Leonard E. Read Quotes (1898-1983)

“'What would you cut out of government expenditures?' I cannot answer that question. Ask me what I would leave in.”

“Civilization, I sometimes think, is little more than a thin veneer of culture covering a host of red-assed baboons!”

“I have never met a single European who had a clean, clear-cut understanding of the principles of strictly limited government.”

“Self-promotion is self-defeating. No matter how brilliant an individual, one becomes instinctively "leery" when he toots his own horn.”

“Coercion doesn't change from evil to good if employed by two against one or by 200 million against one. Arithmetic has no bearing on moral principles.”

“Government cannot, in logic and justice, possess any powers or rights that are not properly the powers and rights of any or all of the individuals who establish it.”

“All creative thought and creative action is strictly personal. A committee, any collective, cannot think. It cannot act creatively. It can only act destructively. It can exercise brute force.”

“At one end of the intellectual spectrum are the wise, those who know they don't know much; and on the other end are the egotists, those who have little, if any, awareness of how little they know.”

“Whenever government assumes responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of citizens, the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is politically expedient to cover them by direct tax levies.”

“Clever phrases or cliches such as "Human rights are above property rights" or "What would you do, let them starve?" have influenced untold numbers of Americans to vote for charlatans and to advocate legal thievery.”

“There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism.”

“An action is morally good which aids or promotes this unfolding of self and it is morally bad if it inhibits or destroys the process. It, of course, goes without saying that this does not include one's own rise at the expense of another.”

“Government can no more use coercion against the life or property of a person and, at the same time, perform its proper function of defending the life or property of that person than I can practice Christian charity on another while robbing him.”

“A fact rarely suspected, let alone understood, is that businessmen are by no means the chief beneficiaries of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Many business ventures fail entirely. Who then are the beneficiaries? The masses!”

“Once an activity has been socialized, it is impossible to point out, by concrete example, how men in a free market could better conduct it. How, for instance, can one compare a socialized post office with private postal delivery when the latter has been outlawed?”

“Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Republicanism, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing.”

“If we are free to be our varietal selves; if there be no obstructions to the exchange of ideas and goods; if we have the liberty to move; society and the persons who compose it will be in as perfect a state as it is possible for it or them to be at any given time.”

“Were it necessary to bring a majority into a comprehension of the libertarian philosophy, the cause of liberty would be utterly hopeless. Every significant movement in history has been led by one or just a few individuals with a small minority of energetic supporters.”

“Why do tourists gape so eagerly at this sort of thing [Château de Fontainebleau]? Most people, I believe, aspire to what these agents and sycophants of the state achieved: ease without work, services for themselves by edict, power and position by wishing plus, of course, a little intrigue.”

“The proper function of government does not include government's intrusion into economic activities;..it should be limited to the use only of repellent or defensive force, protecting equally the rights to life and property of all;...government is properly a juridical, not an economic problem.”

“The more complex our economy, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely. No mind of man nor any combination of minds can even envision, let alone intelligently control, the countless human energy exchanges in a simple society, to say nothing of a complex one.”

“Socialism depends upon and presupposes material achievements which socialism itself can never create. Socialism is operative only in wealth situations brought about by motes of production other than its own. Socialism takes and redistributes wealth, but it is utterly incapable of creating wealth.”