Harry Browne Quotes

The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk".

The police can't stop an intruder, mugger, or stalker from hurting you. They can pursue him only after he has hurt or killed you. Protecting yourself from harm is your responsibility, and you are far less likely to be hurt in a neighborhood of gun-owners than in one of disarmed citizens - even if you don't own a gun yourself.

Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.

Freedom and responsibility aren't interconnected things. They are the same thing.

For those looking for security, be forewarned that there's nothing more insecure than a political promise.

So what is government?... Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercion - such as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has flags in front of its offices.

It's important to realize that whenever you give power to politicians or bureaucrats, it will be used for what they want, not for what you want.

A great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything.

The government's War on Poverty has transformed poverty from a short-term misfortune into a career choice.

In my experience, people who are truly compassionate rarely use the word "compassion." Those who do talk compassion generally intend to be compassionate with your money, not their own. It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that 'compassion'.

When you give politicians the power to do what you think is right you're automatically giving politicians the power to do what you think is wrong.

Everything we know about human nature and about government tells us that individuals using their own money will achieve far more good for themselves and far more for others than politicians spending money they didn't have to work to earn.

Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.

Immigrants used to come to America seeking freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from government. Now they come looking for free health care, free education, and a free lunch.

The American heritage was one of individual liberty, personal responsibility and freedom from government ... Unfortunately ... that heritage has been lost. Americans no longer have the freedom to direct their own lives ... Today, it is the government that is free - free to do whatever it wants. There is no subject, no issue, no matter ... that is not subject to legislation.

Government cripples you, then hands you a crutch and says, 'See, if it wasn't for us, you couldn't walk.'

In almost all matters, the real question should be: why are we letting government handle this?

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

Disarmed citizens encourage crime and violence. Armed citizens encourage criminals to find a safer line of work.

No one ever died from smoking marijuana, but millions of people have died by believing politicians.

...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.

Profit is a reward for satisfying the desire of someone else.

Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other.

It has long been apparent that many people in the media don't believe you're competent to make your own decisions.

We may not always recognize it, but government plays a bigger role in our lives than any other single person or institution. We spend nearly half of our lives working to pay for it. Children spend more time in government schools than they do with their parents. Birth, death, marriage, every area of our lives feels the influence of government.

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

The coercive power of government is always a beacon to those who want to dominate others -- summoning the worst dregs of society to Washington to use that power to impose their will upon others.

Libertarians know that a free country has nothing to fear from anyone coming in or going out - while a welfare state is scared to death of poor people coming in and rich people getting out.

Government seems to operate on the principle that if even one individual is incapable of using his freedom competently, no one can be allowed to be free.

When people do things for you, it's because they want to - because you, in some way, give them something meaningful that makes them want to please you, not because anyone owes you anything.

Give government the weapons to fight your enemy and it will use them against you.

Whatever the issue, let freedom offer us a hundred choices, instead of having government force one answer on everyone.

From the cranberry cancer scare of the 1950s to the Alar-in-apples hysteria of the 1980s, from the "new ice age" of the 1960s to the "global warming" of the 1990s, environmental alarms almost always turn out to be false. Few non-political scientists fear ozone loss, global warming, or acid rain. These are just issues that some people hope to use to reorder the lives of the rest of us.

Government is a parasite-a cancer that by nature tries to spread deeper into society. Those who want to run others' lives won't give up and start minding their own business.

Give politicians power and it certainly will be abused eventually - if not by today's politicians, then by their successors.

Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats.

Social Security is a fraudulent scheme in which the government collect money from you for your retirement - and immediately spend the money on something else.

You have only one life, and no one else will live it for you. Shouldn't you take the time right now to figure out what that life is all about?

The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. It penalizes savings and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a free society, and we aren’t libertarians if we tolerate it.

Whatever the price, identify it now. What will you have to go through to get where you want to be? There is a price you can pay to be free of the situation once and for all. It may be a fantastic price or a tiny one -- but there is a price.

The power of choice. You have it. But you forfeit it when you imagine that you can choose for others. You can't. But you can choose for yourself.

I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions.

The Bill of Rights isn't some legalistic fine print. It was written to make our lives freer, more prosperous, and happier. By forsaking it, America has become no better than any other country in the world.

The marketplace is a wondrous institution. It harnesses the self-interest of each of us and puts it to work for the benefit of all. And it does so without intruding upon our desires, our privacy, or our freedom. It is regulation by reality, not by coercion.

I say that the Second Amendment doesn't allow for exceptions - or else it would have read that the right "to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise." And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong - because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience.

I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution.

The bad consequences of a government program usually don't show up immediately. And the delay may be long enough to hide the connection between the program and its results. So government never has to say it's sorry - never has to take responsibility for ht misery it causes. Instead it can blame everything on personal greed, profit-hungry corporations, and the 'private sector.' And the government's cure for the problems is to impose bigger programs, more regulation and higher taxes.

Forcing people to be generous isn't humanitarian, effective, compassionate or moral. Only acts that are truly voluntary for all concerned can be truly compassionate.

It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda.

If a law could keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people, there would be virtually no gun crime at all.