Harry Browne Quotes

Whatever the price, identify it now. What will you have to go through to get where you want to be? There is a price you can pay to be free of the situation once and for all. It may be a fantastic price or a tiny one -- but there is a price.

Social Security is inherently unsound for the simple reason that it's a political program run by politicians for political purposes...Social Security operates on a very simple principle: the politicians take your money from you and squander it.

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

You don't have to buy from anyone. You don't have to work at any particular job. You don't have to participate in any given relationship. You can choose.

The important thing is to concentrate upon what you can do - by yourself, upon your own initiative.

The communitarians may say you've been enjoying too much individual freedom, and that you must give up some of that for the benefit of the community. But they really mean that they want more power over your life - to force you to subsidize, obey and conform to their choices.

[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.

I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions.

It has long been apparent that many people in the media don't believe you're competent to make your own decisions.

There's nothing shameful in acknowledging that you don't have the answers to every question about life. Just accept the fact that you know only a fraction of what's going on in the world. You don't have to attach explanations in terms of a special revelation of God's will, a glimpse at the supernatural, evidence of a conspiracy, or anything else.

When people do things for you, it's because they want to - because you, in some way, give them something meaningful that makes them want to please you, not because anyone owes you anything.

Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other.

Democratic politicians want to solve the crisis of poor education by taking more of your money and using it to reduce classroom sizes in the government schools. Republican politicians want to solve the crisis by taking more of your money to provide vouchers to a handful of the poorest students in each area, paying for a part of the tuition expense at private schools. But before long this 'reform' would make those private schools indistinguishable from the government schools ... Vouchers are an excellent way for the government to increase control over private schools.

No one ever died from smoking marijuana, but millions of people have died by believing politicians.

You owe it to yourself to be the best person possible. Because if you are, others will want to be with you, want to provide you with the things you want in exchange for what you're giving to them.

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.

The government's War on Poverty has transformed poverty from a short-term misfortune into a career choice.

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.

Government doesn't work. That's the first lesson we must learn if we want to improve society.