Collectivism Quotes

“Every socialist is a disguised dictator.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man's devotion to political illusion and self-destruction.”
― Robert Higgs

“There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.”
― Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics

“State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.”
― Lysander Spooner

“Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people’s natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they — the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate — are themselves the government.”
― Robert Higgs

“I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.”
― Frederick Douglass

“Government programs didn’t arise because the people demanded them or because the free market was unable to provide needed services. They arose because the politicians found them to be a convenient way to buy votes with other people’s money, a convenient way to enlarge their own power, a convenient way to reward their political cronies, and a convenient way to keep people dependent on government.”
― Harry Browne

“Collectivism is the "philosophy" of every cockroach and sewer rat: "If I want it, I must need it, and if I need it, I have a right to it, and if I have a right to it, it doesn't matter what I have to do to get it." The
fact that such an inherently animalistic, short-sighted, anti-human
viewpoint is now painted by some as compassionate and "progressive" does not make it any more sane, or any less dangerous.”
― Larken Rose

“People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.”
― Ayn Rand

“We (libertarians) find just as many things to rip on the left as we do on the right. People on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person to us.”
― Trey Parker

“When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you.”
― Frank Chodorov

“Government is a gang, but not merely as meritorious as a private gang because it claims legal legitimacy. It pillages and uses violence but under the cover of law, and seeks legitimacy not through competition but through the myth of the social contract.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.”
― Karl Hess

“On the opening day of law school at Yale, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.”
― Stephen L. Carter

“Even the richest person, provided the riches comes from mutually beneficial exchange, does not need to give anything "back" to the community, because this person took nothing out of the community. Indeed, the reverse is true: Enterprises give to the community. Their owners take huge risks, and front the money for investment, precisely with the goal of serving others. Their riches are signs that they have achieved their aims.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“What ranks above all else for economic and political reconstruction is a radical change of ideologies. Economic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“The instant that any government obtains a monetary printing press, it becomes a deeply dishonest government, empowered to rob people by stealth. A government with the power to print money knows no limits.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“Growing economies are built by billions of actors behaving according to their own interests, coordinated through institutions that no one in particular created.
Realizing this requires humility, a trait that is in short supply among would-be dictators, politicians, and bureaucrats, which is precisely why these groups are the proven enemies of prosperity in all times and places.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, this thinking goes. Economics is a matter of acquiring and allocating, not creating. This was the view of the world’s smartest people, all top philosophers and not stupid people, for many thousands of years before the age of the enlightenment. It still is.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“Ultimately, all arguments against markets are arguments against anarchy. Marx understood this much, at least.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“Commerce tends toward rewarding inclusion, broadness, and liberality. Tribal loyalties, ethnic and religious bigotries, and irrational prejudices are bad for business. The merchant class has been conventionally distrusted by tribalist leaders -- from the ancient to the modern world -- precisely because merchantcraft tends to break down barriers between groups.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“Individual liberty may be unable to solve every social problem, but collective violence is unable to solve any social problem.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“Irony: Taking a 170-year-old envy-based "philosophy," which has led to the murder of several hundred million human beings and the oppression of billions more, and calling it "progressive".”
― Larken Rose

“Industry rests on the iron law of economic determination. All history reveals that economic interests are the strongest ties that bind men together. That is not because men's hearts are evil & selfish. It is only a result of the inexorable law of life. The desire to live is the basic principle that compels men & women to seek a more suitable environment, so that they may live better & more happily.”
― Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller

“The only common good is the common liberty to pursue individual goods.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski, The Pith of Life: Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty

“The marketplace is an institution that teaches self-advancement, private acquisition, and the domination of nature. Its way of thinking is incompatible with the round river. Ecological harmony is a nonmarket value that takes a collective will to achieve.”
― Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination

“Collectives can’t make money from virtues they make money from weakness. Where there are no weak, they create weak. Cowards hate strong people.”
― Moxie Will, Something That Will Change Your Life: The Quest for Character, Courage, and What's Holding You Back From Genuine Happiness

“The great mass of humankind possesses an unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single organism.”
― Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

“If we lose our significance (character) we fall in ruin. The exploiters take over and sell freedom from fear, from guilt, from want. They excuse all corrupt actions. Collective status degenerates the human spirit.”
― Moxie Will, Something That Will Change Your Life: The Quest for Character, Courage, and What's Holding You Back From Genuine Happiness