Sheldon Richman famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Freedom is never more in peril than when politicians feel the pressure to 'do something.'
-- Sheldon Richman

#Pressure #Politics #Politician
Some conservatives are surprised to find people on the Left supporting the war in Afghanistan. It's not surprising at all...It is hard for the government to prosecute a war and not expand...Conservatives may think they can support war and oppose the expansion of the state, but that is like trying to square the circle. What makes them think they can contain the expansion?
-- Sheldon Richman

#War #Thinking #Squares
Why is Netanyahu pushing war? Among several reasons, demonizing Iran reduces pressure on Israel to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians. Many Israelis prefer building Jewish settlements on Palestinians' land instead. Moreover, Israel's rulers oppose any development-such as an Iranian-U.S. detente-that could diminish Israel's U.S.-financed hegemony in the region. War with Iran would be a catastrophe all around. Netanyahu and his hawkish American allies-the same people who gave us the disastrous Iraq war and ISIS-must be repudiated.
-- Sheldon Richman

#War #Israel #Isis
People with an investment in government power will torture logic like a medieval inquisitor rather than face the facts. ... There's a simple way to keep money out of politics: Keep politics out of our money.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Simple #Government #People
Today, the people who would use guns to violate rights have little trouble getting them, while those who would use them to defend their rights have increasing trouble getting them. ... Gun control is in effect a subsidy for criminals.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Gun #Rights #People
Perhaps the deterioration of American education is illustrated by the high correlation between the number of years a person has attended school and his inability to understand the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Education #School #Mean
The state is an organization of mere mortals who, by one dubious method or another, have been allowed to don the mantle of political legitimacy and to command obedience on pain of imprisonment even of those who never consented to the preposterous arrangement.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Pain #Organization #Political
We must acknowledge, of course, that what looks like failure to us Americans outside the privileged elite may not actually be failure for our overlords.
-- Sheldon Richman

#May #Looks #Acknowledge
The more power government has to provide things, the more power it has to dictate terms.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Government #Term
The draft is a monstrous violation of individual liberty, and even a good motive cannot make it otherwise. In a free society no one should be compelled to take up arms, or be forced to kill or risk being killed... But who can blame prospective volunteers from doubting that there is a threat from Iraq? The Bush administration has yet to make a persuasive argument to that effect.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Iraq #Volunteer #Risk
Apologists for activist government never tire of telling us that the benevolent state is our protector and that without it wed be at the mercy of monsters. It is about time that we understood that the U.S. government does more to endanger the American people than any imagined monsters around the worldâ€¦by pursuing its Grand Foreign Policy of meddling anywhere and everywhere.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Government #People #Doe
Among other grand achievements, F. A. Hayek had a remarkable career pointing out the flaws in collectivism. One of his keenest insights was that, paradoxically, any collectivist system necessarily depends on one individual (or small group) to make key social and economic decisions. In contrast, a system based on individualism takes advantage of the aggregate, or 'collective,' information of the whole society; through his actions each participant contributes his own particular, if incomplete, knowledge-information that could never be tapped by the individual at the head of a collectivist state.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Careers #Keys #Achievement
No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.
-- Sheldon Richman

#Government #Matter #Problem

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