For many libertarian-minded people, Ronald Reagan’s observations on government probably comes closest to their perceptions of “government.” Former U.S. President Reagan stated: “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer, just as liberalism is a misnomer for liberals… The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
Here are a dozen quotes, from some of history’s great thinkers, that best describe the biases libertarians hold against big government – well, government in general:
- All government is an ugly necessity. – G. K. Chesterton
- That government is best which governs least. – Henry David Thoreau
- In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny. – Albert Einstein
- Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
- Government can’t give us anything without depriving us of something else. – Henry Hazlitt
- You can’t give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad – in fact, to do anything it wants. – Henry Browne
- The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. – Milton Friedman
- Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. – Ronald Reagan
- Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
- Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. – Frederic Bastiat
- For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. – Jonathan Swift
- Man is not free unless government is limited. – Ronald Reagan
