“A 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.”

— L. Neil Smith

Zero Aggression Principle ("ZAP"), from "Who is a Libertarian?"
Variant: A 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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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American writer 1946

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“A libertarian is someone who can believe that the police are no more than a gang of thugs without realizing that in the absence of police, thugs will gather into gangs.”

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“In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right.”

Bryan Caplan (1971) American political scientist

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Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

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“Aside from anarcho-libertarianism, there are two contending ideas of libertarianism. In its broad sense, libertarianism is equated with civil liberties and political rights—what we usually mean by democracy. Sweden, Japan, and the United States would thus be almost equally libertarian. In its narrow sense, libertarianism is equivalent to classical liberal democracy, adding to democracy the requirement of a free market. India would then be less libertarian than Japan; Israel less libertarian than West Germany. Theoretically, liberal democracies should have significantly less violence than socialist democracies, but both should have significantly less than nondemocracies.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

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