My Favourite Quotes Other peoples quotes that I'd like to read again, because they express an important idea. ...................................................................... I described the fierce pride of the mountain people; their self-reliance and love of liberty; the rebellion against taxation and all government restrictions or even "benefits"; how out of centuries of tyranny they had learned the lesson well that for every benefit, a freedom must always be surrendered. - Catherine Marshall, Christy ...................................................................... Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. And if they can't get you on grounds of your personal health, they'll do it on grounds of planetary health. - Mark Steyn, Live Free or Die! ...................................................................... Setting a theif (the government) to catch a theif doubles the amount of loot stolen. - Robert LeFevre, A Way to Be Free ...................................................................... Most people trade their freedom for more convenience, but we don't think how we put all our eggs in one basket that we don't control at all. All Apple users are at the mercy of a megacorp. Better don't offend someone online, your Mac may be cancelled... - dragandj ...................................................................... Why is eating animals okay but beastiality isn't? I've never understood that. - cuneicor ...................................................................... The existance of evil can never justify the existance of the State. If there is no evil, the State is unnecessary. If evil exists, the State is far too dangerous to be allowed to exist. - Stefan Molyneux ...................................................................... The government is the most successful criminal gang in a geographic area. - New Hampshire man on the radio, June 11, 2007 ...................................................................... The totalitarian State is the only kind of State. - Albert Jay Nock, A Matter of no Curiosity ...................................................................... Those who get themselves involved in the machinery of power politics, even for the purpose of destroying it, are bound to fail in their purpose. To destroy it, you have to stay out of it. If you want to cut down a tree, it is no use to climb into its branches. The desire to keep contact with something, even to destroy it, is a subtle and insidious illusion. - Vinoba Bhave ...................................................................... Though power corrupts, statists mistakenly believe that power is the cure for corruption. - Stefan Moluneux, Practical Anarchy ...................................................................... We live as subjugated people in an occupied territory. - Jeff Knabel ...................................................................... It is undeniable that human beings have killed other human beings for as long as human beings have lived on this planet, but to kill other human beings efficiently and in large numbers takes a state. - Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy ...................................................................... Taxation: The specific kind of armed robbery committed by the collective known as "government" and generally regarded as legitimate by its victims. - Murray Rothbard ...................................................................... The contradiction of hiring an agency of institutional violence to protect us from violence is even more foolhardy than buying a cat to protect one's parakeet. - Attributed to Linda and Morris Tannehill ...................................................................... He who loves his work never labors. - Jim Stovall, The Ultimate Gift ...................................................................... The whole world is awash in statism. - Carl Watner ...................................................................... Real criminals are simply cannibalistic parasites, the largest infestations of which are governments, feeding on the productive through taxation and regulation. - Dave Scotese ...................................................................... The only highwayman I ever met was the state itself - When I refused to pay the tax which is demanded for that protection which I did not want, itself has robbed me - When I have asserted the freedom it declared, it has imprisoned me. - Henry David Thoreau, Journal ...................................................................... As Evan Williams, a co-founder of Twitter, recently put it, "Convenience decides everything" Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences. (I prefer to brew my coffee, but Starbucks instant is so convenient I hardly ever do what I "prefer") Easy is better, easiest is best. Convenience has the ability to make other options unthinkable. Once you have used a washing machine, laundering clothes by hand seems irrational, even if it might be cheaper. After you have experienced streaming television, waiting to see a show at a prescribed hour seems silly, even a little undignified. To resist convenience - not to own a cellphone, not to use Google - has come to require a special kind of dedication that is often taken for eccentricity, if not fanaticism. But we err in presuming convenience is always good, for it has a complex relationship with other ideals that we hold dear. Though understood and promoted as an instrument of liberation, convenience has a dark side. With its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, it threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life. Created to free us, it can become a constraint on what we are willing to do, and thus in a subtle way it can enslave us. - Tim Wu, The Tyranny of Convenience ...................................................................... Why do smart people trade away so much money and freedom for just a little convenience? We do it all the time. We take the easy path, the simple shortcut or the long-term bad deal simply because it feels easier. The reason? Thinking is not worth the hassle. Cognitive load overwhelms us. Too many choices. The stakes feel too high. Every day, we make 1,000 times as many different decisions as our cavemen ancestors did. We're exhausted from all the decisions, and more than that, from the narrative we have about making them poorly. - Seth Godin, Cognitive load and the Convenience Problem ...................................................................... History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency. - Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed ...................................................................... Attention is like sunlight and water for a plant. What we pay attention to will grow. - Thich Nhat Hanh ...................................................................... If you are not happy with your current `crop,', it is up to you, starting today, to plant a new crop, to begin doing more of those things that lead to success--and to stop engaging in those activities that lead nowhere. - T. Harv Eker ...................................................................... Be - don't try to become. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance. - Rajneesh