Harry Browne Quotes - Page 3

Everything we know about human nature and about government tells us that individuals using their own money will achieve far more good for themselves and far more for others than politicians spending money they didn't have to work to earn.

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.

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

Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats.

Government is a parasite-a cancer that by nature tries to spread deeper into society. Those who want to run others' lives won't give up and start minding their own business.

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.

We may not always recognize it, but government plays a bigger role in our lives than any other single person or institution. We spend nearly half of our lives working to pay for it. Children spend more time in government schools than they do with their parents. Birth, death, marriage, every area of our lives feels the influence of government.

The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a safe code of conduct - one that would earn everyone's approval. Your actions can always be condemned by someone - for being too bold or too apathetic, for being too conformist or too nonconformist, for being too liberal or too conservative. So it's necessary to decide whose approval is important to you.

You have only one life, and no one else will live it for you. Shouldn't you take the time right now to figure out what that life is all about?

I say that the Second Amendment doesn't allow for exceptions - or else it would have read that the right "to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise." And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong - because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience.

The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. It penalizes savings and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a free society, and we aren’t libertarians if we tolerate it.

If you ask the government to impose morality, then moral questions will be decided by whoever has the most political power.

But, actually, it is only Americans who say that our freedoms and prosperity are the reason foreigners hate us. If you ask the foreigners, they make it clear that it's America's bullying foreign policy they detest.

A secure individual...knows that the responsibility for anything concerning his life remains with himself-and he accepts that responsibility.

The Bill of Rights isn't some legalistic fine print. It was written to make our lives freer, more prosperous, and happier. By forsaking it, America has become no better than any other country in the world.

The best kept secret in the investing world: Almost nothing turns out as expected.

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

A Libertarian society of unfettered individualism spreads its benefits to virtually everyone - not just those who have the resources to seize political power.

The press is hostile to the idea of liberty. Most people in the press are for big government. Most people think that the solution to anything, whether it's health care problems, education, whatever it is - it's got to be more government.

Insurance is meant for extraordinary circumstances. You don't use car insurance to pay for oil changes or gasoline; you have it as protection in case you have a terrible accident or your car is stolen. You don't use homeowners' insurance to pay your electricity and water bills; you have it as protection in case a fire or other catastrophic event produces a large expense. Obviously, any insurance policy that promises to cover every small, ordinary expense is going to be much more expensive than one that covers only extraordinary expenses.

The best thing we can do for family values is to repeal the income tax. Then families will have the resources they need to implement their own values - and not those of the politicians. With the income tax gone, families will no longer be forced to have two breadwinners by necessity. Children will be raised better, family values will predominate, and crime will diminish. If your local school indoctrinates your child with values that are alien to you, you'll have the money to buy a private education.

Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.

Politicians are notoriously economically illiterate. And even when they know what would be the right thing, we don't really expect them to do it.

[Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964], many governments in southern states forced people to segregate by race. Civil rights advocates fought to repeal these state laws, but failed. So they appealed to the federal government, which responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But this federal law didn't simply repeal state laws compelling segregation. It also prohibited voluntary segregation. What had been mandatory became forbidden. Neither before nor after the Civil Rights Act were people free to make their own decisions about who they associated with.

It isn't possible to give government just a little control over the economy and our lives. Once we cede that power to government, it uses the power to take more from us. That's why every year the government controls more of our lives.