Quotes from Harry Browne

Whenever I say that America has become an empire, someone is sure to say I'm being ridiculous.

Voluntary association produces the free market - where each person can choose among a multitude of possibilities.

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.

The American way was for commerce, personal relationships, and religion to be voluntary. No one was forced to participate in something he didn't want.

Everyone will experience the consequences of his own acts. If his act are right, he'll get good consequences; if they're not, he'll suffer for it.

Each person is living for himself; his own happiness is all he can ever personally feel.

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.

You are where you are today because you have chosen to be there.

If the Fed had a war on abortion like its war on poverty or war on drugs, within five years men would be having abortions!

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.

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

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

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.

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".

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

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

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.

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.

You can't give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad - in fact, to do anything it wants.

A welfare state is frightened of every poor person who tries to get in and every rich person who tries to get out.

Some people object to libertarian ideas because there are too many irresponsible people in the world - people who will cause trouble if the government doesn't restrain them.

Can you think of a single area of government in which George Bush hasn't already made things worse than Bill Clinton did?

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