Harry Browne Quotes

We have to understand that politicians don't want to reduce government. And it isn't because they think the spending cuts would hurt too many people. It's because they know it would hurt them. No matter what they say, neither Democrats nor Republicans want to give up the power that allows them to bestow favors and exemptions on friends.

To correct this, we don't need to turn back the clock. We only have to turn away from government — from the idea that we can cure social problems with a gun, from the fairy-tale belief that government can be made to work for anyone but the politicians. Coercion will never be as effective as freedom and cooperation. Government doesn't work. It is time to stop trying to fix it, and start finding ways to live with as little of it as possible.

There already are 20,000 federal gun laws and regulations on the books. If those laws haven't made America safe by now, why should we think 20,001 laws will suffice? We shouldn't. Instead, we need to recognize that those 20,000 laws are a principal cause of the current violence in society. They have made our children and all innocent adults much less safe -- by disarming innocent citizens and encouraging armed criminals to take advantage of us.

I think that many people hide their identity, tolerate restrictions, and remain in bad relationships because they're afraid of being lonely. But I wonder what they mean by 'lonely.' Aren't they very lonely when they deal with people who don't understand and appreciate them? I know I'd be lonely in such a situation.

Gun-control laws don't inhibit criminals, who rarely buy their guns in stores. But the laws do prevent you from defending yourself.

Given the results of the government's War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, we can assume that a War on Abortion will lead within five years to men having abortions.

A free person doesn't try to remake the world of his friends or his family. He merely appraises every situation by the simple standard: Is this what I want for myself? If it isn't, he looks elsewhere. If it is, he relaxes and enjoys it — without the problems most other people take for granted.

You are the sovereign authority for your life. You are the ruler who makes the decisions regarding how you will act, what information you will accept. You do it anyway — but if you recognize that you do it, you can gain much greater control over your future.

The politicians' stirring phrases are meant to keep our eyes averted from the reality of war — to make us imagine heroic young men marching in parades, winning glorious battles, and bringing peace and democracy to the world. But war is something quite different from that. It is your children or your grandchildren dying before they're even fully adults, or being maimed or mentally scarred for life. It is your brothers and sisters being taught to kill other people — and to hate people who are just like themselves and who don't want to kill anyone either. It is your children seeing their buddies' limbs blown off their bodies. It is hundreds of thousands of human beings dying years before their time. It is millions of people separated forever from the ones they love. It is the destruction of homes for which people worked for decades. It is the end of careers that meant as much to others as your career means to you. It is the imposition of heavy taxes on you and on other Americans and on people in other countries — taxes that remain long after the war is over. It is the suppression of free speech and the jailing of people who criticize the government. It is the imposition of slavery by forcing young men to serve in the military. It is goading the public to hate foreign people and races — whether Arabs or Japanese or Cubans or Serbs. It is numbing our sensibilities to cruelties inflicted on foreigners. It is cheering at the news of enemy pilots killed in their planes, of young men blown to bits while trapped inside tanks, of sailors drowned at sea. Other tragedies inevitably trail in the wake of war. Politicians lie even more than usual. Secrecy and cover-ups become the rule rather than the exception. The press becomes even less reliable. War is genocide, torture, cruelty, propaganda, and slavery. War is the worst cruelty government can inflict upon its subjects. It makes every other political crime — corruption, bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty — seem petty.

No one ever died from smoking marijuana, but millions of people have died by believing politicians. So why is marijuana outlawed while politicians are still legal?

If you earn whatever you want, you know that it's yours. Then life is an adventure. The uncertainty of the future is a challenge, not a source of dread.

To be honest, you must know yourself well. And that involves integrity — which is honesty's twin asset. Integrity is knowing yourself well enough to be able to mean what you say.

People seek government action because they don't approve of what other people choose to do with their lives. They want to overrule the decisions others have made concerning the use of their own time and money.

I call this The Dictator Syndrome. You see suffering or danger, and in your imagination you see a government program eliminating it. But in the real world the program would operate as you expect only if you were an absolute dictator — having at your disposal all the government's power to compel everyone to do things your way.

Freedom is more often lost by false assumptions than by the power of one's enemies.