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Famous Quotes
 
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The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
A classic since 1953 with over 20,000 quotes from over 3,000 authors.


Famous Last Words
Apt Observations, Pleas, Curses, Benedictions, Sour Notes, Bons Mots, and Insights from People on the Brink of Departure


Stretch Your Wings
Famous Black Quotations for the Young


American Quotations
An exhaustive collection of profound quotes from the founding fathers, presidents, statesmen, scientists, constitutions, court decisions


The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations


Last Words of Saints and Sinners
700 Final Quotes from the Famous, the Infamous, and the Inspiring Figures of History


America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations
Contains over 2,100 profound quotations from founding fathers, presidents, constitutions, court decisions and more


The Law
This 1850 classic is an absolute must read for anyone interested in law, justice, truth, or liberty. A most compelling and revolutionary look at The Law.


Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature (17th Edition)


The Stupidest Things Ever Said by Politicians
Rise up, America -- and laugh out loud at the greatest gaffes that no spin doctor could possibly fix!


The 776 Even Stupider Things Ever Said
Another great collection of stupidity


Quotable Quotes
Wit and Wisdom for All Occasions from America's Most Popular Magazine


The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time
You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less.


2,715 One-Line Quotations for Speakers, Writers & Raconteurs
Invaluable sampler of witticisms, epigrams, sayings, bon mots, platitudes and insights chosen for their brevity and pithiness.


Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts Funny Sayings
A stupendous collection of quotes, quips, epigrams, witticisms, and humorous comments for personal enjoyment and ready reference.


Quick Quips and Quotes; 532 Things I Wish I Had Said
Quick Quips and Quotes is the Ultimate Collection of one liners.


Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
The ultimate anthology of anecdotes, now revised with over 700 new entries.


Quotations for Public Speakers
A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology


Liberty - The American Revolution
This compelling series traces the events leading up to the war and America's fight for freedom.


Founding Fathers
The story of how these disparate characters fomented rebellion in the colonies, formed the Continental Congress, fought the Revolutionary War, and wrote the Constitution


Libertarianism: A Primer
David Boaz, director of the Cato Institute, has written a simple introduction to Libertarianism inteneded to appeal to disgruntled Democrats and Republicans everywhere.


The Libertarian Reader
Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman


Thomas Paine: Collected Writings
All the classics: Common Sense / The Crisis / Rights of Man / The Age of Reason / Pamphlets, Articles, and Letters

 
Milton FriedmanThe preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. 
Milton FriedmanI think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there’s something wrong, pass a law and do something about it. 
Milton FriedmanA society that puts equality...ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. 
Milton FriedmanWe have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. 
Milton FriedmanThe proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line? 
Milton FriedmanInflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. 
Milton FriedmanTo the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. 
Milton FriedmanI'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. 
Milton FriedmanConcentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it. 
Milton FriedmanThe key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. 
Milton FriedmanFreedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself ... Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom. 
Milton FriedmanThe strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. It forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business. 
Milton FriedmanThe Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy. ... Roosevelt's policies were very destructive. Roosevelt's policies made the depression longer and worse than it otherwise would have been. 
Milton FriedmanIt's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else. Most of the arrests for drugs are for possession by casual users. Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons. 
Milton FriedmanThe most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up. 
Milton FriedmanLegalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and also the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order? 
Milton Friedman[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends. 
Milton FriedmanOne role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative. 
Milton Friedman[Trade licensing] almost inevitably becomes a tool in the hands of a special producer group to maintain a monopoly position at the expense of the rest of the public. There is no way to avoid this result. 
Milton FriedmanThe use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interest. 
Milton FriedmanIf the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies. 
Milton FriedmanOne of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. 
Milton Friedman[Drug use] does harm a great many other people, but primarily because it's prohibited. There are an enormous number of innocent victims now. You've got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You've got the people killed in the random drug wars. You've got the corruption of the legal establishment. You've got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners, and more and more police. You've got the rest of us who don't get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible. And, last, but not least, you've got the people of Colombia and Peru and so on. What business do we have destroying and leading to the killing of thousands of people in Colombia because we cannot enforce our own laws? If we could enforce our laws against drugs, there would be no market for these drugs. 
Milton FriedmanIf, for example, existing government intervention is minor, we shall attach a smaller weight to the negative effect of additional government intervention. This is an important reason why many earlier liberals, like Henry Simons, writing at a time when government was small by today’s standards, were willing to have government undertake activities that today’s liberals would not accept now that government has become so overgrown. 
Milton FriedmanThe Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government. 
Milton FriedmanI think that prohibition of drugs is the most immoral program that the United States has ever engaged in. It's destroyed civil rights at home and it is responsible for thousands of deaths abroad. 
Milton FriedmanThe heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights…This implies a belief in the equality of man in one sense; in their inequality in another. 
Milton FriedmanInflation is taxation without representation. 
Milton FriedmanWith respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority. 
Milton FriedmanI am myself persuaded, on the basis of extensive study of the historical evidence, that... the severity of each of the contractions - 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38 - is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities and would not have occurred under earlier monetary and banking arrangements. 
Milton FriedmanThe unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people who are unemployed. Because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn't do a thing for them. 
Milton FriedmanPolitical freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. 
Milton FriedmanThe Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy. 
Milton FriedmanEvery friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. 
Milton FriedmanHell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. 
Milton FriedmanGovernment power must be dispersed. If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations. 
Milton FriedmanEvery friend of freedom... must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. 
Milton FriedmanThe power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank. 
Milton FriedmanCentral bankers always try to avoid their last big mistake. So every time there's the threat of a contraction in the economy, they'll over stimulate the economy, by printing too much money. The result will be a rising roller coaster of inflation, with each high and low being higher than the preceding one. 
Milton FriedmanA major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. 
Milton FriedmanSpending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist. 
Carl J. FriedrichThe history of totalitarian regimes is reflected in the evolution and perfection of the instruments of terror and more especially the police. 
Jean Paul Friedrich RichterO, only a free soul will never grow old! [Ger., O, nur eine freie Seele wird nicht alt.] 
Fred W. FriendlyNo mighty king, no ambitious emperor, no pope, or prophet ever dreamt of such an awesome pulpit, so potent a magic wand [television]. 
Marshall FritzSome want prayer in school, some want condoms. Printing prayers on condoms satisfies nobody. 
Marshall FritzThe Left/Right scale is a misleading way of comparing political systems. It doesn't measure anything. 
Marshall FritzIn all countries, in all centuries, the primary reason for government to set up schools is to undermine the politically weak by convincing their children that the leaders are good and their policies are wise. The core is religious intolerance. The sides simply change between the Atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarians, etc., depending whether you are talking about the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, America, etc. A common second reason is to prepare the boys to go to war and the girls to cheer them on. 
Marshall FritzThe Left/Right scale is a misleading way of comparing political systems. It doesn't measure anything. 
Marshall FritzCharter schools are just public schools on a slightly longer leash. A dog on a long leash is still a dog on a leash. 
Erich FrommThe danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots. 
Erich FrommIf you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it. 
Erich FrommIf faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated. 
Erich FrommThe member of a primitive clan might express his identity in the formula “I am we”; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an “individual,” existing apart from his group. 
David FrostVote Labor, and you build castles in the air. Vote Conservative, and you can live in them. 
Robert FrostMost of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor. 
Robert FrostFreedom lies in being bold. 
Robert FrostA jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. 
Robert FrostMost of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor. 
Robert FrostTwo roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. 
Robert FrostA civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity. 
James Anthony FroudeTo deny freedom of the will is to make morality impossible. 
James Anthony FroudeEnglish character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts. 
David FrumWhy be thrifty when your old age and health care are provided for, no matter how profligate you act in your youth? Why be prudent when the state insures your bank deposits, replaces your flooded-out house, buys all the wheat you can grow? ... Why be diligent when half of your earnings are taken from you and given to the idle? 
David FrumIt’s amazing: some 1.5 million able-bodied people are now enjoying free housing, free meals, television, libraries, educational services, and gymnasiums, all without working and all at the expense of the American taxpayer. All they had to do to qualify for this deal: kill, rob, or rape somebody. 
J. William FulbrightIn a democracy dissent is an act of faith, like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects. 
J. William FulbrightWe must dare to think “unthinkable” thoughts… We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent… Because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless. 
J. William FulbrightWhen public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled. 
J. William FulbrightThe citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute. 
Buckminster FullerTo expose a 4.2 Trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last one-hundred years will be a tall order of business. 
Buckminster FullerGreat nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery. 
Major General J.F.C. Fuller[S]ince the substitution of an industrial for the agricultural order of society and the conquest of the industrial by the financial, the government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semioccult power which, automatically, rather than calculatedly, pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron [of World War I]. 
Margaret FullerI know of no inquiry which the impulses of man suggests that is forbidden to the resolution of man to pursue. 
Justice Melville FullerTo hold that Congress has general police power would be to hold that it may accomplish objects not intrusted to the general government, and to defeat the operation of the 10th Amendment, declaring that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.' 
Justice Melville FullerThe power of the state to impose restraints and burdens upon persons and property in conservation and promotion of the public health, good order, and prosperity is a power originally and always belonging to the states, not surrendered to them by the general government, nor directly restrained by the constitution of the United States, and essentially exclusive. 
Justice Melville Weston FullerThe framers of the constitution employed words in their natural sense; and, where they are plain and clear, resort to collateral aids to interpretation is unnecessary, and cannot be indulged in to narrow or enlarge the text; but where there is ambiguity or doubt, or where two views may well be entertained, contemporaneous and subsequent practical construction is entitled to the greatest weight. 


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