Jim Rongstad's Homepage.
It's All About Freedom!
Quotes on Freedom (N thru S)
Listed below are quotes regarding various aspects of freedom, excluding education. The quotes are in alphabetical order by person/organization. This page contains quotes for persons/organizations N thru S. Click on the links below for other sections of quotes:
A thru F G thru M T thru Z Go to my page of Education Quotes.
Eventually (don't hold your breath!) I also intend to put these quotes into categories, such as liberty in general, gun control, freedom of the press, etc.
You can always reach this site by using the URL: www.rongstad.com
N - S
"We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand. . .the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education ... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents ... The government must undertake the improvement of public health - by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor ... by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth. We combat the ... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of the common good before the individual good."
- - Nazi Party political program, adopted in Munich, February 24, 1920
"I eagerly await the day when taxpayers can keep all the money they earn, and pro sports teams have to hold bake sales in order to finance stadium construction."
--Doug Newman, The Fountain of Truth.
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew...Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up then because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up."
--Reverend Martin Niemoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the Gestapo in 1937.
Albert J. Nock: Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945 ) was an Episcopalian priest. At the age of forty Nock became a writer and editor, founding the publication The Freeman(1920-24). His books include Jefferson (1926), The Theory of Education in the United States (1932), Our Enemy, the State(1935) and The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man(1943). He also wrote the essay On Doing the Right Thing.
"There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means."
-- Albert Jay Nock
"Man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion."
-- Albert Jay Nock
"When politicians say 'I'm in politics,' it may or may not be possible to
trust them, but when they say, 'I'm in public service,' you know you
should flee."
-- Peggy Noonan, author and speechwriter for Ronald Reagan.
"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities."
-Robert Nozick
P.J. O'Rourke: Patrick Jake O'Rourke (1947- ) is an American humorist. He has written for National Lampoon, Rolling Stone, and The American Spectator. His books include The Bachelor Home Companion, Holidays in Hell, Parliment of Whores (1991), and Give War A Chance (1992).
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."
-- P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
-- P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs
is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself."
-- P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"We're told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We're told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it's hard to reach the drive through window at McDonald's from a speeding train. And we're told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine?
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"This country was founded by religious nuts with guns."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"To the extent that a society limits its government to policing functions which curb the individuals who engage in aggressive and criminal actions, and conducts its economic affairs on the basis of free and willing exchange, to that extent domestic peace prevails. When a society departs from this norm, its governing class begins, in effect, to make war upon the rest of the nation. A situation is created in which everyone is victimized by everyone else under the fiction of each living at the expense of all."
-- Edmund A. Opitz
"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights."
-- Edmund A. Opitz
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell, Author
Thomas Paine: Thomas Paine (1737-1809), American political writer and pamphleteer. His most famous work is the 50 page pamphlet Common Sense which Paine published anonymously on January 10, 1776. The pamphlet sold more than 500,000 copies. Paine stated in Common Sense that Great Britain was exploiting
the American colonies and the colonies received nothing from Great Britain. Paine said common sense called for the colonies to become independent and establish a republican government of their own.
"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; moderation in principle is always a vice."
-- Thomas Paine - "Rights of Men" (1791)
"When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny."
-- Thomas Paine
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men,undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-- Thomas Paine
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. Yet we have this consolation with us: the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. It would be
strange indeed if so celebrated an article as freedom should not be highly rated."
-- Thomas Paine
"Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them."
-- Thomas Paine (1776)
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one."
-- Thomas Paine
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression."
-- Thomas Paine (1795)
Ron Paul: Ron Paul (1935), American political leader and physcian. Considered the leading spokesman in congress for liberty, sound money, free market economics and constitutional government, Dr. Ron Paul of Surfside represents the 14th District of Texas in the United States House of Representatives.
Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Duke University School of Medicine. First elected to Congress in 1976, Paul stepped down from his politically safe seat in 1984 to return to his medical practice. Paul was the Libertarian Party nominee for President in 1988.
Paul was re-elected to Congress by the people of the 14th Congressional District of Texas in 1996 and 1998. He has earned the nickname "Dr. No" because of his frequent lone votes against some unconstitutional measure in congress.
Included among his numerous awards are:
"Taxpayers' Best Friend" Award, National Taxpayers Union
"Taxpayers' Hero" Award, Citizens Against Government Waste
Photo of Ron Paul is used with the permission of the The Liberty Committee
"When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads."
--Ron Paul, M.D., Republican congressman from Texas and Libertarian Party candidate for President in 1988.
"In a town where 'principles' are no more than bargaining chips to raise
the price at which the inevitable sellout takes place, it is tough to
hold 'unpopular' positions."
--Ron Paul, M.D., Republican congressman from Texas and Libertarian Party candidate for President in 1988.
"Let the people think they govern and they will be governed."
-- William Penn (1693)
"It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself."
-- Justice Casey Percell
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
-- Pericles (430 BC)
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
- William Pitt
"As you increase the cost of the license to practice medicine, you increase the price at which the medical service must be sold and you correspondingly decrease the number of people who can afford to buy the service."
-William Pusey, former president of the American Medical Association
Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand (1905-1982), was an American philosopher and author born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Rand was an unwavering defender of individual liberty, personal responsibility and free markets. Her works include: We the Living (1936), Anthem (1938), The Fountainhead (1943), and the most popular and well known Atlas Shrugged (1957).
"The government was set to protect man from criminals and the Constitution was written to protect man from government."
-- Ayn Rand
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
-- Ayn Rand
"A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort....is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence."
-- Ayn Rand
"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals - that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government - that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government."
-- Ayn Rand
"Lean liberty is better than fat slavery."
-- John Ray (1670)
Ronald Reagan: Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911- ), 40th president of the United States and a former governor of California. Reagan was dubbed "The Great Communicator" for his ability to communicate his belief in limited government, economic freedom and personal responsibility.
"No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."
-- Ronald Reagan, President of The United States, First Inaugural Address, January 20,1981.
"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."
-- Ronald Reagan
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
-- Ronald Reagan, President of The United States
"The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other."
-- Ronald Reagan, President of The United States
"Man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."
-- Ronald Reagan, President of The United States, farewell address, Jan. 11, 1989
"Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government, has a monopoly on truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put here for a reason and has something to offer"
-- Ronald Reagan, President of The United States, quoted in Imprimus, August 2001
"If socialism ever earns a final epitaph, it will be this: 'Here lies a contrivance engineered by know-it-alls and busybodies who broke eggs with abandon but never, ever created an omelet.'"
-- Lawrence W. Reed, economist, in The Freeman
"Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly 'reforming' their own
handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact that they're always busy 'reforming' is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times."
-- Lawrence W. Reed, economist, in The Freeman
"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation."
-- Thomas B. Reed (1886)
"What I reject in socialism is a philosophy which … places too little emphasis on man, his nature, and his personality and … makes light of the danger that all this may lead to the sacrifice of freedom in the plain and tragic sense exemplified by the totalitarian state. My picture of man is
fashioned by the spiritual heritage of classical and Christian tradition. I see in man the likeness of God; I am profoundly convinced that it is an appalling sin to reduce man to a means … and that each man’s soul is something unique; irreplaceable, priceless, in comparison with which all other things are as naught."
--Wilhelm Roepke
"The moment a politician decides that it is more important to be re-elected than to stand his ground, he becomes weak and ineffective. The willingness to lose elections is a necessary prerequisite of statesmanship. That I believe, is one of the enduring lessons of the Clinton impeachment trials."
--James E Rogan. From Imprimus June 2001. Rogan was one of the House Managers of the Clinton Impeachment.
"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."
-- Will Rogers
“I am convinced that we can do to guns what we’ve done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control.”
-George L. Roman
"Those (who) seek to establish systems of Government based on the regimentation of all Human Beings by a handful of individual rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order."
--Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of The United States
"No one knows what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against grassroots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure of firearms within it."
-- John Salter, Tougaloo College professor and 1960's Civil Rights protestor
"Politics and bureaucracy are arenas of personal power that are nearly
irresistible to mediocre persons. Mediocrities in power regard the world as unsafe as long as persons of originality and creativity are allowed freedom."
-- Otto Scott, Historian.
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the
point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you."
-- William E. Simon
"...free-market principles are not ends in themselves. As believers, we embrace these ideas because we realize, through reason and historical example, that the market provids the means by which humans exercise their God-given creativity - for the good of themselves and their neighbor."
-- Reverend Robert A. Sirico, Acton Notes (September 2001).
Mark Skousen: Mark Skousen is a college professor, prolific author and world-renowned speaker. He frequently speaks and writes articles for organizations such as the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, the Libertarian Party, the Council for National Policy and the Mt. Pelerin Society. Mark Skousen is a descendent of Benjamin Franklin.
"The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society."
-- Mark Skousen
Adam Smith: Adam Smith (1723-1790), Scottish economist and philosopher. Most famous for his principle of "The Invisible Hand", whereby each individual seeking economically what is best for themselves, results in what is best for all, as if led by an invisible hand. Smith wrote Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith established theories of money, prices, wages and division of labor.
"There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people."
-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
"The threat posed by humans to the natural environment is nothing compared to the threat to humans posed by global environmental policy."
-- Fred L. Smith (1992)
Joseph Sobran: Joseph Sobran (1946- ) an American writer and editor. Formerly senior editor at National Review.
"Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your government is doing to you."
-- Joseph Sobran
"The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire."
-- Joseph Sobran
"War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary
results."
-- Joseph Sobran (1991)
"War is just one more big government program."
-- Joseph Sobran
"If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If
you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want
government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist."
-- Joseph Sobran (1995)
"It would be a healthy exercise for every politician to look in the mirror every morning and remind himself that he holds office only because, in a two-man race against another mediocrity, a modest majority of those half-informed people who imagined that their votes mattered reckoned that he was the lesser evil. And they weren't too sure about that."
- Joseph Sobran
"If somebody kills somebody, it's a crime, but if somebody kills somebody of a different race, it's a hate crime. And we think that that is a savage hypocrisy, because all crimes are hate crimes. If a man beats another man because that man was sleeping with his wife, is that not a hate crime? If a person vandalizes a government building, is it not because of his hate for the government? The motivation for a crime shouldn't affect the sentencing. It is time to stop splitting people into groups. All hate crime laws do is support the idea that blacks are different from whites, that homosexuals are different, that we aren't the same. But instead we should all be treated the same, with the same laws and the same punishments for the same crimes."
-- South Park kids, from the cartoon.
Thomas Sowell: Thomas Sowell (1930- ) an American writer, scholar and economist. Sowell is a well known columnist. His books include: Ethnic America (1981), Civil Rights (1984), A Conflict of Visions (1987), Vision of the Annoited and The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999). Sowell is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute.
"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves."
-- Thomas Sowell (1992)
"Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what has worked with what sounded good. In area after area- crime, education, housing, race relations- the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."
-- Thomas Sowell
"Liberals love to say things like, 'We're just asking everyone to pay their fair share.' But government is not about asking. It is about telling. The difference is fundamental. It is the difference between making love and being raped, between working for a living and being a slave. The Internal Revenue service is not asking anybody to do anything. It confiscates your assets and puts you behind bars if you don't pay."
-- Thomas Sowell, Forbes, July 1994
"Under any form of economic or political system, those at the top tend to become complacent, if not arrogant. The big advantage of a free market is that you don't have to convince anybody of anything. You simply compete with them in the marketplace and let that be the test of what works best."
-- Thomas Sowell, from his book "Basic Economics"
"Bad as drugs are - and many of them are deadly - it is not the drugs themselves but the illegality of drugs that is corrupting individuals and whole communities. It is Prohibition writ large."
- Thomas Sowell
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
-- Herbert Spencer (1891)
"The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind."
-- Herbert Spencer - "Social Statics" (1851)
"All socialism involves slavery"
-- Herbert Spencer - Principles of Ethics, (1892)
"He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them."
-- Spinoza
Lysander Spooner: Lysander Spooner (1808-1887), an American lawyer. Spooner an ardent individualist and abolitionist. Spooner condemned slavery in his book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845).
"Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
Crimes are those acts by which one harms the person or property of another."
-Lysander Spooner
"Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenseless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how , and how far, he can, or will perform them."
-Lysander Spooner
"The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit ... Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. . . He does not keep 'protecting' you by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that."
-Lysander Spooner
"All governments, the worst on earth and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them."
-- Lysander Spooner - "Trial by Jury"
"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time."
-- Justice George Sutherland (1938)
Click on the links below for other sections of quotes:
A thru F G thru M T thru Z Go to my page of Education Quotes.
Return to Site Index
Search this web site.
Legal Notice
E-mail:
jimrongstad@rongstad.org
Page Updated: December 27, 2006
© Copyright 1999 -2007 by Jim Rongstad.