I was a loyal Soviet citizen until the age of 20. What it meant to be a loyal Soviet citizen was to say what you were supposed to say, to read what you were permitted to read, to vote the way you were told to vote, and at the same time to know that it was all a lie.

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

When I am Weaker than You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom because that is according to my principles.

After the uprising of the 17th of June, the Secretary of the Writers Union had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee stating that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could win it back only by redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?

If you want to expel religion from our European civilization, you can only do it by means of another system of doctrines; and such a system would from the outset take over all the psychological characteristics of religion—the same sanctity, rigidity and intolerance, the same prohibition of thought—for its own defense.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.

Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.

I cannot be a communist now because I believe in only one thing, liberty. First, I would look after myself and do my work. Then I would care for my family. Then I would help my neighbor. But the state I care nothing for. All the state has ever meant to me is unjust taxation. I believe in the absolute minimum of government.

If I ever regain the vigor and energy which I had on a few occasions... I will vent my anger in terrifying books. I want to turn the whole human race against me. The delight this would give me would console me for everything.

The supreme power extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.

They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.

Stability leads to instability. The more stable things become and the longer things are stable, the more unstable they will be when the crisis hits.

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery — isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.

Equality is at once the most natural and the most chimerical thing in the world: natural when it is limited to rights, unnatural when it attempts to level goods and powers. Not all citizens can be equally strong; but they can all be equally free.

The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity.

The creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, faculties, skills. The more familiar the parts, the more striking the new whole.

Beware of overconcern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.

Who is wise? He who learns from every man.

I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy… censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

The public were not being asked to believe what they heard, they were merely being trained to repeat it.

Progressivism consists in making communist arguments as though they emanated spontaneously from independent speculation.

As a protection against financial illusion or insanity, memory is far better than law.

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

We and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

A man living outside the circle of delusion which imprisons most men has a question of everyone he meets, usually asked silently, 'Can you get outside of yourself for even a split second to hear something you have never heard before?' Those who learn to hear will enter a new world.

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the high-brow periodicals.