Jonah Goldberg 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.'

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear.

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor ... Each of the things is, by the respective party, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

I am not about to be a party to anything having to do with the law that is going to destroy individual freedom and liberty in this country.

If you aren't free to protect yourself when the government puts its thumb on that freedom, then you're not free at all.

Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist.

Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway?... If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible.

Reduced to its lowest terms, the great struggle which now rocks the whole earth more and more takes on the character of a struggle of the individual versus the state.

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

If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.

I don't want to live in a nanny state where people are telling me where I can go and what I can do.

We don't want a busybody government - a boss - that butts into our lives every chance it gets to tell us how to work, how to play, where to live and on and on.

All initiation of force is a violation of someone else's rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it's supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals.

The passion and will for freedom is always contradicted by the necessity of the state.

This is the first time that the Federal Government has told a free people what kind of government they must have. If they can do that, they can tell you what time to go to bed, what time to get up, and whether to have pork and beans for lunch.

In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.

I hate big government; I hate being told what to do on a personal basis.

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.

When an American government takes on characteristics that elevate the state above the individual, it must be vigorously opposed as a form of, or step toward, tyranny.

'Socialize' means we turn more of our personal powers over to Big Brother, not free enterprise.

I believe in small governments or no governments. I think the majority of people want to have big government, a big brother taking care of them.

Anyone who wants to see a very free world does not want government. I also don't like being extorted or being aggressed against by others.

We are free today because we are the stronger; we will be slaves again when the government becomes the stronger.

To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.

You have to ask yourself, 'Who owns me? Do I own myself or am I just another piece of government property?'