"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations)

"The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals [would] assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it." (Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations)

"The number of ministers, of magistrates, of officers, and of servants, who filled the different departments of the state, was multiplied beyond the example of former times; and (if we may borrow the warm expression of a contemporary) 'when the proportion of those who received exceeded the proportion of those who contributed, the provinces were opporessed by the weight of tributes.'" (Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

"The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God." (Isabel Paterson, The Humanitarian with the Guillotine.)

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." (CS Lewis in God in the Dock)

"My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State...and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate!" (JRR Tolkien, the Letters of JRR Tolkien)

"There is no other possibility than either the order governed by the impersonal discipline of the market or that directed by the will of a few individuals; and those who are out to destroy the first are wittingly or unwittingly helping to create the second." (Freidrich A Hayek in The Road to Serfdom)

"When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself." (Freidrich A Hayek in The Road to Serfdom)

"If we have to have an incoherent, self-loathing 'peace' movement, then women showing off their hooters in support of a culture that would stone them to death for showing off their ankles is about as good as it's gonna get." (Mark Steyn in the National Post)

"I resent the characterization of M. Le Pen as 'extreme right'. I'm an extreme right-wing madman myself, and it takes one to know one. M. Le Pen is an economic protectionist in favour of the minimum wage, lavish subsidies for France's incompetent industries and inefficient agriculture; he's anti-American and fiercely opposed to globalization. In other words, he's got far more in common with Naomi Klein than with me." (Mark Steyn in the National Post)