“In a laissez-faire society, there could exist no public institution with the power to forcefully protect people from themselves. From other people (criminals), yes. From one's own self, no.”

“One result for many people is a tendency to think that power comes from cruelty or indifference. But, in reality such things are not powerful, because cruelty and indifference emerge not from a self that is in posession of itself but from a self that is imprisoned in its own inner drama”

“The danger to a free society is not the guns owned by the citizens but an unconstrained government, especially one that is better armed than the public. An armed society is a self-governing society, just as a disarmed people are vulnerable to arbitrary power of every kind.”

“The first duty of the sovereign [is] that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, [which] can be performed only by means of a military force”

“There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions.”

“I finally came to realize is that a fair part of achieving happiness comes from understanding your own programming. And a fair amount of getting what you want from other people comes from understanding theirs.”