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Rose Wilder Lane

86 quotes

• “American clipper ships opened the British ports to free trade. Half a century of American smuggling and rebellion and costly ineffectual blockades; seven years of war in America, and the loss of the thirteen colonies; and all the sound and sensible arguments of English liberals and economists, could not break down the British planned economy. American clipper ships did it.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is obvious that by robbing others, he robs himself, because obviously, if ALL human beings tried to live by not producing but stealing goods from others, none could survive beyond a limited time. So anyone’s using his life-time-energy in stealing, instead of in producing goods, reduces by so much the amount of wealth that potentially could be produced, and progressively diminishes in time the amount that he can get, even by stealing.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 90 (letter October 3, 1953)

• “In southern Illinois there was a Terror. The Government men went into that country and took no nonsense; they condemned the land—every farm; offered the owners $7 an acre, or nothing. This was a model project, tearing down houses, building new roads, surveying a Community Center all blueprinted. The people were frantic and furious; they hired lawyers, who told them they could do nothing; they tried to get the facts printed; no newspaper dared do it.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 169 (letter July 13, 1963)

• “I am FOR any and every way of diminishing the size, the activity, the extent of Government per se, and all respect for Government, to the eventual end of eliminating Government totally. Anarchy is absence of earthly Authority over human beings, by definition and etymology; so I am an anarchist.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 268 (letter, Feb. 14, 1961)

• “I am ‘law‐abiding’ purely for expediency, for self‐defense, in the main against my conscientious principles, so at bottom I am ashamed of not being a conscientious objector practicing Gandhi’s or Thoreau’s civil disobedience. I did refuse to be rationed; I do absolutely refuse to be Social‐Secured; but I should refuse to pay taxes and be in jail, only what would become of my little Maltese puppies? and my own little area of freedom? and my books and my friends and correspondents? I shall be reluctantly a martyr, only when backed into the last corner of the last resort. No heroine, alas.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 269 (letter February 14, 1961)

• “I do not see how a British switch from alliance with Stalin to alliance with Hitler can be any tragic defeat for ‘democracy.’ It is a smashing blow to a communist state and to communists as a party and as an international conspiracy—a blow to conspiracy because it will create further dissension in it. But if this alliance is a triumph for Fascism, then the British alliance with the Czar was a triumph for Czarism, and the one with Stalin was a triumph for communism.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 146 (letter to Dorothy Thompson (Oct. 15, 1938)

• “The existence of totalitarian states even as ruthlessly implemented as Hitler’s and Stalin’s, cannot destroy personal freedom on earth, for when that ideal came into history only a couple of centuries ago, there wasn’t anything else. The technical development that surged up out of free (released from government control) enterprise make totalitarian states look much more horribly terrific now; but actually, in relation to their time, they are no more totalitarian, no more ruthless and barbarous and bloody, than the France of the Louis’, or than Spain now, or than Pre-Victorian England.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 148 (letter to Dorothy Thompson (Oct. 15, 1938)

• “I would question whether, in the dynamics of capitalism, it is true (as Jefferson believed) that it is the distribution of ownership that matters… The man who owned no land was then actually dispossessed. He literally had no right to stand upon the earth. I think myself that the defense of personal freedom depends upon the institution of private property: i.e., the right of every individual to own an actual piece of ground upon which to stand.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 170, letter to Dorothy Thompson (May 20, 1943)

• “In 1800, a prosperous year, the total income of Americans (called ‘the national income’) was something over 2 billion dollars, a fabulous amount then. Capitalists and landlords got 68%, farmers and laborers 32%. In 1930, of tragic memory, near the bottom of ‘the worst depression in history’, the incomes of all Americans amounted to roughly to 75 billion. Of this wage earners (who had increased in number 17%) got 64%+; entrepreneurs, 20%; capitalists and landlords the remaining 16%.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 170, letter to Dorothy Thompson, (May 20, 1943)

• “So far as is discernible to me, capitalism has no alter-ego, strictly speaking. In theory, capitalism is the economics of a society of free individuals. It rests upon the nature of man; this natural being, that each person is a source of human energy, a dynamo creating life energy, and self-controlling in action… I do not see how there can be an ‘alter-ego’ to this basic reality. One might as well say that there is an alter-ego to the fact that the earth is not flat.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Can’t you see,… that the ‘ending up’ of the communist effort, and the fascist, and the nazi, are inevitable in the nature of things? Can’t you see that the New Deal is essentially the same effort as all these, and that its end is inevitably the same end?”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When a free person buys insurance from a private company, the company has a profit-motive in remaining solvent, and the government uses it police power properly to enforce the carrying-out of the terms of the contract freely entered into. But when government uses police power to compel a person to buy government insurance, there is no profit motive, and there is no third party existing, to enforce the terms of the contract. It seems to be a most precarious venture, at best.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 178, letter to Dorothy Thompson (May 20, 1943)

• “It was like being quite alone on the roof of the world. I felt that if I were to go to the edge and look over … I would see below all that I had ever known; all the crowded cities and seas covered with ships, and the clamor of harbors and traffic of rivers, and farmlands being worked, and herds of cattle driven in dust across interminable plains. All the clamor and clatter, confusion of voices, tumults, and conflicts, must still be going on, down there—over the edge, and below—but here there was only the sky, and a stillness made audible by the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me that I felt a part of it, empty myself.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to the Clarence Day (June 10, 1926)

• “Since 1914...I wait for the natural to return; for newspapers to report news with care for accuracy and grammar; for schools to teach and for pupils to study; for faces to be sane and intelligent, and even humorous; for American artists and poets and writers to be exuberant and optimistic...it is all gone with the music of Vienna and the gaiety of San Francisco. But I still see everything against that background, and really I see nothing funny anywhere. The Beatnik beard and the mini skirt and the topless waitress, they ARE funny, I know they are funny but they only make me tired, I don't laugh.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: letter to Roger MacBride (March 5, 1968).

• “We would learn more by looking at America. Oddly enough, statistics appear only in times of agitation and distress. Their function would appear to be that of omens of worse to come. We seem to have a morbid taste for them, like that of children for ghost stories that raise the hair. The American air has not been so full of fragmentary statistics since the Panic of 1893. I read again, for instance, that less than 10 per cent of our population own more than 90 per cent of the wealth… I read also that a hundred years ago 80 per cent of our population owned property and that today the percentage is 23.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Inside these modern National frontiers, the workers have been working harder and getting little more than their ancestors did in the feudal system. So the so-called revolutionists attack their Governments and ruling classes, accusing them of not controlling the social system as it should be controlled. Socialist, Social-Democrat, Communist, Fascist, National Socialist (Nazi) all demand that Government make a better social system; that Government control the men who produce and distribute goods; that Government create security for men on this earth. The basis of all this thinking is ignorance of creative energy; it is ignorance of the real nature of human beings; it is the ancient, pagan superstition that Authority controls a static, limited universe.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “They were the final blow that brought down that whole planned structure. The great English reform movement of the 19th century consisted wholly in repealing laws. There was nothing constructive in it; it was wholly destructive. It was a destruction of Government's interference with human affairs, a destruction of the so-called ‘protection’ that is actually a restriction of the exercise of natural human rights. In that mid-19th-century period of the greatest individual freedom that Englishmen have ever known, they made the prosperity and power of the British Empire during Victoria's long and peaceful reign. And to that freedom, and prosperity and power and peace, the American clipper ship contributed more than any other one thing.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “As to the restraint of trade by business, that is impossible; the notion that money is power is another lie. There is no possible means by which the duPont Company can stop me (if I have the brains, and not a penny) from starting an enterprise that will eventually totally destroy the duPont Company. I can be stopped only by violence, by physical force. The duPont Company, desiring to stop me, has two possible methods: (1) You can hire and pay a gunman to kill me or kidnap me, and gangsters to destroy my property; you cannot do this successfully if the State performs its proper function of protecting human rights (my right to life, liberty, and ownership of property). (2) Or, you can bribe enough Congressmen to pass an Act of Congress setting up a commission and requiring that anyone engaging in any enterprise in the field of duPont Company’s activities must first obtain a permit from the commission and thereafter be ‘regulated’ by the members of the commission.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 2 (letter March 22, 1946)

• “Freedom of enterprise CANNOT ‘produce a society in which there is great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few and considerable poverty among the many.’ Dr. Blake might as well ask, ‘What is our political and Christian duty when water runs uphill, when the earth turns from east to west, when air is heavier than lead?’ Doesn’t he know any facts at all? Does he never LOOK at his country? How can he avoid seeing, if he ever glances at any city, town, highway, or farm, that the salient characteristic of this country is distribution, not concentration, of wealth? Doesn’t he know that even ownership of capital wealth is not concentrated?—that, for example, some 600,000 ‘among the many’ own General Electric? What free enterprise produces most unexpectedly, is a society in which great economic responsibility is concentrated and great wealth is distributed among the many.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 81 (letter June 11, 1952)

• “Chattel slavery really was an interesting illustration of this fact. The slavery-owners were in process of destroying their own economy by maintaining slavery. That’s why they could not win a military victory over the northerners. ‘Natural resources’ were more abundant in the south than in the north, but wealth was progressively less in comparison because slavery inhibited the use of human energy in the south. So the southerner was hampering the use of his own liberty by suppressing the slave’s use of his. The increasingly indebted slave-owner on his increasingly mortgaged property was unable to do much that he wanted to do, and the reason for his diminishing area of freedom was his denial of freedom to his slaves.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 90 (letter October 3, 1953)

• “More and more southerners were seeing this fact and trying to get rid of their slaves; there were all kinds of plans for doing this. So many simply freed their slaves that most, if not all, southern legislatures passed Acts forbidding this—Acts intended to compel slave-owners to continue to bear their responsibility for their slave-property, and to prevent an increase of the numbers of untrained, uncontrolled, unfed and unsheltered person at large in those states. To evade these laws slave-owners moved temporarily into ‘free’ territory, freed their salves there, and returned. So laws were passed forbidding this. And laws forbidding such freed slaves to return to the slave States, on penalty arrest, punishment and sale.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: pp. 90-91 (letter October 3, 1953)

• “American farmers fought the ‘protective tariff’ from 1800 to 1896 … Even as late as 1933, when Garet Garrett and I drove all over the Midwest, the farmers in general were not wanting AAA or any other federal interference. In Kansas I met a rabble‐rousing New Dealer from Washington who took me to a farmers’ meeting where he spoke with real conviction and eloquence. The audience listened absolutely noncommittal, until he worked up to an incandescent peroration: ‘We went down there to Washington and got you all a Ford. Now we’re going to get you a Cadillac!’ The temperature suddenly fell below freezing; the silent antagonism was colder than zero. That ended the speech; the whole audience rose and went out. The orator later said to me, ‘Those damned numbskulls! The only thing to use on them is a club!’”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 168 (letter July 13, 1963)

• “[I]n a hotel lobby in Branson, Missouri, I met a young man almost in tears, totally woebegone and despairing. He had spent seventy days in Stone County, working day and night, he said, house to house, up hill and down, over those horrible roads; he’d gone to every house, he’d used every persuasion he could think of, talked himself hoarse, and he had not got even ONE man to take a $2,500 loan from the government; and those wretched people needed everything; why, their children were barefoot, some of them lived in log cabins—could I believe it? They NEEDED to be rehabilitated; I had no idea what rural slums they lived in; and here he offered them a loan from the Government—amortized, 25 years to pay it, more time if they wanted it; he offered them horses, and tools, even a car, anything almost and they just wouldn’t take it. They didn’t talk or act like such fools either. He couldn’t understand it. He HAD to get some of them to take Government help or he’d lose his job.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: pp. 168-169 (letter Jan. 30, 1957)

• “The county was listed as a rural slum, the land as eroded. When I asked to be shown erosion, the answer was, it is ’sheet erosion’ That is, the constant effect of rainfall on all earth. There was not an eroded ditch in the county. Every farm was well cared for, every house in repair, painted, cared for—simple frame houses, a few without electricity or plumbing, but many with both.… None of them wanted to be rehabilitated. None of them would speak to Garet or to me until we proved that we did not come from the Government. Garet was dumbfounded when men surrounded the car and demanded that proof; luckily he had it, by chance. And these are the people who are said to be demanding subsidies! That was a story—Communist Terror in Illinois. (The manager of the project was a Party member.) No editor would print it, of course. The truth about this country never does get into print.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: pp. 169-170 (letter July 13, 1963)

• “Various authorities have been trying to force a Social Security number on me. They telephone and tell me I MUST have one; since I have none, they are giving me one. I tell them I won’t have it. I get forms, my humble request to be entitled to Social Security benefits; with command, Sign here and return to—I put them in the wastebasket. I get orders to appear at such an hour, such a date, at such an office, with all records and receipts to show cause—I reply that it is not convenient for me to appear—etc., etc. I even get an order to appear and support with documents my claim for refund of the tax‐and‐fine that I paid; I return this, writing across it, I have made no such claim. The telephone rings, and I am informed that I am being given the necessary Social Security number; I say I have none and I shall NOT have one; I will have nothing to do with that Ponzi fraud because it is treason; it will wreck this country as it wrecked Germany; I won’t have it; you can’t make me.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: pp. 203–204 (letter May 9, 1958)

• “Mr. LeFevre and I have engaged in heated, though amiable, controversy, about his attitude to Government. When the students in his Basic course—the one I attended—asked him, what should we do? his reply was negative. He said: Do not depend on Government; do not ask Government for favors and subsidies and support. I think that a negative is not enough; I say that if they do not know the right action they are too apt to take a wrong one; I think that the thing to do is to resist any further extensions and encroachments and usurpations by the Federal Government, by every peaceful legal means while such means exist.…”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 213 (letter October 30, 1958)

• “I do not think that any honesty is involved in paying taxes. Taxation is plain armed robbery; tax‐collectors are armed robbers. I will save my property from them in any way that I think I can get away with. If you wake in the night with a flashlight shining in your face and a masked man with a gun ordering you to tell him where your money is, do you feel that you’re morally obliged to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I think you might. I don’t. I will try to get out of that predicament with as little loss as possible. In regard to taxes, this means taking advantage of every legality that any attorney can find in the tax ‘laws’ so called, and regulations. I have no scruples about this whatever, anything that I want to do with my money, and that I can in any way slip under any legality so that the robbers won’t find it and rob me of some of it, I do. They make the legalities, trying to be smart about who gets how much of my property; and to keep as much as possible of my own, I’ll outsmart them if I can.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 263 (letter February 1, 1961)

• “My attachment to these United States is wholly, entirely, absolutely The Revolution, the real world Revolution, which men began here and which has—so to speak—a foothold on earth here. If reactionaries succeed in destroying the revolutionary structure of social and political human life here, I care no more about this continent than about any other. If I lived long enough I would find and join the revival of the Revolution wherever it might be, in Africa or Asia or Europe, the Arctic or Antarctic. And let this country go with all the other regimes that collectivism has wrecked and eliminated since history began. So much for patriotism, mine.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: pp. 267-268 (letter, Feb. 14, 1961)

• “As to anarchy, you can find me with Woodrow Wilson (that lying treacherous scoundrel who began this World War: truly a ‘Platonic ‘idealist,’ he was) who said words to the effect that increase of freedom is decrease of Government. The difference between W.W. and me is that I mean what I say. I am not wildeyed and whiskered and I do not contemplate throwing a home-made bomb at Mr. Kennedy but I am FOR any and every way of diminishing the size, the activity, the extent of Government per se, and all respect for Government, to the eventual end of eliminating Government totally. Anarchy is absence of earthly Authority over human beings, by definition and etymology; so I am an anarchist.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 268 (letter (letter February 14, 1961)

• “Human minds always are logical; the fallacy always is in the premise, the basic unquestioned assumption, upon which the process of reasoning is based. So in logical return for The Government’s benefits, we are supposed to ‘owe a duty’ to It. The custom of taxation is a remnant of the Incarnate God’s ownership of ‘his people.’ Why do you owe money to Mr. Kennedy? If you need to guard your property, you hire and pay guards, nightwatchmen; if you are a banker you buy and pay for armored cars and hire guards to transport the bank’s gold; if you manage an insurance company you hire and pay detectives to investigate claims against your company. If a foreign power attacks your country, you defend it; you man the tanks, fly the bombers, fire the guns. Is there a need, in reason, to compel persons—by force—to defend their property and themselves? Is there a reason why ‘people cannot do for themselves’ in a free market, everything that The Government is supposed to be doing for them?”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 332 (letter July 13, 1963)

• “‘The people’ have in fact done everything that is done; they built the houses and roads and railroads and telephones and planes, they organized world‐wide cooperative institutions—the oil companies, the banks—and the postal services, and the militia companies, and the schools—what didn’t ‘the people’ do? What happens is that, after they do it, The Government takes it. The Government takes the roads, the postal service, the systems of communication, the banks, the markets, the stock exchanges, the insurance companies, the schools, the militia, the building trades, the telegraph and telephones, the radios, after ‘the people’ have done all these things for themselves.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: pp. 332-333 (letter July 13, 1963)

• “‘Public ownership’ is of course a fantasy. ‘The People,’ ‘The Public,’ do not exist and therefore can’t own anything. ‘Public ownership’ is actually destruction of ownership. Where everyone ostensibly ‘owns’ something, nobody owns it. Who owns a ‘public’ park? or a post office? Complete and absolute ‘public ownership’ is communism, in which nobody owns anything and all persons are inevitably slaves, either willingly obeying or compelled to obey an authority residing outside their own wills. The essential to individual liberty (or more accurately, to the exercise of the individual’s natural self-control and responsibility) is an established legal right to individual ownership of property. Every attack upon ‘private property’ is an attack upon human rights.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 172 (letter to Dorothy Thompson (May 20, 1943)

• “Samuel Grafton asked on the radio some weeks ago, for a listeners’ vote on the question; do you want the benefits of Social Security extended to those now excluded from them? Of course, I knew what the announced results would be, but just for shucks… I sent him a postcard saying ‘no’. I signed it Mrs. C. G. Lane (my name) for obvious reasons. Last Saturday, I’m peacefully digging dandelions out of my lawn with a paring knife, when the State Police arrive, in full uniform, complete with gun, and stern and overpowering as hell. The FBI, if you please, is investigating the subversive activities of Mrs. C. G. Lane. It is true that I sent this postcard? (Copy held accusingly before my eyes.) Is it true that I oppose Social Security? What (in effect) do I mean by it? My sense of proportion completely failed; I rose up in fury, and it’s really too bad that only the dandelions heard me. The State Police, really very decent young fellows, tried to explain that they didn’t really mean anything by it, that I should give them credit for coming to me instead of going around collecting evidence against me from the neighbors, and that of course if I’m Rose Wilder Lane—all of which only made me madder, naturally.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 176, letter to Dorothy Thompson (May 20, 1943)

• “How thoroughly have you studied compulsory insurance in Germany? And why do you believe that it will work here otherwise than it worked there? I would really like to know. My own opinions haven’t ripened yet. So far, I am opposed to so-called ‘Social Security’ principally because I am opposed to tyranny; I think it is tyranny to take my money, money earned by my labor, and to spend it for me—in any way whatever—instead of allowing me to send it for myself. But so far as I have learned, and thought, about this use of tyranny in Germany since Bismarck established it, I’m inclined to believe that it can’t work otherwise than as disastrously as it worked there.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: pp. 177-178, letter to Dorothy Thompson (May 20, 1943)

• “A ‘civilization’ is not an organism, it is not biological, it is not an entity at all. ‘Civilization does not exist; what exists is living individual persons, each one endowed by his Creator with life energy and with liberty, which is his own control of his own actions (kinetic life energy). There is no inevitability whatever in history. Certainly, a collectivist ‘system’ will break down, as socialized Rome did, as all ‘governments’ antique and ancient and modern have broken down, when a majority of living persons believed the socialist fallacy: that there is a Human whole of which persons compose the cellular mass.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: pp. 193-194, letter to Dorothy Thompson (Nov. 18, 1969)

• “I am not a prophet. But I do not believe that anything like a majority of Americans are looking for security; I do not believe that the groups of young radicals in the colleges and all over this country are in a ‘flight’ from socialization. I think they are furiously rebelling against it and determined to abolish it. I believe that their revolt is founded solidly on reality, as the similar socialist revolt of our youth was not; and I believe that they will succeed in overturning the status quo (as the socialist did) and end this century as Americans ended the 18th, in a great surge of liberalism, this time world-wide. I mean genuine liberalism. Since the socialists have stolen that good word, true liberals flounder all over the place, calling themselves ‘ libertarians’ and even ‘conservatives,’ but the accurate word, individualists, seems to be gaining ground lately.”

  Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 194, letter to Dorothy Thompson (Nov. 18, 1969)