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If conservatives really believed in individual liberty, as they endlessly claim and if they used both halves of their brains then they'd be libertarians. Instead, they sabotage themselves, and their cause, by constantly generating one spurious reason after another to deprive other people of their freedom.

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
People
Brain
Claim
Libertarians
Half
Believed
Generating
Freedom
Claims
Sabotage
Individual
Constantly
Deprive
Another
Cause
Endlessly
Used
Instead
Conservatives
Reason
Liberty
Brains
Spurious
Really
Causes
Libertarian
Halves

More quotes by L. Neil Smith

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Thanks to guys like Boss Tweed, famous for saying, 'I don't give a damn who does the voting, as long as I do the nominating,' there hasn't been an honest election in the USA since sometime around the War Between the States.
L. Neil Smith
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Lincoln emancipated nobody. The man freed not a single slave.
L. Neil Smith
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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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Government is about stealing and nothing else. That's all it's ever been about. That's all it'll ever be about.
L. Neil Smith
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And yet, what is bravery but the capacity to reject our fears, ignore and supress them, then go on to do whatever it is we are afraid to do.
L. Neil Smith
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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?
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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It is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profitable - effort to prevent the annihilation of the human race.
L. Neil Smith
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I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.
L. Neil Smith
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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.
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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As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be.
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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The fact is that surveys which media people openly admit to show that fewer than twelve percent of their customers believe they're doing a good job, while the average profit margin in television is in the neighborhood of eighty percent.
L. Neil Smith
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What I want to accomplish artistically amounts to nothing more than fulfilling the promise of the American Revolution.
L. Neil Smith
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[E]lections amount to little more than choosing between the scum that floats to the top of the barrel and the dregs that settle to the bottom.
L. Neil Smith
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The Bill of Rights isn't about us, it's about them . It isn't a list of things we're permitted to do, it's a list of things they aren't allowed even to consider.
L. Neil Smith
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If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything - without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.
L. Neil Smith
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I'm as radical as libertarians come.
L. Neil Smith
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What happened in America in the 1860s was a war of secession, a war of independence, no different in principle from what happened in America in the 1770s and 1780s.
L. Neil Smith