It is the greatest folly of which a man can be capable to sit down with a slate and pencil to plan out a new social world.

In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats, because aristocrats had political influence, in order to corrupt them. Here pensions are given to the great democratic mass, because they have political power, to corrupt them.

Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty.

The yearning after equality [in economic outcome] is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for satisfying that yearning which can do aught else than rob A to give to B; consequently all such plans nourish some of the meanest vices of human nature, waste capital, and overthrow civilization.

Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine - Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way.

Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone.

It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.