Private enterprise creates; government destroys. That is the great economic lesson of our times and all times.

No state empowered to do what is supposedly necessary will restrain itself to those things. It will expand as much as public opinion will tolerate.

The state is a vast enterprise for declaring all sorts of things legal for itself that would be illegal for us.

It's a hard truth for Americans to face, that neither team in Washington is going to guard what we love the most. That is something we are going to have to face. Liberty is for the citizens to guard themselves.

The most absurd public opinion polls are those on taxes. Now, if there is one thing we know about taxes, it is that people do not want to pay them. If they wanted to pay them, there would be no need for taxes. People would gladly figure out how much of their money that the government deserves and send it in. And yet we routinely hear about opinion polls that reveal that the public likes the tax level as it is and might even like it higher. Next they will tell us that the public thinks the crime rate is too low, or that the American people would really like to be in more auto accidents.

To concede that there are social problems that cannot be corrected without the state is to give up the entire argument over the future of liberty itself.

Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority.