Harry Browne Quotes

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.

The only things government can do are regulate and redistribute, prohibit and penalize, confiscate and command. Are these the things that liberty is made of? Somebody else's money and an endless list of Thou Shalt Nots?

But without a caring society, without each citizen voluntarily accepting the weight of responsibility, government is destined to grow even larger, taking more of your money, burrowing deeper into your lives.

These things I believe: that government should butt out.

The government has no business telling an individual what kind of light bulb to buy.

I'm a libertarian-conservative. I believe the state should focus on defending lives, rights, and property instead of depriving its citizens of their God-given liberties.

No American conservative has ever argued that the government should never be involved in peoples' lives. That is anarchy, and we don't argue for that.

The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

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

I do not expect any help for a libertarian revolution from any Government in the world…

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.

The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government 'security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time - the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff.

There is no question that if one were to ask whether we Americans are moving towards more liberty or more government control over our lives, the answer would unambiguously be the latter - more government control over our lives. We might have reached a point where the trend is irreversible and that is a true tragedy for if liberty is lost in America, it will be lost for all times and all places.

I don't want to have anything to do with the government. And yet if we don't have any regulations, there goes civilization, there goes security, and there goes protecting you against what people are going to sell you.

Smaller government, more individual responsibility, more individual control creates more Republicans. More state power and ownership and control and top-down decision-making creates more Democrats.

America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Someday I hope Americans will not believe that anyone had to spend his or her days fighting for limited government because everyone they know wants maximum freedom and minimum statism.

People should be free, people should be unencumbered by regulation as much as possible, that big government always goes corrupt and the truth shall always set you free.

I would much rather see responsibilities exercised by individuals than have them imposed by the government.

Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.

I was born a limited-government person. I've always had this streak going through me.

It's the libertarians who want to reclaim decision-making for themselves. It's the small government folks who see government as a great Leviathan gobbling up more and more of their treasure and freedoms.

Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.