[E]very individual spontaneously tries to find the place and the trade in which he can best increase National gain, if laws do not prevent him from doing so.
Every man seeks his own gain. This inclination is so natural and necessary that all Communities in the world are founded upon it. Otherwise Laws, punishments and rewards would not exist and mankind would soon perish altogether. The work that has the greatest value is always best paid, and what is best paid is most sought after.
As long as I can produce 6 Daler worth of goods a day in one trade, I do not willingly change to another that brings in 4. In the former case the Nation’s gain and mine was one-third more than in the latter.
It is thus undoubtedly a loss to the Nation when somebody is forced or is encouraged by public rewards to work in a trade other than the one in which he earns the highest profit; for this does not happen without such inducements, just as a merchant does not sell his Wares for less than what is offered him.
If he whose work someone has been forced to do gains as much as the worker has lost, it is not National gain; but if he gains more, only the difference is the gain of the Nation, but obtained through the oppression of its citizens.
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
[T]he most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration of the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps one or two generations. The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives. This means that . . . even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit. 
The essential trait in the moral consciousness, is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings.
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling. Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one can be sure any more that in a given case they will uphold the plainest mandate of the Constitution. On the contrary, everyone begins to be more or less convinced in advance that they won’t. Judges are chosen not because they know the Constitution and are in favor of it, but precisely because they appear to be against it.
Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.