What It Means to Be a Libertarian Quotes

“A free society is most threatened not by uses of government that are obviously bad, but by uses of government that seem obviously good.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“it is said that roosters think the sun rises because they crow. Politicians are much the same.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“The entry of government into social insurance and then into a broader range of social interventions has caused incalculable human suffering. It has not produced a society in which fewer people are dependent than would otherwise have been the case. The welfare state has artificially, needlessly created a large dependent class. At the bottom is the underclass, stripped of dignity and autonomy, producing new generations socialized to their parents’ behavior.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“The genius of free human beings is that, given responsibility, they join together to take care of each other—to be their brothers’ keepers when their brother needs help. The triumph of an earlier America was that it had set all the right trends in motion, at a time when the world was first coming out of millennia of poverty into an era of plenty. The tragedy of contemporary America is that it abandoned that course. Libertarians want to return to it.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“But the people who have recently come to dominance and those who will come to dominance in the new century are increasingly aware—or can be made aware—that freedom still works in their own lives and that they effectively exempt themselves from most of the laws that take freedom away from other people.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“Government gets involved in whom a business may hire, how much it pays, and the benefits it provides. The government may make it next to impossible to fire someone without risking a lawsuit.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“I have been drawn to Milton Friedman’s argument for a negative income tax (NIT) that entirely replaces the existing system of income transfers and social services. The quid pro quo would be that the government withdraw altogether from every other form of interference in the organization of social life. Under such a plan the Department of Health and Human Services would become a check-writing office, and the social service agencies, bureaus, and offices scattered throughout government would close down.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow citizens.” That is Adam Smith talking, the apostle of laissez-faire.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“I propose another explanation: The reason so many Americans have become alienated from government since the poll of 1964 is that government really has become more incompetent and really has become alienated from the public it is supposed to serve. Political cycles and political fashion have nothing to do with it. American government isn’t what it used to be.”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“The main attraction of a generous NIT is that it could resolve an impasse. As matters stand, every element of limited government now faces a blanket objection: But what about poor people? An NIT could take poverty off the table by giving every adult an income above the poverty line. Doing so is probably the single most important step in getting the nation to think seriously about restoring limited government. The left has always claimed it wanted to end material poverty. A generous NIT would do that. Is the left willing to give up the apparatus of the welfare state in return? But”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“The entry of government into social insurance and then into a broader range of social interventions has caused incalculable human suffering. It has not produced a society in which fewer people are dependent than would otherwise have been the case. The welfare state has artificially, needlessly created a large dependent class. At the bottom is the underclass, stripped of dignity and autonomy, producing new generations socialized to their parents’ behavior. There”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation

“The goal of an end to poverty is so noble that governments have successfully used the end to justify the means. The means have been high taxation of the productive members of society and arrays of bureaucracies that increasingly regulate the lives of us all. 1”
― Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation