William T. Vollmann Quotes

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.

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

The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitution's protection of privacy.

People should be allowed to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home or their own hotel room.

I do believe people ought to be left alone. I don't care who you are or what you do at home or who your friends are or where you hang out, what kind of music you listen to, what you do in your home is your own business. That's always been who I am. I am a leave me alone kind of guy.

The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.

I am for a clear distinction between public and private life. I believe private matters should be regulated in private and I have asked those close to me to respect this.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

I struggle with deciding when to answer or ignore the constant speculation about my private life, because I feel like that doesn't belong to anybody but me.

I'm a very private person. I like staying home and doing my stuff. I hate people invading on my privacy. I hate talking about my private life.

When we want to have our own style of living, it is nobody's business but ours. What we do in private is our private business.

The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.

Do whatever you want to do in the privacy of your own home.

I don't see why it gives people the right to know about my private life if I don't want to talk about it.

We can restore liberty by taking government out of our bedrooms, our bloodstreams, our bladders, our brains, our businesses and our back-pockets.

If there is one belief that unifies most Alaskans - our true north - it is less government and more freedom. We don't want the government in our pockets or our bedrooms; we certainly don't need it in our families.

I can't imagine anything worse than being in a position that you're not allowed to live your life privately.

Government should stay the hell out of people's business.

The makers of our Constitution . . . conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

Privacy IS freedom. Leave us alone!

For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?

Judaism is much more communal, and partly as a consequence of my religious switch, I am increasingly more suspicous of my previous view that what people do in the privacy of their own home is their business alone.

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 don't see myself as a hero because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.