James Surowiecki Quotes

Since no one but you can know what's best for you, government control can't make your life better.

I am for the people of the whole nation doing just as they please in all matters which concern the whole nation; for that of each part doing just as they choose in all matters which concern no other part; and for each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.

It is a dangerous notion that we need a government to protect us from ourselves.

We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts.... Self-government means self-reliance.

My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility

I believe in the America people's ability to govern themselves. If government would just get out of the way and allow them to lead their lives as they choose, they will succeed.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?

If people don't want to go to the picture, nobody can stop them.

I would much rather see responsibilities exercised by individuals than have them imposed by the government.

Whatever I do, it's my business. It's not my job to parent America.

I feel that the majority of people should decide for themselves what kind of government they want.

Liberty is that principle of spontaneity, or self-determination, which constitutes us as agents, or which gives us a command over our actions, rendering them properly ours, and not effects of the operation of any foreign cause

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm—as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.

That government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap.

our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas.

Either you can do what others want, or you can do what you want to do. That's an easy call.

We need to allow people to bypass government... to look to themselves for solving problems rather than asking the government to do things for them.

I am hostile to the idea that collective solutions have to be made by committees and then imposed top-down. I very much prefer bottom-up solutions.

Solutions and ideas should come from the bottom up, generated by local communities and not mandated from Washington.

We can't stop anybody from doing what they want to do.

Good government is no substitute for self-government.

People have to make their own decisions about their lives.

I am for . . . each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.