Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.
Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to "society," to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force - and statism has always been the poltical corollary of collectivism.
Whoever has not two-thirds of his time to himself, is a slave.
If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his human right.
Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.
Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only system that stood for man's right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself.
I was brought up as a Republican. But when I realized that at the end of the day there wasn't much difference between a Democrat and Republican, I became a libertarian.
Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.
What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves, or it will not be yours.
Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his.
Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.
Music was the one thing that was just mine, and no one could take it from me. I created it, dictated it, and it made me not able to let go of it.
No one can take advantage of you without your permission.
A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.
I really approached the film as if it was a white big piece of paper and I was going to draw a picture on it. And whether that picture was good or bad, whatever people thought of it, what they could never take away was that it was my picture.
I don't belong to anyone else but myself. I have to make my own decisions. Happiness is defined by me.
I can't be a rose in any man's lapel.
Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to “Get Off My Property.” News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.
People should accept themselves for who they really are and be proud of that and take ownership of that first and learn that self love to really be happy.
So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.
I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away
At what point is a person old enough to say, 'I own my body, and I get to do what I want with it'?
