Benjamin Tucker

But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.

The main question ... is not what motive inspired the law, but what it will be possible for men of bad motive to do with the law.

There is no freedom that I would grant to any man that I would refuse to woman, and there is no freedom that I would refuse to either man or woman except the freedom to invade ... whoever has the ballot has the freedom to invade, and whoever wants the ballot wants the freedom to invade. Give woman equality with man, by all means; but do it by taking power from man, not giving it to woman.

Government is the assumption of authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries.

Voting is merely a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable... It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the bully, and the bullet.

To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.

Anarchism does not repudiate the right of ownership, but it has a conception thereof sufficiently different from [others'] to include the possibility of an end of that social organization which will arise, not out of the ruins of government, but out of the transformation of government into voluntary association for defence.

The makers of dictionaries are dependent upon specialists for their definitions. A specialist's definition may be true or it may be erroneous. But its truth cannot be increased or its error diminished by its acceptance by the lexicographer. Each definition must stand on its own merits.

The moment that justice must be paid for by the victim of injustice it becomes itself injustice.

The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.

Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.

Thus, the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.

The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.

If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State.

Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual?

It is foolish in the extreme not only to resort to force before necessity compels, but especially to madly create the conditions that will lead to this necessity.

We are here to let in the light of Liberty upon political superstition.