Charles Bukowski Quotes

I'm a complete libertarian. I think it's very, very dangerous. I really mean that. I think the smoking ban is a tip of an iceberg of society - the leaders of society telling us how to be. I think it's not their business. It's an attitude where the governors think, 'We know what's best for people, and they're so stupid that they would only not do it if we ban it.'

The major basis for my opposition to marijuana prohibition has not been how badly it's worked, the fact that it's produced much more harm than good - it has been primarily a moral reason: I don't think the state has any more right to tell me what to put into my mouth than it has to tell me what can come out of my mouth.

If you support the war on drugs in its present form, then you're only paying lip-service to the defense of freedom, and you don't really grasp the concept of the sovereign individual human being.

I don't know if people really want to know how I feel about drugs. I'm not such a stickler. I believe you can choose to live your life any way you want.

The Libertarian Party holds that same-sex marriages are an individual issue and that the government has no right to determine with whom a person should have a relationship.

The sanctity of a woman's right to control her own destiny is a moral force of its own... I came to realize that the question of choice is to be answered, not by the state, but by the individual.

The whole American experiment has been predicated on giving individuals as much control over their own lives as possible.

Our view is that individuals and families can govern their lives better than bureaucrats.

I believe in letting a guy live the way he wants to if he doesn't hurt anyone.

Our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee to all our people the greatest freedom ever enjoyed by the public of any great nation. This system guarantees freedom of individual enterprise, freedom to own property, freedom to start one's own business and to operate it according to one's own judgment so long as the enterprise is honorable. The individual has power to produce beyond his needs, to provide savings for the future protection of himself and family. He can live where he wishes and pick any job he wants and select any educational opportunity

What makes America unique in the world is the idea of the self-directed life.

… it [liberty] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home, bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience and generally, to enjoy those privileges long recognized in common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

I believe everybody got the right to live their own life the way they want to.

It is essential that the young people of this country learn to respect the right of every man and woman to seek his or her happiness with minimal interference from the government.

Consistent conservatives should frame their views in accordance with the fundamental belief that individuals, not governments, have the right to determine the course of their own lives.

The demand for individual freedom leads us to different realms, and it enables us to participate in social events.

As soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individuals mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest details.

I'm as against restricting access to drugs as I am to burning books. It offends me in the same way.

Our lives are bound by physical limits, familial ties, political conditions, and geographical restrictions. Individual freedom takes us beyond them all.

What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.

The FDA calls certain substances "controlled." But there are no "controlled substances," there are only controlled citizens.

Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him.

The right to take a chance, the right to suffer. The right to be unwise, the right to die. These aims are hateful to the government, which values ever frightened mouse and falling sparrow as equal to a tiger burning bright.

No community dictates to any individual how to live their lives. You can criticize and you can push but people freely choose.

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