For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded - and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals - if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.

Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression “individual rights” is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression “collective rights” is a contradiction in terms.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
(errant consilia nostra, quia non habent quo derigantur; ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est)

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.

It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.

When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is 'control'.

What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people - like themselves - need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.
(Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.)

No, I'm not a feminist... I think they've become too strident. I think they have done great damage to the cause of women by making us out to be something we are not. Each person is different. Each has their own talents and abilities, and these are the things you want to draw and bring out. You don't say: “I must get on because I'm a woman," or that "I must get on because I'm a man.” You should say that you should get on because you have the combination of talents which are right for the job. The moment you exaggerate the question, you defeat your case.

The Fascism of tomorrow will never say 'I am Fascism.'
It will say: 'I am anti-Fascism.'