"The strong government executes firmly and decisively. The weak one is fickle and inconsistent, and as a result has to be much more vicious to achieve any given level of security."

"This is how Rothbard so frequently reasons himself from Lockean absolutes to sheer insanity. He is a master of the reductio ad absurdum, but so stubborn that he defends the absurdum."

"The secret of power is that power and responsibility are the same thing."

"Most people in the West don't think their entire system of government is fundamentally, irreparably corrupt. Nor did most people in the Soviet Union."

"[T]he replacement of religion by idealism has allowed people who are essentially religious fanatics to achieve positions of unprecedented temporal supremacy, not only without arousing the alarm of reasonable, scientifically minded writers, but in fact enlisting their enthusiastic support."

"In the English language as we use it now, words like progressive and conservative are actually relative designations. Progressive means "left of the mainstream" and conservative means "right of the mainstream." When the mainstream shifts, these words have to shift as well, and the result is that many of the radical left-wing ideas of 1907 would be radical right-wing ideas in 2007."

"[F]ar from advancing toward tolerance for all, Western civilization is being overrun by an aggressive and intolerant monoculture."

"[T]axation is not theft. Taxation is rent."

"It is a commonly held misconception that elected politicians hold any significant power in the current Western system of government. At best they represent figureheads around which power coalesces, and you can follow the power by following the name, as if it were a small and dusty bobber attached to a large and energetic fish."

"In fact, the word racism is applied in almost exactly the same way, by almost exactly the same authorities, as atheism in 1811. It is an omnibus epithet for a tremendous variety of ideas and opinions which responsible authorities find dangerous or displeasing."

"Since the ideal of limited government—that is, the idea that sovereignty cannot be the rightful property of anyone, individual, family, or corporation—has become general, we have seen an extraordinary level of violence, which appears to be connected to the question of who should control and receive the revenues of sovereignty."

"In the twenty-first century, any writer whose work appears anywhere but his own blog is a shill. Or at least, he should be assumed to be compromised unless proven otherwise. The Internet has all the tools you need to write and be read without being beholden to anyone. If anyone rejects this independence, you have to wonder why."

"[R]evenue-maximizing government is not a medieval atrocity from the past, but a permanent feature of human history whose rare exceptions are unstable and undesirable."

"History is a branch of literature, not a field of science."

"A good way to find the most powerful people in the US is to find the most responsible people. No one in the US is scheming for power. A lot of them seem to be working for change. No one in the US is brainwashing the masses. A lot of them seem to be educating the public. No one in the US is ruling the world. A lot of them seem to be making global policies."

"[U]niversal faith in progress is evidence for, not against, decline."

"The root cause of terrorism is liberalism."

"Progressives have created a vast set of puppet cultures which enable them to describe their monoculture as a multiculture."

"The US military fails in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan because it is operating under a doctrine designed to fail."

"I can't imagine counting the number of times I've heard someone say "we should…" when what they really mean is "the government should…"."

"The problem today is that the people who think they are the most daring are in fact the most obsequious."

"[T]he continuity of tradition from Plymouth Rock to the United Nations is quite unmistakable."

"All decent, reasonable men are horrified by the idea that the government might control the press. None of them seem concerned at all that the press might control the government."

"[E]very kind of human action has become shrouded in a vast cloud of something called "ethics", which no one can define, but no one is allowed to question. An actual holy book would be a serious improvement."

"[T]he hardest part of thinking clearly is recognizing false assumptions that are universally shared."

"That's always the trouble with history. It always looks like it's over. But it never is."

"In fact, it's basically impossible to combine a system in which agreements stay agreed with one in which equality stays equal."

"Democratic politics is best understood as a sort of symbolic violence, like deciding who wins the battle by how many troops they brought."

"The only problem with colonialism was that it got nationalized. Which was enough. Colonialism chartered company–style is profitable. Colonialism as a government department is a disaster."

"[T]he modern world has largely replaced religion, defined as the veneration of paranormal beings, with idealism, defined as the veneration of mysterious universal principles."

"The essential idea of leftism is that the world should be governed by scholars."

"In fact, rationalism is to reason as scientism is to science."

"There is no institution to which one can go in order to receive a sound paleoconservative education. Most of the people in the idea trade would simply deny that such a thing exists. Safeway will sell you a whole, salted rhinoceros head before Harvard will teach you that Lincoln was a tyrant."

"The First Republic was the Congressional regime, which illegally abolished the British colonial governments. The Second Republic was the Constitutional regime, which illegally abolished the Articles of Confederation. The Third Republic was the Unionist regime, which illegally abolished the principle of federalism. The Fourth Republic is the New Deal regime, which illegally abolished the principle of limited government."

"Technical advances have masked, and continue to mask, the signs of decay that would otherwise be obvious."

"The other day I was tinkering around in my garage and I decided to build a new ideology."

"Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought. If you believe the status quo of 2007 is basically righteous, then you should believe the same thing if a time machine transported you to Vienna in 1907. But if you went around Vienna in 1907 saying that there should be a European Union, that Africans and Arabs should rule their own countries and even colonize Europe, that any form of government except parliamentary democracy is evil, that paper money is good for business, that all doctors should work for the state, etc., etc.—well, you could probably find people who agreed with you. They wouldn't call themselves "moderates", and nor would anyone else."

"Limited government is a recipe for corrupting the judiciary."

"You think you're charging the matador, but you're charging the cape."

"For example, in many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army."

"Replacing your own ideology is a lot like do-it-yourself brain surgery."

"[T]he state is simply a real-estate business on a very large scale."

"Universities are no longer institutions of scholarship. They are revolutionary seminaries. Their product is cadre."

"The New York Times could print nothing but lies for a year, and it would still be the most powerful institution in the world."

"An alien perspective is useful because it is not, at least not obviously, influenced by the ideas that are loose in the world today."

"In a democracy with a free press, the press is the government. Public opinion on any subject will naturally shift toward the opinions of those who explain that subject to the public."

"A good test for whether or not anything should continue to exist: if it didn't exist, would anyone invent it?"

"Hominids crave power, and they rationalize it as responsibility. No one ever achieved power by promising to enslave his followers. It is always about improving the world, at least from the perspective of prospective supporters. And it is almost always sincere. Insincere leaders are very rare, because hominids are very good at detecting insincerity. It is much easier to delude others if at the same time you delude yourself."