mankind suffers and declines. – Murray N. Rothbard
The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations. – Eric Hoffer
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. – Thomas Jefferson
Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time, are either psychopaths or mountebanks. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. No constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. – Judge Learned Hand of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York’s Central Park on May 21, 1944
People unfit for freedom – who cannot do much with it – are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a “have” type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a “have not” type of self. – Eric Hoffer
American public education is a remarkable enterprise; it succeeds best where it fails. Imagine an industry that consistently fails to do what it sets out to do. A factory where this year’s product is invariably sleazier than last year’s but, nevertheless, better than next year’s. Imagine a corporation whose executives are always spending vast sums of money on studies designed to discover just what it is they are supposed to do and then vaster sums for further studies on just how to do it. Imagine a plant devoted to the manufacture of factory seconds to be sold at a loss. Imagine a producer of vacuum cleaners that rarely work hiring whole platoons of engineers who will, in time, report that it is, in fact, true that the vacuum cleaners rarely really work, and who will, for a larger fee, be glad to find out why, if that’s possible. If you discover some such outfit, don’t invest in it. Unfortunately, we are all required to invest in public education. – Richard Mitchell