Quotes

"This high official, all allow,
Is grossly overpaid;
There wasn't any Board, and now
There isn't any Trade."
The President of the Board of Trade (1922)

"This we learn from Watergate
That almost any creep'll
Be glad to help the Government
Overthrow the people."

"Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty."

"And they that rule in England,
In stately conclaves met,
Alas, alas, for England
They have no graves as yet."

"There is, in fact, no law or government at all [in Italy]; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them."

"The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think"

"There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against a political despotism", On Liberty (1859)

"Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant - society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it - its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself", On Liberty (1859)

"Liberty is the soul and element of commerce; she excites the genius and application of merchants who never cease to meditate on new methods to make discoveries and found enterprises. [Liberty] kindles a perpetual movement which produces abundance everywhere. The moment we limit the genius of merchants by restrictions, we destroy trade", quoted in Murray Rothbard, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith

"The greatest secret is to leave trade entirely free; men are sufficiently attracted to it by their own interests...Never have manufactures been so depressed, and trade also, since we have taken it into our heads to increase them by way of authority", quoted in Murray Rothbard, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith