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L. Neil Smith Quotes (1946-2021)
Author, Writer, Activist
About L. Neil Smith
Lester Neil Smith III (12 May 1946 β 27 August 2021), also known by his nickname El Neil, was a libertarian science fiction author and political activist, whose works include the novels Pallas, The Forge of the Elders, and The Probablity Broach, each of which won the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award for best libertarian novel.
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful L. Neil Smith quotes.
βThe function of government is to provide you with service; the function of the media is to supply the Vaseline.β
βWhat I want to accomplish artistically amounts to nothing more than fulfilling the promise of the American Revolution.β
βLike the government, corporations must be bound with the chains of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights.β
βOf all the groups that sometimes claim to own your life, family is the hardest to defend your individual sovereignty from.β
βWe live in times of wonderful technology and crappy politics. The task before us now is not to let the latter destroy the former.β
βChoose your allies carefully: it's highly unlikely that you'll ever be held morally, legally, or historically accountable for the actions of your enemies.β
βIt is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profitable - effort to prevent the annihilation of the human race.β
βThereβs a big difference between keeping the peace, which is something folks do pretty well themselves, and enforcing the law, which is another thing altogether.β
βWe must oppose programs that would take food from the mouths of younger generations to buy prescription drugs for old people, and we must do it... for the children.β
βTry never to speak of your enemies by name. Any publicity is still publicity β and there are those for whom your disapproval constitutes a recommendation.β
βChoose your enemies carefully: you'll probably be known much better and far longer for who they were, than for anything else you ever managed to accomplish.β
βIf there were a generic one-word expression for 'one whose fear of the uncertainties of success moves him to surrender at the very moment of victory', it would be 'Republican'.β
βMoney, first and foremost, is a medium of communication, conveying the information we call 'price'. Government control of the money supply is censorship, a violation of the First Amendment. Inflation is a lie.β
βI'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution.β
βIt's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.β
βJust as liberalism is the main force that drives conservatism and maintains its popularity in some quarters, conservatism is the reason liberalism continues to enjoy the traction that it does in our poor civilization.β
βThanks 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.β
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L. Neil Smith on Libertarianism 2 quotes
βA libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.β
L. Neil Smith on Publicity
βTry never to speak of your enemies by name. Any publicity is still publicity β and there are those for whom your disapproval constitutes a recommendation.β
L. Neil Smith on Conservatism
βJust as liberalism is the main force that drives conservatism and maintains its popularity in some quarters, conservatism is the reason liberalism continues to enjoy the traction that it does in our poor civilization.β
L. Neil Smith on Compromise
βWorse than thieves, murderers, or cannibals, those who offer compromise slow you and sap your vitality while pretending to be your friends. They are not your friends. Compromisers are the enemies of all humanity, the enemies of life itself. Compromisers are the enemies of everything important, sacred, and true.β
L. Neil Smith on Control
βMost libertarians agree that all rights are, in effect, property rights, beginning with this fundamental right to self-ownership and control of one's own life. As owners of their own lives, individuals are completely free to do absolutely anything they wish with them β provided, of course, that it doesn't violate the identical right of others β whether the people around them approve of what they do or not.β
L. Neil Smith on Climate change denial
β"Global Warming" represents the last gasp of so-called "scientific progressivism", a mass of pitifully transparent falsehoods being employed to justify reducing mankind under the absolute despotism of "experts", the obvious implication being that we canβt even breathe responsibly. Environmentalism, Gaianism, is a religion on the basis of which β illegally under the First Amendment β public policy is being generated. Exhaling carbon dioxide is Original Sin, a reliable source of unlimited power and wealth to a Parasitic Class of politicians, bureaucrats, and cops with which our civilization now finds itself infested.β
L. Neil Smith on Censorship
βIt seems that Wikipedia.com, that splendid source for all kinds of information, is no longer dedicated to the truth, assuming it ever was. Individuals who have tried to edit the pages about Barack Obama β to reflect the incontrovertible fact that he is not God, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan β report that their contributions have vanished within minutes of posting them, and that they, themselves, have been suspended for three days following each 'infraction'. When some sort of official at Wikipedia was contacted about this, she stonewalled, claiming that this censorship was the work of 'volunteers', implying they were somehow beyond control of Wikipedia itself. Like the Red Guard and the Khmer Rouge were "volunteers."β
About L. Neil Smith
Lester Neil Smith III (12 May 1946 β 27 August 2021), also known by his nickname El Neil, was a libertarian science fiction author and political activist, whose works include the novels Pallas, The Forge of the Elders, and The Probablity Broach, each of which won the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award for best libertarian novel.