The first and chief violation of the right of property, which pervades and disturbs all the natural relations of ownership, confusing, and perplexing the ideas of all men as to the source of the right of property, and what is their own, of which so many actions stigmatized by the law as crimes, are the necessary consequences, and the natural corrections,--the parent theft from which flow all other thefts, is that of the legislator, who, not being a labourer, can make no disposition of any property whatever, without appropriating what does not naturally belong to him.

No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire.

The law of equal freedom, the essential principle of Anarchism, is a protection to life, liberty and property.

The history of humanity has been largely one long and gradual discovery of the fact that the individual is the gainer by society exactly in proportion as society is free, and of the law that the condition of a permanent and harmonious society is the greatest amount of individual liberty compatible with equality of liberty. The average man of each new generation has said to himself more clearly and consciously than his predecessor: "My neighbor is not my enemy, but my friend, and I am his, if we would but mutually recognize the fact. We help each other to a better, fuller, happier living; and this service might be greatly increased if we would cease to restrict, hamper, and oppress each other. Why can we not agree to let each live his own life, neither of us transgressing the limit that separates our individualities?" It is by this reasoning that mankind is approaching the real social contract, which is not, as Rousseau thought, the origin of society, but rather the outcome of a long social experience, the fruit of its follies and disasters. It is obvious that this contract, this social law, developed to its perfection, excludes all aggression, all violation of equality of liberty, all invasion of every kind. Considering this contract in connection with the Anarchistic definition of the State as the embodiment of the principle of invasion, we see that the State is antagonistic to society; and, society being essential to individual life and development, the conclusion leaps to the eyes that the relation of the State to the individual and of the individual to the State must be one of hostility, enduring till the State shall perish. "But," it will be asked of the Anarchists at this point in the argument, "what shall be done with those individuals who undoubtedly will persist in violating the social law by invading their neighbors?" The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.

Human society, must, in freedom, become one large experimental field wherein, according to the law of the survival of the fittest, only those institutions and customs which actually serve human needs can survive. Only by the free and unhampered operation of this great law will folly be eliminated because the absence of paternalism places fools in a position to reap the full rewards of their folly and in doing so become wise, i.e. capable, self-reliant, and responsible. Of course, in the larger view, the law of the survival of the fittest, which, by the way and contrary to the beliefs of many humanitarians, is an amoral law and taxes no cognizance of "good" or "bad" men, is always in operation, We the great mass of people suffer today because, in our ignorance we do not understand how to live. But in the long run, if there is to be any "survival" on this earth, it is within the realm of certainty that it is to come only by the extension of individual liberties through the ultimate abolition of the State, the elimination of all government of man by man.

It’s the exercise of power, not the exercise of freedom, that requires justification.

Government intervention, when it comes down to it, is the power of the gun. It is brute force, pure and simple. Motives here are irrelevant. Whether the government is full of benevolent bureaucrats or pernicious politicians is of no consequence. If a seller charges more than the government-imposed price ceiling allows, he will be jailed or deprived of his property. The same fate befalls anyone who violates government edicts. The opportunities of the market participants to make and attempt to realize their plans have been stymied. The system that makes the harmonizing of divergent plans possible has been distorted into one of inevitable clash due to government distribution.

The free market opens the way for men to operate at their moral best.

My view is that libertarianism is best regarded as an ideology focused on moving from the current state toward a smaller state--for some of us, a state so much smaller that it ultimately disappears completely and gives way to governance via individual, explicit, voluntary contracting between protection agencies and every adult subject to an agency's protection of its subscribers' natural rights.

Statism is a system of intitutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power -- to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed ... Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.

The government is a gang of criminals. It should be a badge of honor to avoid giving them money.

Individuals within tribes no doubt learned that cooperation in robbery was a safer procedure than lone robbery. In time it must have occurred to someone that one tribe could rob another tribe. In such forays the winners would kill the losers. Natural handicaps made women weaker than men, so men became the warriors and the women did the work. Women thus being useful, in subsequent raids they were captured instead of killed. Somewhere along the line a fellow who had been clubbed for his goods survived, and proceeded to gather more goods. When this was observed, probably the greatest humanitarian idea that man has discovered throughout the ages was born—that it was not necessary to kill a man in order to get his goods. This boon was slavery, which at least promised a lease on life. Thus, in conquest between tribes, the conquerors became the rulers and the conquered the slaves. This, in my view, was the origin of the State, which may be defined as an organization of rulers who rob the populace over which it can hold sway, and which uses that populace as soldiers to enlarge the territory and number of people it can exploit. The political history of the world has been the record of internal struggles to grasp State power, and between governments to enlarge their domains. (That governments provide services which citizens want or can be persuaded to want, does not alter the basic concept of nature and origin of the State.) The ruler-ruled relation became in the course of time so ingrained as to become a universal superstition. It is the common belief that no society could exist without government. Indeed, what government will allow anything else to be taught in the schools?

Whatever promotes the growth of the state also weakens the capacity of individuals in civil society to fend off the state’s depredations and therefore augments the public’s multifaceted victimization at the hands of state functionaries. Nothing promotes the growth of the state as much as national emergency—war and other crises comparable to war in the seriousness of the threats they pose. States, by their very nature, are perpetually at war—not always against foreign foes, of course, but always against their own subjects. The state’s most fundamental purpose, the activity without which it cannot even exist, is robbery. The state gains its very sustenance from robbery, which it pretties up ideologically by giving it a different name (taxation) and by striving to sanctify its intrinsic crime as permissible and socially necessary. State propaganda, statist ideologies, and long-established routine combine to convince many people that they have a legitimate obligation, even a moral duty to pay taxes to the state that rules their society.

Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.

Has nobody noticed that the authorities can't even keep drugs out of prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

I believe that as long you don't harm another person, or get in the way of their freedom ALL THINGS should be legal and available. As no amount of laws passed seem to prevent people's love of freedom, nor squelch their curiosity, nor their basic humanity, we would do better to look through the eyes of love and compassion, rather than condemnation and fear.

The peoples owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. Governments have employed every means that lay in their power to prevent the attainment of these rights or to render them illusory. Great mass movements among the people and whole revolutions have been necessary to wrest these rights from the ruling classes, who would never have consented to them voluntarily. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has to be wrested inch by inch from the despots.

What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

There is no possible evolution in a totalitarian society. Terror does not evolve except towards a worse terror, the scaffold does not become more liberal, the gallows are not tolerant. Nowhere in the world has there been a party or a man with absolute power who did not use it absolutely.

A question that confronts every society and every political philosophy concerns our obligations to the poor and unfortunate and how we are to extend them help. Probably the most common answer involves an appeal to government to supply them welfare benefits and other entitlements financed through taxation. But free-market advocates maintain that coercing people to assist others is wrong, both pragmatically and in that it violates others' rights. Instead, they appeal to private organizations to provide the necessities for those in need. Pragmatically, free-market advocates argue that a taxed and regulated society is less prosperous with less upward mobility and thereby experiences poverty; the redistribution of wealth can be a strong disincentive for people to earn and so increases the number of people who need help. Moreover, people who are taxed to underwrite the costs of welfare are less likely to give voluntarily. The rise of the welfare state is commonly viewed as the turning point at which the large-scale philanthropy that marked 19th-century society disappeared. If government services were removed, free-market advocates maintain that people would be far more likely to voluntarily contribute to charity and other community causes and in larger amounts.