[T]he right to peaceably dispose of one’s property surely includes the right to trade, throw, or gamble it away. The Founding Fathers understood this. As Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence by day, he related in the evening by betting on backgammon, cards, and bingo. Benjamin Franklin...printed a good portion of the colonies’ playing cards. George Washington regularly bet on horses, gambled in card games, and bought lottery tickets. He also managed public lotteries, as did Franklin and John Hancock. Apparently, some notable Founders regarded gambling as part of their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.

[The] right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

If you don't have the right to do something wrong [to yourself], you don't have any rights at all.

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.

Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?

[T]hat which we call sin in others is experiment for us.

Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another. The exercise of the natural rights of every man, has no other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other man the free exercise of the same rights; and these limits are determinable only by the law.

Privacy is as necessary as company; you can drive a man crazy by depriving him of either.

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.

No loss by flood and lightening, no destruction of cities and temples by hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.

No one can imagine himself free if his communion with his fellows is interrupted or submitted to surveillance.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter IX

The associative principle...[t]he freer a nation, the more developed we find it in larger or smaller spheres; and the more despotic a government is, the more actively it suppresses all associations.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XII

Liberty of communion is one of the first requisites of freedom. Wherever, therefore, a government struggles against liberty...[n]ot only is liberty of the press abolished, but all communion is watched over...The spy, the mouchard, the dilater, the informer, the sycophant, are sure accompaniments of absolutism.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XXIII

[I]nterference and dictation are the essence of absolutism.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XXIII

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please.

[N]o drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle.

It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself.

Call it tolerance, call it respect: it is the mark of a free society that individuals are left free to pursue their own values, however wise or foolish, however enlightened or benighted, however pleasing or offensive to others.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

[H]ow many tobacco smokers resort to theft and prostitution in order to support their habit? Yet clinical studies have shown that tobacco is more habit forming than heroin.

[In outlawing tattooing], [t]he City of New York had, in fact, created a new class of criminals, based solely on artistic profession and personal expression.

The liberty the citizen enjoys is to be measured not by the governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the paucity of restraints it imposes on him.

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

What do you mean that people would ‘abuse’ drugs? How? By giving themselves pleasure? Should that be forbidden?

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state.

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have.