Herbert Spencer Quotes

Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.

I really didn't know much about the Libertarians. I knew they were for less government and more individual freedom. I liked that.

Republics are not in and of themselves better than other forms of government except in so far as they carry with them and guarantee to the citizen that liberty of thought and action for which they were established.

Every citizen has, under the law, a sacred and inviolable right to personal liberty and to the possession of his goods

I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, …. No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race

When each citizen submits himself to the authority of law he does not thereby decrease his independence or freedom, but rather increases it. By recognizing that he is a part of a larger body which is banded together for a common purpose, he becomes more than an individual, he rises to a new dignity of citizenship. Instead of finding himself restricted and confined by rendering obedience to public law, he finds himself protected and defended and in the exercise of increased and increasing rights.

The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible..

Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties.

The right of private judgment is absolute in every American citizen.

Your constitution guarantees to every citizen, even the humblest, the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. It promises to all, religious freedom, the right to all to worship God beneath their own vine and fig tree, according to the dictates of their conscience. It guarantees to all the citizens of the several states the right to become citizens of any one of the states, and to enjoy all the rights and immunities of the citizens of the state of his adoption.

In a government bottomed on the will of all, the... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

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

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

The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.

Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others.

At this time is freedom anything but the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.

A man is free in proportion to the measure of his virtues, and the extent to which he is free determines what his virtues can accomplish.

Liberty is too priceless to be forfeited through the zeal of an administrative agent.

I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis of personal liberty.

The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.

They say the state should not impose on its citizens a preferred way of life, but should leave them as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.

The ultimate test of a society's freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens; it's how it treats its dissidents.

There is only one basic human right: the right to do as you please, without causing others harm. With it comes our only basic human duty: the duty to accept the consequences of our actions.