Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
L. Neil Smith
101 quotes
“A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I want to accomplish artistically amounts to nothing more than fulfilling the promise of the American Revolution.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Forget 'redeeming social value,' dirty pictures are fun. When I die I want my ashes sprinkled over a nudist camp.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Venus Belt, 1980.
“Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon — rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Atlanta Declaration," presented at WeaponsCon I, Atlanta, Georgia, September 1987.
“My current novel, Pallas, is all about that culture war - in fact it's been called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Sagebrush Rebellion - and yet what I hear all too often from libertarians is that they don't read fiction.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Merchants of Fear" Presented to the Boulder County Libertarian Party, 20 February 1994.
“As a novelist, I have a somewhat higher soapbox to stand on than most people do when it comes to talking back to the merchants of fear.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poverty is a solved problem - all they have to do is abolish taxes and regulations which cripple those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women and destroy their productive capacity, then stand back and watch the economy boom.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Violent crime is a solved problem - all they have to do is repeal the laws that keep those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women from arming themselves, and violent crime evaporates like dry ice on a hot summer day.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The function of government is to provide you with service; the function of the media is to supply the Vaseline.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some New Tactical Reflections" 15 January 1998.
“Choose your allies carefully: it's highly unlikely that you'll ever be held morally, legally, or historically accountable for the actions of your enemies.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Choose your enemies carefully: you'll probably be known much better and far longer for who they were, than for anything else you ever managed to accomplish.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact that nobody asks you to sing is not an indication that you should sing louder. This sounds obvious until it's applied to matters like mass transportation. There are virtually no private mass transit companies. This does not represent the failure of the market to provide a needed service, it represents the failure of an unneeded service to go away!”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Great men don't 'move to the center' — great men move the center!”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there were a generic one-word expression for 'one whose fear of the uncertainties of success moves him to surrender at the very moment of victory', it would be 'Republican'.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once you've taken a public stand you know is right, never back down; anything less than a rock-hard stance will let your enemies nibble you to death.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who sell their liberty for security are understandable, if pitiable, creatures. Those who sell the liberty of others for wealth, power, or even a moment's respite deserve only the end of a rope.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Try never to speak of your enemies by name. Any publicity is still publicity — and there are those for whom your disapproval constitutes a recommendation.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You cannot force me to agree with you. You can force me to act as though I agree with you — but then you'll have to watch your back. All the time.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Money, first and foremost, is a medium of communication, conveying the information we call 'price'. Government control of the money supply is censorship, a violation of the First Amendment. Inflation is a lie.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I'm Tired (With Apologies to Pearl Bailey and Madeleine Kahn) Presented to the second annual Liberty Round Table Conclave near Estes Park, Colorado, 2 July 1998.
“What kind of mind would sacrifice millions for the sake of a few thousands, especially when it's been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that victim disarmament can't save even those thousands? What kind of mind wants a return to mean streets and ever-soaring crime rates? What kind of mind collaborates with agents of mass murder and genocide? Make no mistake: you victim disarmament types are sick, sick people, in the words of T.D. Melrose, who'd rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You're people, in short, who must be stupid, insane, or evil to continue arguing — in the face of indisputable facts and irrefutable logic — that others must be forced into a state of helplessness and victimized by individual criminals or the state. Stupid, insane, or evil.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let's make it clear for the dimmest bulbs among you: the kids at Columbine High didn't die from too many guns, they died from too few. I'm not suggesting that the teachers should have carried guns — not as franchised agents of the state. They should have carried guns as ordinary individuals, exercising a sacred right, and in performance of a solemn duty to protect the young lives that were placed — very foolishly, as it turned out — in their hands.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Worse than thieves, murderers, or cannibals, those who offer compromise slow you and sap your vitality while pretending to be your friends. They are not your friends. Compromisers are the enemies of all humanity, the enemies of life itself. Compromisers are the enemies of everything important, sacred, and true.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Am I the NRA?" collected in Lever Action (2001) and republished online in 2007.
“Gun ownership is a problem, not because it represents any physical danger to [the IRS]. Americans have proven dismayingly forbearing in that regard. But people who own guns often look at the world differently than those who don't. That's the real danger to social and political parasites. Roughly 25% of Americans own guns. The number increases each time there's widespread discussion of more gun control - call it what it is: 'victim disarmament'. If the figure ever rises to 50%, I suspect the widespread discussion will be about repealing the 16th Amendment.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vermont Fudge," originally published in The Sierra Times 18 March 2002.
“It is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profitable - effort to prevent the annihilation of the human race.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How Many Americans Does It Take to Change a Dim Bulb?" Presented to the Second Annual Freedom Summit, Phoenix, Arizona, 12 & 13 October 2002.
“Like the government, corporations must be bound with the chains of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must oppose programs that would take food from the mouths of younger generations to buy prescription drugs for old people, and we must do it... for the children.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Empire of Lies" Presented to the Libertarian Party of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 15 June 2003.
“Thanks to guys like Boss Tweed, famous for saying, 'I don't give a damn who does the voting, as long as I do the nominating,' there hasn't been an honest election in the USA since sometime around the War Between the States.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Libertarians: The Connies Speak Out (Part Two)," 2 October 2005.
“To politicians, solved problems represent a dire threat — of unemployment and poverty. That's why no problem ever tackled by the government has ever been solved. What they want is lots of problems they can promise to solve, so that we'll keep electing them — or letting them keep their jobs in a bureaucracy metastasizing like cancer.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We're all a bunch of badminton birdies who just got batted from the Republican side of the court to the Democrat side. We'll eventually get batted back again, of course, unless libertarians can manage to do something about it. If your principal concern, like mine, is freedom, there's absolutely no discernable difference between the two 'majors,' and for all practical purposes, they're one big party — the Boot On Your Neck party — pretending to be two.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We live in times of wonderful technology and crappy politics. The task before us now is not to let the latter destroy the former.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Des Moines," 29 June 2008.
“...[T]ry not to be too angry or disappointed with your fellow Americans. Most of them don't care about politics as much as the majority of my readers, and the education they have received about it from the government's public school system is nothing more than a septic tank full of warmed-over self-serving statist lies and leftist propaganda.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Only Nixon," 9 November 2008.
“Socialism is, among other things, the political habitat of low self-esteem, incompetence, self-loathing, and a willingness to steal – or have stolen for you — what you are unable or unwilling to work for. Socialism is a philosophy fit only for slugs, leaches, and mosquitoes.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Alice Shrugged," 18 December 2008.
“Most libertarians agree that all rights are, in effect, property rights, beginning with this fundamental right to self-ownership and control of one's own life. As owners of their own lives, individuals are completely free to do absolutely anything they wish with them — provided, of course, that it doesn't violate the identical right of others — whether the people around them approve of what they do or not.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (with Rylla Cathryn Smith) What Libertarians Believe, "Introduction: The Zero Aggression Principle," 4 January 2009.
“Conventional politicians almost never think their philosophy through and set it down for everyone to examine. In most cases, they don't dare. Republicans would soon discover that they're actually socialists. Democrats would discover that they're actually fascists.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Politicians must be taught, in no uncertain terms, that the only real way to economically 'stimulate' the Productive Class is to stop stealing their fucking money! If the government announced a total tax amnesty, as well as a complete, permanent end to individual and corporate taxes — repealing all unconstitutional economic regulations would help, too — this depression would be over by the end of the week.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Collectivism's Last Stand," 18 January 2009.
“Taxes are a barbaric remnant of ancient times in which early farmers, tied to the land, no longer able to roam freely, unable to fight back with awkward agricultural tools the way they once could with hunting implements, became victims, first, of itinerant plunderers, then of bandits settling down beside them to become the governments we know today.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All real libertarians are dedicated to the eventual elimination of all taxes. That's one way you can tell them from the fakes. If anyone asks what government will run on, tell them it's not our problem. If they can create a 'government' that doesn't initiate force and steal from us, that doesn't break things and kill people in the enforcement of the will of parasites, that doesn't subsist by beating individuals up and killing them, they're welcome to try. Just leave us out of it altogether.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have long argued that we need to reopen Alcatraz to house government criminals, and let tourists on excursion boats in San Francisco Bay pay to chum the water with meat with an expired sell-by date that would otherwise have to be discarded.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: It Has to Cost Them Something," 8 February 2009.
“One of the nastiest aspects of the 'no-fly list' — and believe it or not, its authors are proud of this part — is that you can't find out whether you're on it until you've paid for your ticket and are standing in line to get your boarding pass. Denied the service that you paid for, to my knowledge there is no way to get your money back. Nor is there any way to find out why you're on the list, or how you can get off. It is known that civil rights advocates of various kinds have been placed on the list, apparently because they're civil rights advocates.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just about everybody in politics has something to hide. The higher they rise in the system, the more skeletons they have stuffed in their closets. And as we have all come to appreciate, this goes double — or perhaps even squared — for politicos who got their start in Chicago. And because the system no longer cares about our rights (to the extent it ever did) we can no longer focus solely on issues related to them, but must cast about more widely to ensnare and defeat the enemies of liberty.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have a recurring daymare that when the Glorious People's SWAT Teams smash their way in, most of us — by which I mean members of the general freedom movement — will be caught flatfooted, sitting in our underwear behind our computer monitors, guzzling Jolt and gorging on Cheetos, while arguing with our friends and enemies online about immigration or abortion, two of the issues that the Lefties know they can always rely on to keep that general freedom movement divided and powerless.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pushing Rope," 15 February 2009.
“I do know enough about economics — and so do you — to understand that the 'stimulus program' of Barack Obama and his ravenous parasitic hordes, supposedly designed to 'repair' America's broken economy, reveals him to be unimaginably stupid, gibberingly insane, or simply the biggest, most barefaced criminal thug ever to occupy the White House. And that's saying a lot.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Little Austrian Flea," 1 March 2009.
“Only someone as puffed up and demented as John Maynard Keynes, every left wing fascist's sainted mentor in this connection, could manage to convince himself that taxing America's Productive Class can restore it to prosperity. In point of fact, it's like screwing for chastity, guzzling alcohol for sobriety, or gorging to fight gluttony. It's like killing indiscriminately for peace — oops, Democrats, Republicans and their moral and spiritual ilk have devoutly believed that particular bit of perverse nonsense since at least the War of 1812.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of mental illness more than it does a philosophy. Socialists get bees in their bonnets. And because they chronically lack any critical faculty to examine and evaluate their ideas, and because they are pathologically unwilling to consider the opinions of others, and most of all, because socialism is a mindset that regards the individual — and his rights — as insignificant, compared to whatever the socialist believes the group needs, terrible, terrible things happen when socialists acquire power.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambodian Road Trip," 15 March 2009.
“Many individuals spend a considerable portion of their lifetimes in terror of one imagined catastrophe or another. The classic is that your immortal soul will be consigned to eternal torment in the never-ending subterranean barbecue if you fail to follow the whacky edicts of one particular set of puckered dogwhistles or another. You may recall from the great movie Strange Days that a "dogwhistle" is a guy whose asshole is so tight that when he farts, only dogs can hear him.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Bad Guys," 28 April 2009.
“There’s a big difference between keeping the peace, which is something folks do pretty well themselves, and enforcing the law, which is another thing altogether.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ceres, Chapter Fourteen, 2009.
“Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective — economic value, anyway — while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ceres, Chapter Eighteen, 2009.