Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole. By stimulating industry, by regarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically: while, by increasing the general mass of productions, it diffuses general benefit, and binds together by one common tie of interest and intercourse, the universal society of nations throughout the civilized world.

The theoretical connections between individualist anarchism and liberalism seem obvious. While liberalism called for individual liberty and a limited state, individualist anarchism called for individual sovereignty and no state. In economics as well as in politics, individualist anarchism seemed to be the logical extreme of liberalism. George Bernard Shaw put this succinctly: “laissez-faire, in spite of all the stumblings it has brought upon itself by persistently holding the candle to the devil instead of to its own footsteps, is the torchbearer of Anarchism.” However, this picture is too simplistic for several reasons. First of all, socialism was at least as influential as liberalism on the character of individualist anarchism, particularly in terms of economics.

Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part.

Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.

Every time you reach an agreement by consensus, rather than threats, every time you make a voluntary arrangement with another person, come to an understanding, or reach a compromise by taking due consideration of the other person’s particular situation or needs, you are being an anarchist -- even if you don’t realize it.

By definition an anarchist is he who does not wish to be oppressed nor wishes to be himself an oppressor; who wants the greatest well-being, freedom and development for all human beings. His ideas, his wishes have their origin in a feeling of sympathy, love and respect for humanity: a feeling which must be sufficiently strong to induce him to want the well-being of others as much as his own, and to renounce those personal advantages, the achievement of which, would involve the sacrifice of others. If it were not so, why would he be the enemy of oppression and not seek to become himself an oppressor?

Philosophers have spent at least 2,500 years trying to produce a good theory of government authority--that is, of the duty to obey the law. But basically all their attempts to justify government authority stink, and stink badly. Every major theory of authority has big gaping holes and is subject to devastating objections. If, after 2,500 years, super-smart people can't produce a decent justification of authority, perhaps government authority is a myth. Perhaps there's no duty to obey the law after all.

Defending the continued existence of the state, despite having absolute certainty of a corresponding continuation of its intrinsic engagement in robbery, destruction, murder, and countless other crimes, requires that one imagine nonstate chaos, disorder, and death on a scale that nonstate actors seem incapable of causing. Nor, to my knowledge, does any historical example attest to such large-scale nonstate mayhem. With regard to large-scale death and destruction, no person, group, or private organization can even begin to compare to the state, which is easily the greatest instrument of destruction known to man.

But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

Despots reward compliance with more oppression.

The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.

As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.

The advantage of a free market is that it allows millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, allocating resources - labor, capital and human ingenuity - in a manner that can't be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner.

Anarchy is defined, not as the absence of all physical compulsion, but absence of physical compulsion of the non-aggressive. Individuals would not be left to do as they choose. They would be left to do as they choose only within certain limits,--those of equal freedom. Criminals or invaders would be restrained or punished by voluntary organizations for defence, and only non-aggressive persons would be exempt from interference.

It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

Libertarians have often dreamed of escaping the tyranny of the State; some have sought to do so by seeking refuge in distant and uninhabited lands where they could live in solitary hermitage or in small communities held together by the principle of voluntary association and mutual aid. But historians know that such experiments seldom survive in peace for long; sooner or later the State finds and confronts them with its instinctive will to violence, its mania for coercion rather than persuasion, for compulsion rather than voluntarism. Such has been the fate of the Mormons and Mennonites, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Amish people, among others.

If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught, let them never entrust that instruction to any government; for the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat.

Freedom is threatened from two ends, the right and left. The idea of liberty really does represent a third way, a path lit by the hope in the kind of civilization that can be built not from the top down but from the bottom up, not through the force of power but by voluntary associations of regular people who aspire to live better lives.

The individualistic or philosophical anarchists favor the abolition of 'the State' and government of man, by man. They seek to bring about a state of perfect freedom of anarchy.

Ever reviled, accursed, ne’er understood, thou art the grisly terror of our age. “Wreck of all order,” cry the multitude, “Art thou, and war and murder’s endless rage.” O, let them cry. To them that ne’er have striven the truth that lies behind a word to find, to them the word’s right meaning was not given. They shall continue blind among the blind. But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure, thou sayest all which I for goal have taken. I give thee to the future! Thine secure when each at least unto himself shall waken. Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest’s thrill? I cannot tell—but it the earth shall see! I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule, and also ruled I will not be!