Quote

Those who sell their liberty for security are understandable, if pitiable, creatures. Those who sell the liberty of others for wealth, power, or even a moments respite deserve only the end of a rope.

L. Neil Smith

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L. Neil Smith
Age: 75 †
Born: 1946
Born: May 12
Died: 2021
Died: August 27
Author
Novelist
Politician
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Denver
Colorado
Lester Neil Smith III
Even
Creatures
Wealth
Pitiable
Security
Respite
Liberty
Understandable
Moments
Rope
Others
Sell
Ends
Sells
Power
Deserve

More quotes by L. Neil Smith

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As Al Franken has demonstrated, liberals give lousy talk radio.
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Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220 pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110 pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. Is that evil? Is that wrong?
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Socialism is, among other things, the political habitat of low self-esteem, incompetence, self-loathing, and a willingness to steal - or have stolen for you what you are unable or unwilling to work for. Socialism is a philosophy fit only for slugs, leaches, and mosquitoes.
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Today, human civilization is drowning in a sea of lies.
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Never Forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn't allow him to do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.
L. Neil Smith
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I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.
L. Neil Smith
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I'm tired of living in a police state.
L. Neil Smith
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A libertarian presidential candidate isn't going to win anyway, so he can afford to say that all taxation is theft, and it isn't the job of a libertarian presidential candidate to cook up new ways to commit theft.
L. Neil Smith
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This planet is 15 million years overdue for an asteroid strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs.
L. Neil Smith
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We're most likely to lose our rights when we allow ourselves to be persuaded to deprive others of theirs.
L. Neil Smith
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Violent crime is a solved problem - all they have to do is repeal the laws that keep those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women from arming themselves, and violent crime evaporates like dry ice on a hot summer day.
L. Neil Smith
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There's nothing noble or selfless about politicians and there never has been. Putting it charitably, Profiles in Courage is a compendium of Democratic mythology, ghostwritten for an ambitious young Massachusetts Senator who never did a thing for himself if he could pay to have it done by others.
L. Neil Smith
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Forget 'redeeming social value,' dirty pictures are fun. When I die I want my ashes sprinkled over a nudist camp.
L. Neil Smith
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I'll remind you all, however, that for government, existence is a privilege, not a right.
L. Neil Smith
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Like the government, corporations must be bound with the chains of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights.
L. Neil Smith
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[N]o one's ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It's just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred.
L. Neil Smith
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People in the mass media tend more and more every day to look and act like elected and appointed officials.
L. Neil Smith
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There's a big difference between keeping the peace, which is something folks do pretty well themselves, and enforcing the law, which is another thing altogether.
L. Neil Smith
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Lincoln emancipated nobody. The man freed not a single slave.
L. Neil Smith
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You cannot force me to agree with you. You can force me to act as though I agree with you but then you'll have to watch your back. All the time.
L. Neil Smith