Herbert Spencer Quotes

If individuals are rational, there is no need to protect them against their own choices.

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.

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

But there is no obvious reason for holding that some normal adults are entitled to make choices for other normal adults, as paternalists of both left and right believe.

We believe in personal choice, rather than society dictating how we must live our lives.

The old theory was, that the least possible should be left to the choice of the individual agent; that all he had to do should, as far as practicable, be laid down for him by superior wisdom. Left to himself he was sure to go wrong.

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

Many Americans abhor paternalism. They think that people should be able to go their own way, even if they end up in a ditch. When they run risks, even foolish ones, it isn't anybody's business that they do.

The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.

My whole take on libertarianism is simply that I don't know what's best for other people.

We’re not so free that we don’t have to listen to rules, and laws, and regulations. Those are important. But the spirit, the freedom of the spirit, that’s what I think of American Dream, that we are free here to do what we want to do, what we set out to do.

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

The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.

It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed.

I let everyone follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.

No government on earth can make men, who have realized freedom in their hearts, salute against their will.

There is only one basic human right: the right to do as you please, without causing others harm. With it comes our only basic human duty: the duty to accept the consequences of our actions.

It is far better to be free to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else

Everyone should have the opportunity of not being over-influenced.

It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other.

Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.

Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others.