Happiness is impossible, and even inconceivable, to a mind without scope and without pause, a mind driven by craving, pleasure, or fear. To be happy, you must be reasonable, or you must be tamed. You must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world and what things in it can really serve you. To be happy, you must be wise. -George Santayana (1863-1952), (this quote appears around the inner perimeter of Ondaatje Hall in Massey Hall, University of Toronto) http://www.anielski.com/economics-of-happiness/new-ideas-stories/
It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things. -Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), _The Law_ (1850)
We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law. -President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), News Conference May 13, 1959 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11382
You own your life. To deny this is to imply that another person has a higher claim on your life than you do. No other person, or group of persons, owns your life nor do you own the lives of others. You exist in time: future, present, and past. This is manifest in life, liberty, and the product of your life and liberty [property]. The exercise of choices over life and liberty is your prosperity. To lose your life is to lose your future. To lose your liberty is to lose your present. And to lose the product of your life and liberty is to lose the portion of your past that produced it.
A product of your life and liberty is your property. Property is the fruit of your labour, the product of your time, energy, and talents. It is that part of nature that you turn to valuable use. And it is the property of others that is given to you by voluntary exchange and mutual consent. Two people who exchange property voluntarily are both better off or they wouldn't do it. Only they may rightfully make that decision for themselves.
At times some people use force or fraud to take from others without wilful, voluntary consent. Normally, the initiation of force to take life is murder, to take liberty is slavery, and to take property is theft. It is the same whether these actions are done by one person acting alone, by the many acting against a few, or even by officials with fine hats and fancy titles. --Ken Schoolland, professor of economics (1950-), Prologue to _The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible_ (1989) http://jonathangullible.com/philosophy-of-liberty-text
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