Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye…Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties — John Milton in his great 1644 essay against censorship, Areopagitica.

“Increasingly, inexorably, the State the Socialists have created is becoming more random in the economic and social justice it seeks to dispense, more suffocating in its effect on human aspirations and initiative, more politically selective in its defense of the rights of its citizens, more gargantuan in its appetite—and more disastrously incompetent in its performance. Above all, it poses a growing threat, however unintentional, to the freedom of this country, for there is no freedom where the State totally controls the economy. Personal freedom and economic freedom are indivisible. You can't have one without the other. You can't lose one without losing the other” — Margaret Thatcher in her March 20, 1976 speech, The Historic Choice.

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy" -- Winston Churchill, 1948.

“The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but—what is worse—the slave of as many masters as he has vices” — 5th Century theologian Augustine of Hippo. For more on him, see https://bit.ly/1Q8jfh3.

“One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license” — humorist P. J. O’Rourke in Rolling Stone, 30 November 1989.

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. But the basic reason for this ought not to be mysterious. The reason is that the demagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group. As far as they go they may often be right. In these cases the answer consists in showing that the proposed policy would also have longer and less desirable effects, or that it could benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The answer consists in supplementing and correcting the half-truth with the other half” — economist Henry Hazlitt, author of the classic, Economics in One Lesson, available at FEE.org.

“A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom…Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.”

“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die” — educator John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.

“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism” — Barry Goldwater in his speech accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness” — Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U.S. President, in the Declaration of Independence, of which he was the principal author, 1776.

“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me” — Harriet Tubman, the most renowned “conductor” of the Underground Railroad.

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide” — Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, We the Living, Anthem, etc.

“Taxes on the very necessaries of life enable an endless tribe of idle princes and princesses to pass with stupid pomp before a gaping crowd, who almost worship the very parade which costs them so dear” — feminist and political philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

“All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land” — William Kingdon Clifford, 19th-century English mathematician and philosopher.

“You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth” — Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.

“Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened. Commitment to great causes makes great men. I feel sorry for the man who has never known the bracing thrill of taking a stand and sticking to it fearlessly. Moral courage has rewards that timidity can never imagine. Like a shot of adrenaline, it floods the spirit with vitality” — evangelist Billy Graham.

“I think that when it comes to the training of human beings, you have to be a great deal more careful than you do in other spheres about preservation of the right of individual liberty and the principle of individual responsibility; and I think we ought to be plain about this — that unless we preserve the principles of liberty in this department there is no use in trying to preserve them anywhere else. If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else as well” — Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen, author of Christianity and Liberalism.

“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” — Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard, author of Man, Economy and State, For a New Liberty, etc.

“The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster” — Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who deserved a dozen Nobels but never got one.

“It's nice to elect the right people, but that isn't the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things” — Chicago School economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, author of Free to Choose and many other works.