Esther Dyson Quotes

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

I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.

In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.

I think that the best that government can do for you and I as individuals is to empower you and I to make decisions that only you and I should make.

Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.

Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

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

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

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.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

All I'm for is the liberty of the individual.

America is the most individualist, libertarian culture in the world.

Why can't you and I let the world run itself its own way?

What government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Liberty is a right which every individual must be ready to vindicate for himself, and which he who pretends to bestow as a favor, has by that very act in reality denied. Even political establishments, though they appear to be independent of the will and arbitration of men, cannot be relied on for the preservation of freedom; they may nourish, but should not supersede that firm and resolute spirit, with which the liberal mind is always prepared to resist indignities, and to refer its safety to itself.

It's a free country. I know we have a lot of regulations in the world right now in what we can and can't do. I would rather our people be responsible and not have to be regulated.

It really is this: you are either for liberty, you're for freedom, and you're for living how you want to live without infringing and impugning on anyone else's rights, or you want the state to deal with everything.

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

The only thing I believe is individual responsibility doesn't mean the government is the answer to ever fear and every problem every individual has. We are the masters of our own destiny.

Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.

The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.

You have to make your own decisions. That's what the freedom in America is all about.

Ultimately, I'm about liberty and I think you have to defend it.

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.