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Libertarianism

''This article is about the political philosophy and movement that uphold liberty as a core principle. For the type of libertarianism stressing both individual freedom and social equality, see Left-libertarianism.''

 (from Latin: libertas, meaning "freedom") is a political philosophy and movement that upholds liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximize and autonomy, emphasizing individualism, freedom of choice and voluntary association. Libertarians share a skepticism of authority and state power, but they diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and s.

A

 * In markets where freedom of choice is hampered by inadequate information, or where rational choice requires extraordinary expertise, there is no acceptable alternative to government regulation. Contrary to libertarian preachments, it would be imprudent to expect an air traveler to do research required to avoid unsafe airlines, or for the automobile buyer to find out which cars are affected with rear-wheel lockup, or for the pregnant woman to conduct chemical tests to avoid drugs which may kill or deform her unborn child. Here social regulation is imperative, either by providing indispensable information to consumers or by prohibiting hazardous products outright. Here the privilege of free choice in a free market is the freedom to play Russian roulette with health and safety, and to impose the cost of death or injury on families or society.
 * Walter Adams and James Brock, in The Bigness Complex (1986), p. 235

 * Libertarians are self-governors in both personal and economic matters. They believe government's only purpose is to protect people from coercion and violence. They value individual responsibility, and tolerate economic and social diversity.
 * Advocates for Self Government (1995)

 * He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.
 * Isaac Asimov, in I. Asimov : A Memoir (1994), p. 308

B

 * Libertarians … advocate a high degree of both economic and personal liberty. Libertarians believe that people have the right to freely engage in both commercial and private activities. Libertarians consistently uphold the right of individuals to control their own lives in all respects.
 * David Bergland, 1984 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, in Libertarianism In One Lesson (Ninth Edition, 2005)

 * In the libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used force—actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud. Libertarians believe this code should be applied to actions by governments as well as by individuals.
 * David D. Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer, Free Press, (1998) p. 2

 * Because libertarians do have a basic set of principles, you know that a libertarian will always come out on the side of any issue which maximizes personal liberty and responsibility — and which reduces government control over the individual.
 * David Bergland, in Libertarianism In One Lesson (Ninth Edition, 2005)

 * I am hard put to find something to say to people who still think libertarianism has something to do with liberty. A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs.
 * Bob Black, in "The Libertarian as Conservative" (1984), published in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986)

 * There are libertarians who try to retrieve libertarianism from the Libertarian Party just as there are Christians who try to reclaim Christianity from Christendom and communists (I’ve tried to myself) who try to save communism from the Communist parties and states. They (and I) meant well but we lost.
 * Bob Black, in "The Libertarian as Conservative" (1984), published in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986)

 * You might object that what I’ve said may apply to the minarchist majority of libertarians, but not to the self-styled anarchists among them. Not so. To my mind a right-wing anarchist is just a minarchist who’d abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else. But this incestuous family squabble is no affair of mine. Both camps call for partial or complete privatization of state functions but neither questions the functions themselves. They don’t denounce what the state does, they just object to who’s doing it. This is why the people most victimized by the state display the least interest in libertarianism. Those on the receiving end of coercion don’t quibble over their coercers’ credentials. If you can’t pay or don’t want to, you don’t much care if your deprivation is called larceny or taxation or restitution or rent. If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment from enslavement only in degree and duration.
 * Bob Black, in "The Libertarian as Conservative" (1984), published in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986)

 * The libertarian phobia as to the state reflects and reproduces a profound misunderstanding of the operative forces which make for social control in the modern world. If — and this is a big “if,” especially where bourgeois libertarians are concerned — what you want is to maximize individual autonomy, then it is quite clear that the state is the least of the phenomena which stand in your way.
 * Bob Black, in "The Libertarian as Conservative" (1984), published in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986)

 * Unlike side issues like unemployment, unions, and minimum-wage laws, the subject of work itself is almost entirely absent from libertarian literature. Most of what little there is consists of Randite rantings against parasites, barely distinguishable from the invective inflicted on dissidents by the Soviet press, and Sunday-school platitudinizing that there is no free lunch — this from fat cats who have usually ingested a lot of them.
 * Bob Black, in "The Libertarian as Conservative" (1984), published in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986)

 * Libertarians complain that the state is parasitic, an excrescence on society. They think it’s like a tumor you could cut out, leaving the patient just as he was, only healthier. They’ve been mystified by their own metaphors. Like the market, the state is an activity, not an entity. The only way to abolish the state is to change the way of life it forms a part of. That way of life, if you call that living, revolves around work and takes in bureaucracy, moralism, schooling, money, and more. Libertarians are conservatives because they avowedly want to maintain most of this mess and so unwittingly perpetuate the rest of the racket. But they’re bad conservatives because they’ve forgotten the reality of institutional and ideological interconnection which was the original insight of the historical conservatives.
 * Bob Black, in "The Libertarian as Conservative" (1984), published in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986)

 * The issue should not be government. It should not be unlimited and unalloyed idolatry of personal property, which is the path that the libertarian movement has gone down.
 * David Brin Libertarianism: Finding a New Path

 * One difference between libertarianism and socialism is that a socialist society can't tolerate groups of people practicing freedom, but a libertarian society can comfortably allow people to choose voluntary socialism. If a group of people — even a very large group — wanted to purchase land and own it in common, they would be free to do so. The libertarian legal order would require only that no one be coerced into joining or giving up his property.
 * David D. Boaz, in "The Coming Libertarian Age" in Cato Policy Report (January/February 1997)

 * Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people — to women, to people of different religions and different races — is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.
 * David D. Boaz, in "Key Concepts of Libertarianism" (1 January 1999)

 * Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that "people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything." Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.
 * David D. Boaz, in "Key Concepts of Libertarianism" (1 January 1999)

 * Libertarians have always battled the age-old scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class — which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict.
 * David D. Boaz, in "Key Concepts of Libertarianism" (1 January 1999)

 * We should never define Libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals or conservatives — nor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are Libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times.
 * Harry Browne, in The Libertarian stand on abortion" (21 December 1998)

C

 * One of the more pretentious political self-descriptions is "Libertarian." People think it puts them above the fray. It sounds fashionable and, to the uninitiated, faintly dangerous. Actually, it's just one more bullshit political philosophy.
 * George Carlin, in Napalm and Silly Putty (2002), p. 261

 * The difference is libertarians strive for government to have a smaller economic footprint so that individuals can have a larger one.
 * Jon Caldara“Caldara: Don’t believe the media hype, Jared Polis is no libertarian” The Complete Colorado (May 29, 2019)

 * Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. ... When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations.
 * Kevin Carson, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2007), Chapter 4

 * Libertarian in the United States has a meaning which is almost the opposite of what it has in the rest of the world traditionally. Here, libertarian means ultra right-wing capitalist. In the European tradition, libertarian meant socialist. So, anarchism was sometimes called libertarian socialism, a large wing of anarchism, so we have to be a little careful about terminology. I was drawn pretty early, maybe in the early teens, towards anarchist thinking and activities, and even spent a lot of time in anarchist bookstores and picking up pamphlets and talking to mostly Europeans who had fled or had been driven out of a pretty ugly continent in the 1930s.
 * Noam Chomsky, in "Reluctant Icon" (interview, c. 1990)

 * There's a long tradition of Anarchism — libertarian thought outside the United States, which is diametrically opposed to the positions of the Libertarian Party — but it's unknown here. That's the dominant position of what's always been considered Socialist Anarchism. Now, the Libertarian Party, is a capitalist party. It's in favor of what I would regard a particular form of authoritarian control. Namely, the kind that comes through private ownership and control, which is an extremely rigid system of domination — people have to... people can survive, by renting themselves to it, and basically in no other way... I do disagree with them very sharply, and I think that they are not … understanding the fundamental doctrine, that you should be free from domination and control, including the control of the manager and the owner.
 * Noam Chomsky, in an appearance on Donahue/Pozner (14 February 1992)

 * There isn't much point arguing about the word "libertarian." It would make about as much sense to argue with an unreconstructed Stalinist about the word "democracy" — recall that they called what they'd constructed "peoples' democracies." The weird offshoot of ultra-right individualist anarchism that is called "libertarian" here happens to amount to advocacy of perhaps the worst kind of imaginable tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. If they want to call that "libertarian," fine; after all, Stalin called his system "democratic." But why bother arguing about it?
 * Noam Chomsky, on ZNet (24 September 2009)

 * I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one.
 * Ward Churchill, in Z Magazine, vol. 8, p. 32

D

 * There is this very strong libertarian belief that inequality is not a proper area of study for economists. Even if you were to worry about inequality, it would be best if you just kept quiet and lived with it.
 * , quoted in Angus Deaton on inequality: 'The war on poverty has become a war on the poor' for The Guardian (7 October 2023)

 * This country is a one-party country. Half of it is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn't make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians.
 * Hugh Downs, as a guest on Politically Incorrect (31 March 1997)

F

 * Both Rand and Rothbard, overeager to seal the case for expelling the state from the economy that economic arguments alone apparently could not clinch, had to cast themselves as participants in a Manichean struggle against unscrupulous wrongdoers with impure motives. This already betokened a deep complacency about the validity of their own views, such that anyone who disagreed with them must be a deliberate enemy of truth; and it marked the beginning of the anti-intellectualism that continues to disfigure libertarian thought. The virtually unanimous opposition of scholars and intellectuals to a view as self-evidently true as libertarianism seems to be to Rand and Rothbard must, they thought, be a function of the intellectuals' perversity (rather than of weaknesses of libertarian argument and evidence).
 * Jeffrey Friedman, “What’s wrong with Libertarianism,” Critical Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1997), p. 452.

 * The attraction of free markets … is that they have self-correcting features that place far smaller demands on anyone’s knowledge than democracy does. Each person concerns herself with her own life and the system, supposedly, runs itself. Interpreted in this way, the literature on public ignorance could form the basis of the consequentialist argument the postwar free-market economists sought, but never found … against all government economic intervention: for even if it cannot be shown, on economic grounds, that every intervention hurts more than it helps, it might be shown, on political grounds, that by opening the door to helpful interventions, we begin sliding toward the unhelpful ones on a slope slippery with public ignorance.
 * Jeffrey Friedman, “What’s wrong with Libertarianism,” Critical Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1997), p. 455.

G

 * Most left-wing ideologues are dangerous because they don't recognize that they have an ideology. They simply think they're doing the obvious and right thing. Libertarians of the stripe I've been talking about have a different problem. They know they have an ideology. They know it and they love it. And they love it so much they are unwilling to loosen their clench on it when reality — and more importantly, morality — demand it. Just as they consider "state violence" to be always and everywhere evil, they fetishize change, assuming it to be always and everywhere good.
 * Jonah Goldberg, in "The Libertarian Lobe" in National Review Online (22 June 2001)

 * Young Libertarians have so much more energy and verve than pretty much anybody else these days, young conservatives included. Libertarianism is an ideology best suited for young folks. It compellingly tells kids everything they want to be told. Self-interest is not merely indulged; it is sanctified. Experience — represented either in the traditions accumulated over the centuries or simply in the lessons learned by one's elders — has no greater authority than the self-gratifying whims of a single person. In the world of these young libertarians, the utopian future is one where they get to share with the world the full benefit of their inexperience.
 * Jonah Goldberg, in "The Libertarian Lobe" in National Review Online (22 June 2001)

H

 * Libertarianism is, as the name implies, the belief in liberty. Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property, and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life — as long as he simply respects the same right of others to do the same.
 * Sharon Harris, President, Advocates for Self-Government, "What is Libertarianism?"

 * For libertarians, freedom entails the right of people to live their lives any way they choose, so long as their conduct is peaceful. For conservatives, freedom entails the right of government to do just about anything it wants, even if its conduct is violent.
 * Jacob G. Hornberger, in "The Meaning of Freedom" (2001)

 * Too many libertarians hate the left more than they love liberty... I confess to some schadenfreude myself as the left squirms in the aftermath of a defeat they didn’t see coming. But... Now, more than ever, libertarians need good-hearted, open-minded people on the left as allies in an attempt to preserve the things we agree on. We should never let our frustrations with the left become more important than preserving the liberal order... No libertarianism worth its name should ever accept those kinds of fundamental restrictions on the rights of humans, and their freedom to peacefully provide for themselves and their families, in exchange for the pot of gruel of the promise of some tax cuts and deregulation. Nor should any libertarianism worth its name think for a second that there is some sort of equal moral weighting between those promised economic policies and the return of state-sponsored torture... There’s no moral equivalence here. There are just a whole lot of Very Bad Things that are really happening right now. You can create all the balance sheets you want, but if you don’t understand that some things are far more important than others, you are not blind like the impartial scale of justice, but blind instead to the future of liberalism that hangs in that balance.
 * , "Liberalism in the Balance" (January 2017), Bleeding Heart Libertarians

I

 * The basic premise of libertarianism is that each individual should be free to do as he or she pleases so long as he or she does not harm others. In the libertarian view, societies and governments infringe on individual liberties whenever they tax wealth, create penalties for victimless crimes, or otherwise attempt to control or regulate individual conduct which harms or benefits no one except the individual who engages in it.
 * Definition written by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, during the process of granting the Advocates for Self Government status as a non-profit educational organization, as quoted in Healing Our World : The Other Piece of the Puzzle (1992) by

 * The Libertarians, of whom I'm rather fond, are running Harry Browne. Libertarians are, just as they claim, principled and consistent — they believe in individual liberty. Commendable as they are, and despite their reliability as allies in civil liberties struggles, you may notice that Libertarians sometimes prove that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and that there is a difference between logic and wisdom.
 * Molly Ivins, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (7 September 1996)

J

 * What was the old saying? That if you weren't a Democrat in college, you didn't have a heart. And if you weren't a Republican in later life, you didn't have a brain. Well, I happen to think libertarian kind of encompasses hearts and brains both. And that's what we all are about.
 * Gary Johnson, in an interview with ´s John Harwood (August 22, 2016)

K

 * The libertarians are rejected because they are metaphysically mad. Lunacy repels, and political lunacy especially. I do not mean that they are dangerous: Nay, they are repellent merely. They do not endanger our country and our civilization, because they are few, and seem likely to become fewer.
 * Russell Kirk, "A Dispassionate Assessment of Libertarians" (1988)

 * In the sense used by Marx and Engels, the concept of ideology was intended to mean forms of social consciousness which prevent people from realising that their thinking about the world is determined by some conditions which do not depend on them and which are not themselves ingredients of consciousness. In ideological thinking, people imagine that the logic of thinking itself rules their consciousness and they are organically incapable of being aware of the social situations and of the interests which mould their mental work.
 * Leszek Kolakowski, “Althusser’s Marx”, Socialist Register 1971, pp. 111-127

L

 * We the members of the Libertarian Party challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.' We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.
 * The Libertarian Party Statement of Principles (1972); (May 2008 edition)

 * Libertarians believe the answer to America's political problems is the same commitment to freedom that earned America its greatness: a free-market economy and the abundance and prosperity it brings; a dedication to civil liberties and personal freedom that marks this country above all others; and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade as prescribed by America's founders.
 * The Libertarian Party: A Short History (2000) by Libertarian Party

 * Rothbard is surely right in thinking that what we now call free-market libertarianism was originally a left-wing position. The great liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat sat on the left side of the French national assembly, with the anarcho-socialist Proudhon. Many of the causes we now think of as paradigmatically left-wing—feminism, antiracism, antimilitarism, the defense of laborers and consumers against big business—were traditionally embraced and promoted specifically by free-market radicals. ... I like calling the free market a left-wing idea—in fact, I like calling libertarianism the proletarian revolution.
 * Roderick T. Long, "Rothbard's 'Left and Right': Forty Years Later," Rothbard Memorial Lecture, Austrian Scholars Conference (2006).

 * Kevin Carson has coined the terms “vulgar libertarianism” and “vulgar liberalism” for the tendencies, respectively, to treat the benefits of the free market as though they legitimated various dubious features of actually existing “capitalist” society (vulgar libertarianism), and to treat the drawbacks of actually existing “capitalist” society as though they constituted an objection to the free market (vulgar liberalism).
 * Roderick T. Long, "Left-libertarianism, market anarchism, class conflict and historical theories of distributive justice," Griffith Law Review, Vol. 21 Issue 2 (2012), p. 416

 * Given the extensive involvement of state violence in the process by which the corporate elite not only achieved its wealth in the past but continues to maintain and augment it in the present, it is clear that the massive inequalities of wealth that characterise present-day “capitalist” society are radically inconsistent with any approach to justice in holdings that is even remotely Nozickian.
 * Roderick T. Long, "Left-libertarianism, market anarchism, class conflict and historical theories of distributive justice," Griffith Law Review, Vol. 21 Issue 2 (2012), p. 425

M

 * I think that in some ways the libertarian movement—possibly due to the combined influence of Ayn Rand and many economists—has gotten to a kind of ideological dead end that I don’t think does justice to business or capitalism or human nature.
 * John Mackey, as quoted by Tom G. Palmer “Interview with an Entrepreneur: Featuring John Mackey”, in The Morality of Capitalism: What Your Professors Won’t Tell You (2011), Ed. Tom G. Palmer, Jameson Books, p. 16.

 * Many years ago, on a television network far, far away, I expressed support for libertarianism because back then it meant that I didn’t want Big Government in my bedroom or my medicine chest, and especially not in the second drawer of the night-stand on the left side of my bed. And I still believe that. But somewhere along the way libertarianism morphed into this creepy obsession with Free Market capitalism based on an Ayn Rand novel called ‘‘Atlas Shrugged’’, a book that’s never been read all the way through by anyone with a girlfriend.
 * Bill Maher, ‘Bill Maher Trashes Libertarians’

 * For the libertarian, it is always illegitimate to initiate force against nonaggressors. Libertarianism is the political philosophy based on the concept of self-ownership; that is, every human being, simply by being a human being, has moral justification over his or her own body. This jurisdiction, which is called individual rights, cannot properly be violated, for this would be tantamount to claiming that human beings are not self-owners.
 * Wendy McElroy, in "Demystifying the State" (21 May 2008)

 * Libertarianism is a direct attack upon the mystique of the state. It recognizes that the state is only an abstraction and reduces it to the actions of individuals. It applies the same standard of morality to the state as it would to a next-door neighbor. If it is not proper for a neighbor to tax or pass laws regulating your private life, then it cannot be proper for the state to do so. Only by elevating itself above the standards of personal morality can the state make these claims on your life.
 * Wendy McElroy, in "Demystifying the State" (21 May 2008)
 * Now what is it that we mean when we talk about libertarianism? And let me quote the words of the greatest authority on freedom in Argentina, Professor Alberto Benegas Lynch Jr, who says that libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression, in defence of the right to life, liberty and property. Its fundamental institutions are private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, and the division of labour and social cooperation, in which success is achieved only by serving others with goods of better quality or at a better price. In other words, capitalist successful business people are social benefactors who, far from appropriating the wealth of others, contribute to the general well-being. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero. And this is the model that we are advocating for the Argentina of the future. A model based on the fundamental principle of libertarianism. The defence of life, of freedom and of property.
 * Javier Milei, Special Address to the World Economic Forum, 18 January 2024

N

 * First and foremost, libertarians believe in the principle of self-ownership. You own your own body and mind; no external power has the right to force you into the service of "society" or "mankind" or any other individual or group for any purpose, however noble. Slavery is wrong, period.
 * David F. Nolan, in "The Essence of Liberty"

 * A government which cannot conscript, confiscate, or counterfeit, and which imposes no criminal penalties for the mere possession and peaceful use of anything, is one that almost all libertarians would be comfortable with.
 * David F. Nolan, in "The Essence of Liberty"

 * Lacking much historical information and assuming (1) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that those from the least well-off group in the society have the highest probabilities of being the (descendants of) victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefited from the injustices, ... then a rough rule of thumb for rectifying injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society.
 * Robert Nozick,  (1974) pp. 231-232

 * These issues are very complex and are best left to a full treatment of the principle of rectification. In the absence of such a treatment applied to a particular society, one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no considerations of rectification of injustice could apply to justify it. Although to introduce socialism as the punishment for our sins would be to go too far, past injustices might seem to be so great as to make necessary in the short run a more extensive state in order to rectify them.
 * Robert Nozick,  (1974) p. 232

 * Whoever makes something having bought or contracted for all other held resources used in the process (transferring some of his holdings for these cooperating factors), is entitled to it. The situation is not one of something’s getting made, and there being an open question of who is to get it. Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them.
 * Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), p. 160.

O

 * Nozick’s Theory, in spite of its apparent dedication to self-ownership, cannot escape the conclusion that women’s entitlement rights to those they produce must take priority of persons’ rights to themselves at birth. ... There is nothing about a woman’s production of an infant that does not easily fulfill the conditions of the principle of acquisition as Nozick specifies them.
 * Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, (1989), pp. 82-83.

 * The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.
 * George Orwell, in a letter to Malcolm Muggeridge (4 December 1948), published in Malcolm Muggeridge : A Life (1980) by Ian Hunter

R

 * The trouble with the world today is philosophical: only the right philosophy can save us. But this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes them with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and call themselves libertarians and run for office.
 * Ayn Rand as quoted in (2005). Mayhew, Robert, ed. Ayn Rand Answers, the Best of Her Q&A. New York: New American Library. p. 73. (1976)

 * Once an individual who would advance liberty has settled on self-perfection as correct method, the first fact to bear in mind is that ours is not a numbers problem. Were it necessary to bring a majority into a comprehension of the libertarian philosophy, the cause of liberty would be utterly hopeless. Every significant movement in history has been led by one or just a few individuals with a small minority of energetic supporters.
 * Leonard E. Read, as quoted in "Toward an American Shibboleth!" by Tim Wingate, at Strike The Root (26 January 2007)

 * Government doesn’t "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market. ... Those who argue for "less government" are really arguing for a different government—often one that favors them or their patrons.
 * Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (2015)

 * Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you have to argue point by point. Especially since the minimalists want to keep the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That's libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. No! If you want to make the minimum-state case, you have to argue it from the ground up.
 * Kim Stanley Robinson, in Green Mars (1993), p. 371

 * What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and the peasants.
 * Rudolf Rocker, in The Tragedy of Spain (1937)

 * All libertarians, of whatever faction or persuasion, lay great stress on education, on convincing an ever-larger number of people to become libertarians, and hopefully, highly dedicated ones. The problem, however, is that the great bulk of libertarians hold a very simplistic view of the role and scope of such education. They do not, in short, even attempt to answer the question: After education, what? What then? What happens after X number of people are convinced? And how many need to be convinced to press on to the next stage? Everyone? A majority? Many people? … Beyond the problem of education lies the problem of power. After a substantial number of people have been converted, there will be the additional task of finding ways and means to remove State power from our society. Since the state will not gracefully convert itself out of power, other means than education, means of pressure, will have to be used. What particular means or what combination of means — whether by voting, alternative institutions untouched by the State or massive failure to cooperate with the State — depends on the conditions of the time and what will be found to work or not to work. In contrast to matters of theory and principle, the particular tactics to be used — so long as they are consistent with the principles and ultimate goal of a purely free society — are a matter of pragmatism, judgment, and the inexact "art" of the tactician.
 * Murray Rothbard, in For a New Liberty'' (1973), Ch. 15 : A Strategy for Liberty

S

 * Libertarian logic for non-interference, when consistently explored, can have extraordinarily stern implications in invalidating the right to assistance from the society when one is hit by self-harming behaviour. If that annulment is not accepted, then the case for libertarian “immunity” from interference is also correspondingly undermined. We should not readily agree to be held captive in a half-way house erected by an inadequate assessment of the demands of liberty.
 * Amartya Sen, "Unrestrained smoking is a libertarian half-way house", Financial Times (February 11, 2007)

 * Most 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 — provided, of course, that it doesn't violate the identical right of others — whether the people around them approve of what they do or not.
 * L. Neil Smith, and Rylla Cathryn Smith in What Libertarians Believe, Introduction: The Zero Aggression Principle

 * 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, and Rylla Cathryn Smith, the "Zero Aggression Principle" in What Libertarians Believe, Introduction: The Zero Aggression Principle

 * Violence, fraud, the prerogative of force, the claims of superior cunning—those are the sources to which titles may be traced. The original deeds were written with the sword, rather than with the pen; not lawyers, but soldiers, were the conveyancers; blows were the current coin given in payment; and for seals, blood was used in preference to wax. Could valid claims be thus constituted? Hardly. And if not, what becomes of the pretensions of all subsequent holders of estates so obtained? Does sale or bequest generate a right where it did not previously exist?
 * Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, First Edition (1851), Chapter 9

T

 * Libertarianism is basically Aristotelian (reason, objectivity, individual self-sufficiency) while conservatism is just fundamentally Platonic (privileged elitism, mysticism, collective order).
 * Jerome Tuccille, Radical Libertarianism: A New Political Alternative, Perennial Library/Harper & Row (1971) p. 6.

W

 * As Nozick acknowledges, a modern state should not feel morally constrained by property holdings which might have had a Lockean pedigree but in fact do not. In this regard it is interesting that one of the main uses of Lockean theory these days is in defending the property rights of indigenous people—where a literal claim is being made about who had first possession of a set of resources and about the need to rectify the injustices that accompanied their subsequent expropriation.
 * Jeremy Waldron, "Property and Ownership", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 * Libertarianism offers an alternative to coercive government that should appeal to peaceful, productive people everywhere. No, a libertarian world isn't a perfect one. There will still be inequality, poverty, crime, corruption, man's inhumanity to man. But, unlike the theocratic visionaries, the pie-in-the-sky socialist utopians, or the starry-eyed Mr. Fixits of the New Deal and Great Society, libertarians don't promise you a rose garden. Karl Popper once said that attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell. Libertarianism holds out, not the goal of a perfect society, but of a better and freer one. It promises a world in which more of the decisions will be made in the right way by the right person: you.
 * , Libertarianism: A Primer (1997) Ch. 1 : The Coming Libertarian Age"; A Note on Labels: Why "Libertarian"?

 * I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. I suppose an anarchist would say, paraphrasing what Marx said about agnostics being "frightened atheists," that libertarians are simply frightened anarchists. Having just stated the case for the opposition, I will go along and agree with them: yes, I am frightened. I'm a libertarian because I don't trust the people as much as anarchists do. I want to see government limited as much as possible; I would like to see it reduced back to where it was in Jefferson's time, or even smaller. But I would not like to see it abolished. I think the average American, if left totally free, would act exactly like Idi Amin. I don't trust the people any more than I trust the government.
 * Robert Anton Wilson, in "Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" - interview with Jeffrey Elliot (1980)

 * A 'popular libertarian' might ... feel all that needs to be done to bring the world to justice is to institute the minimal state now, starting as it were from present holdings. On this view, then, libertarianism starts tomorrow, and we take the present possession of property for granted.
 * There is, of course, something very problematic about this attitude. Part of the libertarian position involves treating property rights as natural rights, as so as being as important as anything can be. On the libertarian view, the fact that an injustice is old, and, perhaps, difficult to prove, does not make it any less of an injustice. Nozick, to his credit, appreciates this, and implies that in all cases we should try to work out what would have happened had the injustice not taken place. If the present state of affairs does not correspond to this hypothetical description, then it should be made to correspond.
 * Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (1991), p. 106

title: Libertarianism


text:
Millennium (TV series)

Millennium (1996–1999) is a grim, suspenseful American television series, produced by Chris Carter (creator of The X-Files), and set during the years leading up to the dawn of the new millennium. The series follows Frank Black, a freelance forensic profiler and former FBI agent with a unique ability to see the world through the eyes of serial killers and murderers.

Pilot [1.01]

 * Calamity: Tell me what you want.
 * The Frenchman: I want to see you dance on the blood-dimmed tide. The ceremony of innocence is drowned. This is the second death. The abominable and the fornicators - this is the second death. You'll have your part in the lake - the great plague - the maritime city. You'll have your part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone.

 * Frank: The killer is confused about his sexuality. He feels guilt, quite possibly from his mother. So he goes to peep shows to try to feel something toward women but all he feels is anger - anger that fuels his psychosis, that distorts and twists his view of reality.
 * Geibelhouse: Twists it to fit some screwy French poetry?
 * Frank: The killer doesn't see the world like everyone else.
 * Bletcher: How does he see it?
 * Frank: Differently.
 * Geibelhouse: Wait a second. You say this guy is angry at women, that he cruises boys but then he kills this John Doe we found burned in the forest. How does that work?
 * Frank: He's very confused.
 * Geibelhouse: Undoubtedly.
 * Frank: His way of dealing with it is by fulfilling a prophecy.
 * Geibelhouse: I don't buy it.
 * Kamm: Uh, it's a good story but I've got to agree. Evidence just doesn't support it.

 * Frank: I was approached by a group of men who helped me understand the nature of my facility... my gift.
 * Bletcher: This Millennium Group. They really believe all that stuff? Nostradamus and Revelations? The destruction of the world?
 * Frank: They believe we can't just sit back and hope for a happy ending.

 * Bletcher: Tell me how you know. Why are you so sure? You see it, or something.
 * Frank: It's complicated, Bletch.
 * Bletcher: What do you see?
 * Frank: I see what the killer sees.
 * Bletcher: What, like a psychic?
 * Frank: No. I put myself in his head. I become the thing we fear the most.
 * Bletcher: How?
 * Frank: I become capability. I become the horror--what we know we can become only in our heart of darkness. It's my gift. It's my curse. It's why I retired.

 * Catherine: I can handle imposition, Frank. What I can't handle is secrecy.
 * Frank: I don't keep secrets, Catherine. I'll tell you anything you want.
 * Catherine: You think you're protecting me but you make it worse, Frank. You can't shut the world out for me. You can't ask me to pretend that I don't know what you do.
 * Frank: Everyone pretends. We all make believe. These men I help catch... make us.
 * Catherine: We're raising a daughter, Frank. The real world starts to seep in. You can't stop it.

Gehenna [1.02]

 * Frank: It seems that the old biblical concept of the devil's influence has lost any currency.
 * Catherine: I just think the language has changed. I think science and psychology have given us a clearer idea of why people commit evil acts. I see it everyday, abused kids become abusive adults.
 * Frank: So the true source of evil is us.
 * Catherine: You mean, are we all capable of it?
 * Frank: Or is there something out there - a force or a presence - waiting until it can create another murder, another rape, another holocaust.
 * Catherine: I think it's something that everyone who looks deeply at life wonders.
 * Frank: What would you tell a child? What would I tell Jordan?
 * Catherine: Maybe you should just tell her good-night.

 * Mike: What you described in there last night... the face of the beast...
 * Frank: I saw it, the day I arrived.
 * Mike: I've seen the face of evil, Frank. I've looked into its eyes, seen it staring back at me. The face has always been a man's face... a human face. I've always believed that evil is born in a cold heart and a weak mind.
 * Frank: I have too.

 * Catherine: Frank went back to work because he had to. It's who he is. Sometimes I think of Frank as the catcher in the rye... standing at the edge of the cliff trying to save the world... but he can't change anything. All he can do is catch these horrible men before they kill again. And that's why I can never let him think that Jordan and I aren't perfectly safe in this perfect house and perfect world that he's tried to give us... Because I know, if he ever thought differently... next time he'd never be able to leave.

 * Mike: There is a deliberate error in the Great Pyramid in Giza... an architectural anomaly that some prophets have cited as an error in our calculation of the true calendar year. Some believe it sets the date of the apocalypse in 1998.
 * Penseyres: Plan your investment strategy accordingly.

 * Mike: He sends the photos to you, Frank. The envelope has your name on it. What's the object of terrorism?
 * Frank: Terror.
 * Mike: That's all he wants at this point.
 * Frank: Then he's a success...

Dead Letters [1.03]

 * Frank: He needed one lens replaced -- the left lens?
 * Janice: Well, that I don't remember. But what I do remember is that he was getting all weirded out.
 * James: Weirded how?
 * Janice: I guess his glasses got a little lost in the shuffle, so I asked him for a service slip number and he gets all sweaty, and his eyes got real weird. So I went back, I asked the technicians, maybe they had seen them. And I guess they were in the tray right behind me but all the trays are marked with the customer's name on it. And he starts going: 'I have a name! I have a name!'

 * James: I thought it was the guy. We all did.
 * Frank: What if it was, James? Is bouncing the subject's head off the hood of the car going to do anything to change all the other murders that will occur today?
 * James: Come on, Frank! Some guy cuts your wife and your daughter into eight pieces and you just stand there and you read him his rights?!
 * Frank: He hasn't killed our wives or our families and he's not going to. If you make every one of these personal, you'll go insane and that's from having been there, James.
 * James: I get so far into the heads of the killers and the victims.
 * Frank: You haven't got there at all.
 * James: Don't you tell me where I am!
 * Frank: You put them in your head.
 * James: I keep reliving... what it's like to be cut in half... or four... or eight.
 * Frank: This isn't about you, James! The whole thing... what's going on out here... it's about us! Me, you... the killer and the victim.
 * James: I can't help but take this personally. Another person is going to die, horribly. Because I s-... we screwed up. I-... we did all this for nothing.
 * Frank: No, we didn't. We handed out 30 pins from the hospital charity to be placed here. There's 31. We wanted one taken, but one was left. He was here.

 * James: I don't know, Catherine. Maybe it's because T.C.'s been taken out of my everyday life. Or... he's two now and he's becoming a person, you know? But I can't... these murderers... before they were a... fascinating, psychological, societal puzzle. Most I could even feel sympathy for them because of their horrible lives. But now... when I walk into a crime scene, all I see is my little boy's face superimposed on the victim. And... and these... killers can't be simply cases or psychological anomalies anymore. They're just... monsters. Just monsters.

 * Catherine: They play well together.
 * James: Yeah. It's great to watch them, huh? They have no idea. Things we see... things we know are out there. I hope I'm not screwing him up... I never ever dreamed at that perfect moment that... my time with him would be regulated by petitions, attorney retainers, orders of the court... that mother, father and son would become nothing more than a case number... that as a father, I risk adding nothing to his life. I could become nothing but... face covered in gray tape.
 * Frank: When I read Dostoevsky there was a passage, something like: 'There's nothing more sad than a life that ends and no one knows or cares.' Hair today, gone tomorrow. The subject is angry that his life will go unnoticed... that he will have left nothing. The hatred of himself is directed toward the world which has held him back because it objectified him... reduced him, reduced us all to universal bar codes. We are animals in a caged shelter, controlled by dog catchers. The gray tape makes the victims look like how he feels -- faceless -- a dead letter lost at the post office. He's killed before... when he was young... most likely a female prostitute, after an early setback... a girlfriend, a job. He sought out a woman that wouldn't turn him away. The solicitation increased his feelings of nothingness and so he killed her before sex. My guess? He was never caught. He got away with it. Subject has felt guilt ever since, angered at a world that should have punished him but didn't. The murder, however, was the most significant event in his life. He's returned to this place, to the event. He wants nothing more than to be stopped. But he will do everything in his control to remain significant.

 * Frank: What's the matter, honey?
 * Jordan: I had a bad dream.
 * Frank: Oh... come on... Everybody has bad dreams.
 * Jordan: Why?

The Judge [1.04]

 * Judge: Having found sufficient evidence the accused removed, or caused to be removed, lighting from his apartment building's common stairwell. This action resulted in a female client, aged 62, sustaining fatal injuries as a result of a fall. It is now my duty to pronounce sentence. You are to apprehend the condemned as instructed and having transported him to the place designated, to amputate his right leg below the knee.
 * Bardale: I got it written down from earlier, Judge. I like the foot. I mean it's like the son of a bitch, he kicked that old lady down the stairs, practically.
 * Judge: The prisoner shall be conscious prior to the amputation. You shall make him aware of the court's sentence.
 * Bardale: I'll rub it in good.
 * Judge: The hood may seem superfluous to you, Mr. Bardale, but I pronounce formal sentence to honor what we do and to set it apart from frying bacon or passing gas.
 * Bardale: Oh, I respect that, Judge. Only, the two of us here, it seems a little like law court, you know?
 * Judge: Mine is not a court of law, Mr. Bardale. It is a court of justice. We cannot address every case. Our scope is not broad like the common law courts. It is narrower. Deeper. More pure. Our judgment final.
 * Bardale: I'd better get going. You're doing the right thing like this. Feels good. I'm real grateful, Judge.

 * Frank: A controller. Someone calling the shots. Out of caution or distaste, he's chosen to avoid direct action. Now he's found himself a new surrogate.
 * Penseyres: Someone to carry on the killing.
 * Frank: Someone predisposed to an alternative theory of justice. Disillusioned, credulous, naïve...
 * Bletcher: You mean we're looking for two guys now?
 * Frank: The killer's capable of a high level of violence, probably someone who's been in the justice system once or twice, done time.
 * Penseyres: Ex-con, moves in similar circles outside. Limited number of places these people go. Limited ways they socialize.
 * Bletcher: I think I know the kind of places you mean.

 * Frank: Sit down. What should I call you?
 * Judge: 'Judge' is fine. Or the name on the report. My name is 'Legion.'
 * Frank: 'Legion?'
 * Judge: When Jesus of Nazareth expelled demons from a herd of enchanted hogs, story has it that the demons told him their name was 'Legion.' How would you like to work for me?
 * Frank: Work? You mean killing.
 * Judge: Every man finds his own path to justice. You needn't commit yourself now. The offer's open. A month, a year... Many benefits. I know you're sometimes scared for your family, your wife. There's a child now too, yes?
 * Frank: When you spoke to Bardale, what did you say to him when he called you from the bar?
 * Judge: Bardale... who can speak to Bardale? A slave of echoes. I can talk to you. We're after the same thing.
 * Frank: How's that?
 * Judge: I can show you an absolute justice, an unconstrained justice. You'd have freedom to act without fear. Bardale and his kindred... they fear me, they obey me. Your family would be safe from such threats.
 * Frank: Uh-huh.
 * Judge: The police are about to release me. You and your group of associates have never been as close to me as I've allowed this time. I wanted you to hear my offer, feel its truth, see my strength.
 * Frank: We're going to find Bardale.
 * Judge: Oh, yes. My congratulations in advance. Well, it's time to go. And remember, the offer's open. And if I'm hard to reach, well, don't make the conventional assumptions.
 * [Frank leaves]
 * Bletcher: What'd he say?
 * Frank: He offered me a job.

 * Frank: The man I had Bletcher pick up has filed a half a dozen law suits. City's attorney's ordered the police to stay away from him. [Offers his sandwich to Catherine.] Want this?
 * Catherine: No, thanks. There's nothing to be done, to bring this man to justice?
 * Frank: He flaunts the system and gets away with it, as if his private justice was a higher, purer form.
 * Catherine: Then he uses conventional law to protect himself.
 * Frank: When you believe in nothing, everything is acceptable. It's a game to him. He sits at home a free man. He's taunting us.

 * Cheryl: Wherein where previous findings indicate the other body parts were all sundered while the victims where alive, but I believe this tongue was removed after death. Also the instrument wasn't as sharp or as skillfully used as in previous excisions.
 * Bletcher: Would that point to, uh, rage, loss of control?
 * Cheryl: Doubtful. The cuts aren't unusually forceful, just imprecise. A few false starts, repetitive blade strokes.
 * Bletcher: Frank?
 * Frank: We do have a pattern change.
 * Penseyres: Unlikely to be intentional deviation from the established method.
 * Bletcher: So how do we account for it?
 * Cheryl: The victim died prematurely or the killer was interrupted.
 * Penseyres: The perpetrator may be getting lazy, becoming more casual as his activities lose their novelty.
 * Bletcher: So it really doesn't tell us much then.
 * Frank: Well, it tells us that he's less concerned about being discovered but no less dangerous... possibly more so. There's nothing here to indicate that this is going to stop.

522666 [1.05]

 * Raymond Dees: Frank?
 * Frank: What?
 * Raymond Dees: I've seen it. The moment before. Their faces. They're terrified because they don't understand... unlike you, Frank. They don't understand what it is to give yourself over to chaos. But you understand. You've seen it too. I can tell.

 * Raymond Dees: I touch people in a deep, lasting way. A life-altering way.
 * Frank: You're really a very important man.
 * Raymond Dees: Well, thank you, sirrah. I'm glad you see that. Do you know precisely what happens at the moment of detonation? Shock waves moving faster than the speed of sound, pressure of over 500 pounds per square inch and this is all unleashed by me, Frank. It moves so fast that a vacuum is formed behind it, sucking back all the air that's been forced out by the blast. So, you see, Frank, a glass splinter will literally turn itself around, go back and penetrate anything that's in its path. I just don't know anything that has the power to stop that. My art brings out the truth. People are either vic-TORS or vic-TIMS. My explosion strips every hypocrisy, every pretension sheltered in the human heart and exposes the naked soul.

 * Frank: I feel your work is about waiting, anticipating the moment, the terror created. Playing so long on the mind, the fantasy becomes dull. The only moment worth a damn... the only arousal, is the moment of fire. Feel the heat upon your face. The impact upon your chest. The screams. The sirens. It is the moment of creation.
 * Raymond Dees: What I do is not work, Frank. It's art. My palette is fire, glass and blood. It's a fleeting art. It lasts only a fraction of a second, but the effect is profound, permanent... and if you're lucky, you happen to look in the right direction at the right time, you might get to see my creation.
 * Frank: When?
 * Raymond Dees: Later. Today.

 * Frank: It's not enough, Pete... all this manpower. I feel I could save so many lives if I understood what he wants.
 * Peter: We all heard him, Frank. It's the thrill. Sexual transference.
 * Frank: It's more. His thrills wear out quickly. First, he alerts the authorities there's a bomb. After a day he needs more. So he contacts us? Taunts us to the point of near capture? What will he do to increase his excitement?
 * Peter: What if it's some kind of god complex? He talked about his creation, about controlling people.
 * Frank: What I can't get out of my head is when he stated I'd be famous when I caught him. A 'star.' It lies in there, somehow.

 * Pierson: You want to bring him in because he was a hero... twice?
 * Frank: That's him, I know it.
 * Pierson: Frank... after Centennial Park, there is no way that I could bring this guy in without more evidence.
 * Frank: The bomber has expert knowledge in explosive devices. He knew exactly what and how much to use to create the effect he wants. There were two explosions today... neither one of which matched the lethal intensity of The Queen's Arms bombing.
 * Pierson: It was lethal enough to kill five people.
 * Frank: But not so destructive a person couldn't survive inside of it. Especially if he knew when and how the force would dissipate. Raymond Dees is a maintenance worker in that building. He has the knowledge and the opportunity to place those devices where it would best suit him. He watched the first bombing from a distance. He believed that watching the chaos which he created would be the thrill, but he needed more... to smell it, to touch it, to participate in the aftermath, but that wasn't enough either.
 * Peter: So, today he placed himself within his created chaos.
 * Frank: It wasn't enough to watch others. He needed to watch himself. A real star.
 * Pierson: Are you saying he killed 18 people so he could be on Good Morning America?
 * Frank: Killing wasn't the motive. It was a by-product of his obsession.

Kingdom Come [1.06]

 * Reverend: 'I love thee, oh Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock of refuge... my shield, the horn of my salvation, my strong horn...
 * Galen: If any one of you tries to leave, you will die. If you just sit down and sit still, I will tell you about the fiction and the fallacy as brought to you by the salesmen of salvation.
 * Reverend: Who are you?
 * Galen: I... am the lamb.

 * Ardis: In all these years, we work at a distance, with a remove. It helps us to objectify... so why is this one different to me?
 * Frank: The coldness, the calculation, the victims... merciless acts against the merciful.
 * Ardis: I haven't been to church since I was eight. I've always been happily cynical. So why I am taking this so personally?
 * Frank: I feel it myself.
 * Ardis: Have you and your wife raised Jordan in any particular faith, Frank?
 * Frank: No. Catherine and I haven't even dealt with it yet.
 * Ardis: I know. My husband and I make it up as we go along.
 * Frank: Maybe faith is like the picture album left in the closet. We don't go back and visit it every day. We need to know it's there, need to know it's safe... so we can pass it along when the time is right.

 * Frank: The man who did this... who we believe did this... he does it without conscience. Is that evil?
 * Father Schultz: There's a disconnectedness out there and those desperate with that feeling expect faith to fill the void and when it doesn't... they blame us.
 * Frank: I can't speak to that, father.
 * Father Schultz: No?
 * Frank: I'm afraid my own faith is lacking.
 * Father Schultz: Well, I've ministered to many who have lost their way.
 * Frank: I think my time would be better spent trying to catch the man who killed your friend.

 * Galen: Then you know the truth. You know that God has abandoned us. That's why you're afraid to die. Just like I am.
 * Frank: No.
 * Galen: You're lying.
 * Frank: I'm afraid, Galen, but not like you. You're afraid to die, because you fear God's judgment.
 * Galen: I've... lost my faith.
 * Frank: No, you've tried to kill it, but you can't. I've... seen your ritual. You try to kill your faith with the tools of your own belief because of your pain, because you think God's forsaken you. You think that you can get rid of your pain by slaughtering the faith that's inside you.
 * Galen: It is inside of me, isn't it? It just won't die.

 * Frank: Yeah. I was just thinking on the plane about this man Calloway. I felt how human he was... so inundated by pain, fragmented by grief. It led him to surrender his humanity.
 * Catherine: I know, Frank. It scares me.
 * Frank: We can't stop evil but we can't lose our faith either.
 * Catherine: And you're thinking that's what we need to teach Jordan.
 * Frank: I'm going to tell Jordan that bad things happen. And even though the bird died and it upset her, we have to balance sadness... with a sense of hope... and faith.
 * Catherine: I still have faith, Frank... even in a world where men like that exist.
 * Frank: So do I.

Blood Relatives [1.07]

 * Frank: He knew who she was.
 * Bletcher: Not many housewives make that kind of enemy.
 * Frank: It's not about her. Killer's rage is directed towards someone else.
 * Peter: I agree. The stab wounds were brutal but impersonal, clustered well away from her face.
 * Giebelhouse: So he knew who she was, but it wasn't about her? And he sliced her up, but it wasn't directed at her?... Hey, I'm just trying to keep up.

 * Catherine: How could anyone abandon a child? But millions of people do it. Millions. God, it's scary. We have home after home filled with kids like James. And we know they'll turn violent. How do I tell the survivors that no one saw it coming? They're out there, Frank.
 * Frank: Thousand points of darkness.
 * Catherine: People full of holes. Like James. Living off the fantasy that his mother will somehow make everything better. Frank?
 * Frank: It doesn't make any sense. James never gave up. He never stopped looking.
 * Catherine: It was fantasy.

 * Bletcher: So, what we have here is a guy that goes to funerals for fun and kills people.
 * Giebelhouse: Plus carves them up.
 * Bletcher: Does Social Service have a name for that?
 * Catherine: He's a classic lost child. And there's an army of them just like him... Put up for adoption at one and a half. Never placed... In and out of foster care, reform school, abuse. He essentially raised himself.
 * Bletcher: Then he didn't do a very good job.
 * Catherine: They never do. No one showed him how to connect with the world. Odd as this may sound, going to funerals is his attempt.
 * Giebelhouse: Attempt at what?
 * Catherine: Finding human contact. Family.
 * Giebelhouse: Family? Please!
 * Catherine: Read his diary... Decide for yourself... but I'm telling you, at some level, he wants what we all have.
 * Giebelhouse: He wants to destroy what we have.
 * Bletcher: I read once the first two weeks of a kitten's life seal its fate. If it has human contact... it's domestic. If it doesn't... it goes feral.
 * Catherine: Tough room.

 * Catherine: You've got to let him see his wife.
 * Bletcher: I'm not jerking him around here. She was cut up... viciously. All the evidence is under wraps until I get my game plan in order.
 * Catherine: It won't be real to him until he sees the body.
 * Bletcher: I seriously doubt that that's the way he wants to remember his wife.
 * Catherine: Then don't expect his cooperation. It would help to have him on your side.
 * Bletcher: Oh, I could definitely stand to have someone on my side.
 * Catherine: Maybe someone else should have picked up the phone when you called our house this morning.

 * Bletcher: You should have waited for us, damn it.
 * Frank: She'd be dead now.
 * Bletcher: He should have waited. You tell him.
 * Catherine: I know... I know you had to go in there... Because of who you are... Because you had no choice. Frank... I can't lose you.
 * Frank: I'm not going anywhere.
 * Catherine: Promise me? I don't want to ask myself 'am I strong enough to be alone?'
 * Frank: It's okay. Nobody is.

The Well-Worn Lock [1.08]

 * Catherine: We all have secrets, Mrs. Bangs.
 * Mrs. Bangs: Maybe that's what they're best kept as.

 * Catherine: Tell me honestly, Frank. Am I going too far?
 * Frank: We live in a world where too many people won't go far enough, won't do what they know is right, what they believe. I don't know how or why it got this way but the world has become so complicated that to involve yourself in someone else's problems is to invite them needlessly on yourself.

 * Catherine: Just because it's hard to imagine or hard to accept, people don't want to deal with this because it's easier to believe that it couldn't really happen.

 * Bangs: Yeah, well, you just go right on believing it -- whatever it is -- but when lies pass for the truth, then the whole world will have gone crazy and there won't be a damn thing that matters. Lady, there are things you just don't know.

Wide Open [1.09]

 * Frank: Yeah. Thinking about my parents, my grandparents -- forty or fifty years ago, they never locked their doors, day or night. We seem to have accepted it so... gracefully, so naturally -- the security systems. We've allowed ourselves to become almost besieged by our own fear.
 * Catherine: If you're not afraid, you're living in denial. The world's changed.
 * Frank: Yeah, I know. Can't turn it back. But we wonder... where are we headed from here?

 * Frank: He's teaching us a lesson... about our pretensions to safety... about how vulnerable we are.

 * Frank: He takes chances but everything's considered... as if scripted, planned -- what to leave, what to take, what he wants us to see, what he wants others to see. He's leaving a record of the events -- videos, 911 calls, witnesses.

 * Glen: 'John Allworth.' The signature... centrifugal, vertical lines, forward expansion. The strokes... forceful, measured, alternating cursive and print. This man's signature's probably been the same since he was old enough to sign it.
 * Frank: What does that tell you?
 * Glen: That the signer is deliberate. He has focus, but that this is to contain his rage or his anger -- that he can be explosive, prone to outburst or violence.

 * Glen: Abraham Lincoln, Elvis and Muhammad Ali, all signed the guest book at the Open House. In my professional opinion, none are viable suspects.

The Wild and the Innocent [1.10]

 * Maddie Haskell: I was at church Easter Sunday, and the minister was talking about the mystery of faith, and how easy it is to doubt what you can't prove, and how none of us saw the miracle at the Lord's tomb that day, all we had to do was to believe in it hard enough, and it would be true. And that's what faith was. He said that we can't be weak, that we can't dismiss the miracle, that we have to be strong enough to make mysteries real.

 * Maddie Haskell: Dear Angel, I was thinkin' today of Momma. How she had the sofest, sweetest voice you ever heard... like a willow in a breeze. In church, when she sang, people standin' around her would hush just to get a better listen. I can't help thinkin' how sad all this would have made her. She never liked Bobby much... And, for whatever reason, I fell in love with him. he paid attention to me... made me feel pretty... I saw him sittin' on the hood of his Firebird late one summer night in high school. He was one of those types of people who acted fearless... like he had a secret. I never had secrets. Momma had a hard life. Guess I'm kinda glad you weren't around 2 see her hurt like she did. I'm not sayin' this like it's an excuse for anything that happened. Just that, well... I never wanted to be one of those people that gets to used to bein' sad. That must sound funny comin' from me. Love, Maddie

 * Maddie Haskell: Dear Angel, I never told you about the night you left. I'd come out for groceries and when I came back home you were gone. I was terrified. I was lost. I couldn't get a straight answer out of anybody. I must have driven for hours looking for you... but there was no sign. I got tired and I kinda gave up. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I gave up on you that night. Please forgive me.

 * Maddie Haskell: Dear Angel, It's Christmas Eve. I remember when I was ten years old and caught Momma putting presents under the tree. Broke my heart. Believing in Santa was the last bit of little kid mystery left in the world. I'm looking up at the dark winter sky right now wishing that weren't true. Wishing that old guy in the red suit would bring you home. I miss you so much. I gotta go. He hates it when I write to you, and I can hear him comin' up the stairs.

 * Maddie Haskell: I've never been clear on why they call it "makin' love". Every time I let Bobby have me... it felt more like... like makin' peace. You know, killin' - killin' time. A few precious minutes to myself. I found out my real dad had hit my mom a couple of times. Then she took up with Jim and he just hit her more often. I can't stop blamin' myself for what happened to my mom. What she found out what Jim had done to me... she just... she couldn't live with it. I know I'm guilty for letting what happened happen but if I didn't stay in the car, I knew I'd never see Angel again.

Weeds [1.11]

 * Frank: The kidnapper sees himself as a holy figure, a purifier. He makes the impure ingest his blood so that they can be cleansed.

 * Frank: The victims were taken brazenly, in public spaces. The killer knows these neighborhoods, he feels safe here.
 * Sheriff Gerlach: What does this guy want? If it's money, why doesn't he ask for it?
 * Frank: He sees his victim as ugly, decayed. The mutilation suggests that he wants us to see the boy the same way.

Loin Like a Hunting Flame [1.12]

 * Frank: To him, the victims are unreal, erotic figments to be manipulated. He kills them to prevent them from existing outside his fantasies.

Force Majeure [1.13]

 * Dennis Hoffman: On May 5th, 2000, seven inner planets align for the first time since the Great Flood. Uranus at the meridian of its epicenter. Earth the focus of the biggest gravitational tug-of-war in 6,000 years. Catastrophic Earth changes on alignment day, preceded by abnormal weather patterns now as stresses build. Example: hurricanes - Edouard; Andrew; Andhra Pradesh, Bay of Bengal. Example: The Sahara Desert advancing 70.7 meters per year. Example: Lima earthquake, 7.3; Loma Prieta, 7.1; Irian Jaya, 8.0. Example: ...
 * [He nods toward the spot where the girl died, site of the previous night's storm.]

 * Frank: There is someone out there who believes in May 5th. He's responsible for the death of two girls already. I need to know who else believes in earth changes.
 * Dennis Hoffman: Einstein did.
 * Frank: I mean today.

The Thin White Line [1.14]

 * Hance: I mark 'em, on the palm. That's my trademark. That makes them my property - my meat.
 * Frank: And the third?
 * Hance: The third one was a coward. I ate his fear up like it was a Thanksgiving meal. His sweat was the cranberry sauce. His breath was the stuffing. And those frozen eyes? They were the dark meat.
 * Frank: You marked him - but you didn't kill him.
 * [He bends back his hand to show Hance his scar.]

Sacrament [1.15]

 * Bletcher: I'm sorry, Frank.
 * Frank: You saved Helen's life, Bletch. It's your surveillance that forced him into hiding her in his house.

 * Frank: He used his son to procure his victims. He was the devil that Green couldn't escape.

 * Tom Black: I feel nothing. None of this is real. There is nothing inside.

 * Frank: Some truths are better left unknown.

Covenant [1.16]

 * Frank: Your Honor, I've spent my whole adult life trying to understand how the mind of a killer works. How he thinks, how he feels. William Gary is not capable of doing the things he has been convicted of.

 * Frank: He may be feeling so guilty that he convinced himself he is responsible for the killings.

 * Reilly: Fashion an angel for your wife's birthday and then kill the family. Happens all the time.

 * Frank: Why didn't you let you lawyer use temporary insanity?
 * Gary: I wasn't insane. I was angry. I was in rage. I let things build up shame on me.

 * Gary: I came in from working in the garage. I was tired. I put in a long day. William Jr. was coming down from the stairs. He didn't see me at first. I think I thought I was just smacking him till I realized I had the chisel in my hand and there was blood all over me... my son was dead. My wife came down from the stairs, she must have heard the noise. There was no stopping now. After I was finished with my wife I went into my daughter's room. Mary was awake. That made it more difficult. She cowered on her bed crying. She didn't fight. She didn't fight back or try to run away. It was the first time I had ever laid a hand on her. I had to go upstairs to Gabe's room. I'm grateful now he didn't wake up to see me looking down at him. He was only five years old. Once you start something like this you somehow have to finish it.

Walkabout [1.17]

 * Peter: While you were at that trail. Whatever you were after. That is your business.

 * Frank: What did you do to me?
 * Dr. Miller: I thought I did you a favor. One to another.

Lamentation [1.18]

 * Peter: They say genius is the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. What do you call a man who holds two contradictory personalities?
 * Frank: The Devil.

 * Frank: Who is she?
 * Dr. Fabricant: She?
 * Frank: Lucy Butler.
 * Dr. Fabricant: You had me commuted so you might learn the nature of evil. I can tell you now... You think I'm evil, Frank? You don't know what that is. It's greater than we are -- you and me.
 * Frank: Who did this to you?
 * Dr. Fabricant: The base sum of all evil... The sleep of reason... The Devil's liege...
 * Frank: [shouting] Who was in my house?!
 * Dr. Fabricant: It knows you, Frank. It feeds off your passion.
 * Frank: [shouting] Who killed my friend?!
 * Peter: Let's go, Frank.
 * Dr. Fabricant: Everything you hold sacred... Frank... Run... [more weakly] Run.

 * Frank: I know this man. I know what drives him. Dr. Fabricant told me as a boy he used to slit the stomachs of neighborhood cats, turn them loose, just to see how long they'd live. After med school, as a resident, he would respond to no-code patients just to see how they died. He said the medical profession had but one interest for him -- the knowledge and the opportunity to rend death from life.

Broken World [1.20]

 * Willi: Once you figure that out, that's when you leave your mark on this world, Frank.
 * Frank: You're not going to make any marks on this earth. You don't even rate a footnote.

 * Frank: His only source of feeling alive is his urge for sexual pleasure. His paraphilia has now defined it. It intoxicates and terrifies him. He's standing at an abyss and he's hesitating.

 * Frank: This time. My work normally begins with dead bodies... multiples of dead bodies. I came here because I think we have a chance to stop this killing before it starts. You're witnessing the birth of a psychosexual killer.

Paper Dove [1.22]

 * Frank: Hunziger doesn't fit my profile on this case. He loved animals. Trained hunting dogs with his dad. Gregarious. Dated regularly. He was very popular in high school, which is where he met his future wife. Very focused on his future. That's not the man that did this.
 * Emmerich: So, he's not a... loser who wet his bed and tortured his Easter bunny. A lot of men who are not serial killers murder their wives.
 * Frank: Her larynx was excised, but it was done very carefully. The jugulars were not cut. He wanted her alive, but unable to speak. This indicates some organization. And some medical training. I'd like to plug in to what you might have on this victim type.
 * Devlin: Okay, we'll give you what we have.

 * Henry: I'm not playing with you anymore in any way. Understand? I'll annihilate your sleep forever because I'm sure as hell going to let the public know that what's happening to them is because of you... your stupidity and Frank Black! I know about Frank Black, yes. Now, you go back and you find her, damn it! She's in those woods alone! I might as well let you know, Mr. Kane, that I intend to terrorize D.C. until there are soldiers in the streets corners.
 * Kane: You're misunderstanding me.
 * Henry: Do not talk to me! This city is just one small room in my playground. I've decided to take my stake in America, lay claim to my own peculiar heritage. The 'moron' is going to wander far and wide through the land and kill and kill and kill...

 * Kane: So you think Hunzinger's wife was done by our so-called 'Big Woodsman?'
 * Emmerich: There isn't a remote similarity in the M.O. The Woodsman is an abductor. He never kills in their homes.
 * Frank: I think Hunzinger's wife was his first victim. When he almost got caught, he changed his M.O., abducting, taking them from the home, then killing them.
 * Kane: But his signature is the same.
 * Devlin: The larynx? The four women our Woodsman has killed didn't have their larynxes removed.
 * Frank: In one case, the hyoid bone was destroyed, crushed with bolt cutters. In another, beaten flat with a hammer. Two others were garroted with piano wire, severing their tracheas. In each case, the aim was to stop them from speaking.
 * Emmerich: 'Silence is golden?'
 * Frank: He's silencing somebody he knows... his wife or his mother. Once they're silenced, they become a captive audience. Still listen, be sympathetic. That's what he wants. That's why he never disfigures their faces.
 * Devlin: Do you think he's got a nagging wife? We've always pegged The Woodsman as a... loner.
 * Frank: Well, he never does a blitz attack. He easily enters middle-class homes and confronts them. He's comfortable there. I think that's where he lives. I think he does not live alone.
 * Kane: Amy Lee Walker.
 * Emmerich: A woman fitting his basic victim profile disappeared a few days ago in Hagerstown.

 * Devlin: Everybody's got a theory on the increasing violence in our society.
 * Emmerich: My wife thinks it's the artificial hormones in beef.
 * Devlin: Seriously, is it true that some of your people think it's because of some greater evil out there?
 * Kane: Yeah, I mean, that sounds almost like a religious thing.
 * Frank: Yeah, some people have that belief.
 * Devlin: What's your take?
 * Frank: I don't think it's the beef.

 * Frank: Henry Dion.
 * Henry: Uh-oh... You!
 * Frank: Uh-uh. Don't move, Henry.
 * Henry: I won't move... She's dead. The important thing is we finally came to understand each other, isn't that right, Frank?

The Beginning and the End [2.01]

 * The Polaroid Man: Would you, could you, in a house? Would you, could you, with a mouse? Would you, could you, die for God? If I told you, Cathy, that all that jazz you've been hearing so much about... The throne of God, a sea of glass, the seven veils, the seven seals, the seven plagues, the slain lamb with seven eyes and seven thorns. Fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his kingdom has come. And the beast of the sea and the beast of the land cast into a lake of fire. And then, ah, to live and reign with Christ for a thousand years of peace and love. If I told you, Cathy, that I know that Frank will know, it is all true, would you die, be beheaded, for your witness to the word of--God?

Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense [2.09]

 * Jose Chung: Unlike profiling serial killers, writing is a lonely and depressing profession.

Goodbye Charlie [2.10]

 * Frank Black: I'm not depressed. I'm just quiet.

Seven and One [3.19]

 * Frank Black (voiceover): I've been given the gift of insight, of seeing in the dark and seeing into the darkness of men's hearts and minds. I know what evil is. I've seen it, felt it, tasted it, inhaled the demon breath of its ancient powers. The same powers that have been prophesied through history and which are now marshalling. Who is witness to this? Have we stopped listening to the prophets, the seers and the sayers? I have misjudged my gift. If I see in the darkness it's because there is light. And it is the light which guides me now. The light that will not go out, that will lead us out of the dark night, if we let ourselves feel this, too. It will protect me, as it protects those around me. Even as the ancient forces try to steal our breaths. Seven years of trials and tribulations. Seven plus one, the prophets tell us. Is this the end? The last year of this peace? Or the beginning?

Cast

 * Lance Henriksen - FBI Special Agent Frank Black
 * Megan Gallagher - Catherine Black (seasons 1–2, guest season 3)
 * Klea Scott - FBI Special Agent Emma Hollis (season 3)
 * Terry O'Quinn - Peter Watts
 * Brittany Tiplady - Jordan Black
 * Bill Smitrovich - Lt. Robert Bletcher (season 1)
 * Stephen J. Lang - Det. Bob Giebelhouse
 * C. C. H. Pounder - Cheryl Andrews
 * Sarah-Jane Redmond - Lucy Butler
 * Kristen Cloke - Lara Means (season 2)
 * Allan Zinyk - Brian Roedecker (season 2)
 * Stephen E. Miller - Andy McClaren (season 3)
 * Peter Outerbridge - Barry Baldwin (season 3)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Millennium (TV series)


text:
User:Beck

This is the same user beck as the wikipedia one.

title: User:Beck


text:
Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 film about two ranch hands who fall in love unexpectedly and continue their love affair for a span of 20 years. "One of the greatest American love stories."
 * Directed by Ang Lee. Written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Original short story by Annie Proulx.

Love is a Force of Nature.

Jack Twist

 * It's nobody's business but ours.
 * Truth is, sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it.
 * You sit down before I knock your ignorant ass into next week!
 * I wish I knew how to quit you.
 * Brokeback got us good, don't it?
 * You know it could be like this, just like this, always.
 * There ain't never enough time, never enough...
 * You know friend, this is a God damn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.

Ennis Del Mar

 * This is a one-shot thing we got goin' on here.
 * Two guys livin' together? No way.
 * Jack, I swear.
 * If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it.
 * (mourning Jack's death) Jack, I swear...

Others

 * Alma Del Mar: You didn't go up there to fish!
 * Alma Del Mar: Don't try and fool me no more, Ennis. I know what it means. Jack Twist? Jack Nasty!
 * Joe Aguirre: You boys sure found a way to make the time pass up there. Twist, you guys wasn't gettin' paid to leave the dogs babysittin' the sheep while you stem the rose.
 * Lureen Newsome: What are you waitin' for, cowboy? ...a mating call?
 * Cassie Cartwright: You don't say much but you get your point across.

Dialogue

 * Jack Twist: Jack Twist.
 * Ennis Del Mar: Ennis.
 * Jack Twist: Your folks just stopped at Ennis?
 * Ennis Del Mar: Del Mar.
 * Jack Twist: Nice to know you, Ennis Del Mar.

 * Ennis Del Mar: You know I'm not no queer.
 * Jack Twist: Me neither.

 * Ennis Del Mar: Well, I guess I'll see you around, huh?.
 * Jack Twist: ...Right.

 * Ennis Del Mar: You got your wife and baby in Texas and, you know, I got my life in Riverton.
 * Jack Twist: That so? You and Alma, that's a life.
 * Ennis Del Mar: Now you shut up about Alma. This ain't her fault. The bottom line is...we're around each other and...this thing grabs hold of us again...in the wrong place...in the wrong time...we're dead.

 * Jack Twist: Is there anything interesting up there in heaven?
 * Ennis Del Mar: [looking up at night sky] I was just sending up a prayer of thanks.
 * Jack Twist: For what?
 * Ennis Del Mar: For you forgettin' to bring that harmonica. I'm enjoying the peace and quiet.
 * Jack Twist: You know it could be like this, just like this, always.
 * Ennis Del Mar: Yeah, how you figure that?

 * Jack Twist: Once in a while. Every four fuckin' years?
 * Ennis Del Mar: If you can't fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it.
 * Jack Twist: For how long?
 * Ennis Del Mar: For as long as we can ride it. There ain't no reins on this one.

 * Ennis Del Mar: I tell ya there... there were these two old guys ranched up together, down home. Earl and Rich. And they was the joke of town, even though they were pretty tough ol' birds. Anyway they... they found Earl dead in an irrigation ditch. Took a tire iron to 'im. Spurred him up, drug him 'round by his dick 'till it pulled off.
 * Jack Twist: You seen this?
 * Ennis Del Mar: I wasn't but nine years old. My daddy, he made sure me and brother seen it. Hell, for all I know, he done the job.

 * Jack Twist: That's more words than you've spoke in the past two weeks.
 * Ennis Del Mar: Hell, that's the most I've spoke in a year.

 * Ennis Del Mar: I'm gonna tell you this one time, Jack fuckin' Twist, an' I ain't foolin'. What I don't know – all them things I don't know – could get you killed if I come to know them. I ain't jokin'.
 * Jack Twist: Yeah well try this one, and I'll say it just once!
 * Ennis Del Mar: Go ahead!
 * Jack Twist: Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together, fuckin' real good life! Had us a place of our own. But you didn't want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain! Everything's built on that, that's all we got boy, fuckin' all. So I hope you know that, if you don't never know the rest! You count the damn few times we have been together in nearly twenty years and you measure the short fucking leash you keep me on, and then you ask me about Mexico and tell me you'll kill me for needing somethin' I don't hardly never get. You have no idea how bad it gets! I'm not you... I can't make it on a coupla high-altitude fucks once or twice a year! You are too much for me Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch... I wish I knew how to quit you.
 * Ennis Del Mar: Well why don't you? Why don't you just let me be, huh? Because of you, Jack, that I'm like this. I'm nothing... and nowhere.
 * Jack Twist: Ennis...
 * Ennis Del Mar: Get the fuck off me!
 * Jack Twist: Sorry... it's all right. Damn you, Ennis!
 * Ennis Del Mar: I can't stand it anymore, Jack!

 * Ennis Del Mar: If you don't want no more of my kids, I'll be happy to leave you alone.
 * Alma Beers Del Mar: I'd have 'em if you'd support 'em.

 * Alma Beers Del Mar: You still go fishing with Jack Twist?
 * Ennis Del Mar: Not often.
 * Alma Beers Del Mar: You know, I used to wonder how come you never brought any trouts home. You always said you caught plenty, and you know how me and the girls like fish. So one night I got your creel case(ph) open the night before you went on one of your little trips — price tag's still on it after five years — and I tied a note to the end of the line. It said, 'Hello, Ennis, bring some fish home. Love. Alma.' And then you come back looking all perky and said you caught a bunch of browners and you ate them up. Do you remember? I looked in that case first chance I got, and there was my note still tied there. That rod hadn't touched water in its life.
 * Ennis Del Mar: Don't mean nothing, Alma.

 * Lureen Twist: I thought Brokeback Mountain might be around where he grew up. Knowing Jack, it might be some pretend-place: where bluebirds sing and there's a whiskey spring.
 * Ennis Del Mar: No ma'am we, we was herding sheep on Brokeback one summer, back in '63.
 * Lureen Twist: Well, he said it was his favorite place. I thought he meant "to get drunk." He drank a lot.

Cast

 * Heath Ledger - Ennis Del Mar
 * Jake Gyllenhaal - Jack Twist
 * Michelle Williams - Alma Beers Del Mar
 * Anne Hathaway - Lureen Newsome Twist

title: Brokeback Mountain