Paul Samuelson Quotes

Even as I pursued a doctorate in the history of ideas in my native Denmark, I realized I had neither the encyclopedic training nor the passion for cool logic - not to mention the nerve - to follow in the footsteps of classical liberal philosophers and economists such as Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman.

Remember, Alan Greenspan was a member of Ayn Rand's collective. To understand this is to understand why we are doomed with the Federal Reserve.

There's an oft-used shorthand for the technologist's view of the world. It is assumed that libertarianism dominates Silicon Valley, and that isn't wholly wrong. High-profile devotees of Ayn Rand can be found there.

To describe Peter Thiel as simply a libertarian wildly understates the case. His belief system is based on unapologetic selfishness and economic Darwinism.

David and Charles Koch are pretty much as far right as you can get on the ideological spectrum without falling off. They are far right libertarians, very anti-government, very pro-business, very anti-tax, anti-regulatory, in favour of free markets ruling the day.

I give out Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it.

I'd describe myself as a sexual libertarian - but I'm not a libertine. "To each his own" is my motto.

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom...

The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression.

.. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.

As for my personal politics, some people seem to think I'm some kind of archlibertarian, a hyper-conservative.

I believe in a libertarian communist society.

Ayn Rand more than anyone else did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism.

The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.

It's quite amazingly radical, what their [the Kochs] vision of America would be.

Fascism isn't a libertarian doctrine! It just isn't, never will be and it can't be cast as one.

Can someone explain the vitriol whenever Ayn Rand comes up? 'Atlas' is the greatest motivator for the individual that I can imagine.

I would like to be interpreted as a liberal libertarian, like leave everybody alone and let them do their own thing.

When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.

By going on the defensive. [...] libertarians are, inadvertently, conceding that speech should be policed for propriety, and that those who violate standards set by the PC set are somehow defective on those grounds alone and deserve to be purged from "polite" company.

Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.

At first the relevance of chattel slavery to libertarian ideals was noted only in individual passages of isolated pamphlets.

I never thought I was a libertarian until I picked up Reason magazine and realized I agree with everything they had printed.

Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.

My wife and I are both Libertarian; she was a Democrat and I was a Republican, and we both met in the middle somewhere.