Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.

If people behaved like governments, you’d call the cops.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.