David Graeber Quotes

Today, I see that many of our citizens are not free. They are dependent.

Every time you pass a law, it is a little bite out of freedom.

The bigger the State, the smaller the citizen

The state is made for man, not man for the state.... That is to say, the state should be our servant and not we its slaves

Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?

Asking, ‘If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?’ is like asking, ‘If there is no master, whose slave will I be?’ If your purpose of life is to submit as a slave, then your meaning comes from flattering the ego of a person whom you should detest.

That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression.

When it comes to my rights as an American citizen, and yours, I am a triumphalist and an absolutist. Anything less is an insult.

Politics is the practical exercise of the art of self-government, and somebody must attend to it if we are to have self-government; somebody must study it, and learn the art, and exercise patience and sympathy and skill to bring the multitude of opinions and wishes of self-governing people into such order that some prevailing opinion may be expressed and peaceably accepted. Otherwise, confusion will result either in dictatorship or anarchy. The principal ground of reproach against any American citizen should be that he is not a politician. Everyone ought to be, as Lincoln was.

The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state.

Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. . . . There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.

Many people would say that A Tibetan monk, even in Lhasa, may be free while the ruler of China may not be free.

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that.

Big government makes small citizens.

One day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.

So we must lay it down that the association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions. Those who contribute most to this kind of association are for that very reason entitled to a larger share in the state than those who, though they may be equal or even superior in free birth and in family, are inferior in the virtue that belongs to a citizen. Similarly they are entitled to a larger share than those who are superior in riches but inferior in virtue.

The United States is my subject, but as Hawthorne once wrote, "the United States are suited for many admirable purposes, but not to live in."

Every person's life is theirs by right. An individual's life can and must belong only to to himself, not to any society or community, or he is then but a slave.

Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality.

The property a man has in his own industry, is violated, whenever he is forbidden the free exercise of his faculties or talents, except insomuch as they would interfere with the rights of third parties.

I think Americans have become a - much more a nation of consumers than citizens.

The more freedoms Americans lose, the more dangerous government becomes.