By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

By the age of fifteen, I had convinced myself that nobody could give a reasonable explanation of what he meant by the word 'God' and that it was therefore as meaningless to assert a belief as to assert a disbelief in God. Though this, in a general way, has remained my position ever since, I have always avoided unnecessarily to offend other people holding religious belief by displaying my lack of such belief, or even stating my lack of belief, if I was not challenged.

To create conditions in which competition will be as effective as possible, to prevent fraud and deception, to break up monopolies- these tasks provide a wide and unquestioned field for state activity.

Nothing is more securely lodged than the ignorance of the experts.

Unlike proportionality, progression provides no principle which tells us what the relative burden of different persons ought to be the argument based on the presumed justice of progression provides no limitation, as has often been admitted by its supporters, before all incomes above a certain figure are confiscated, and those below left untaxed.