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.

Variation is the seed of progress. Liberty is the soil and the climate in which the seed will sprout and grow. Human capacity for independent decisions and free choice is the husbandman who nurtures the crop during the period of its growth and harvest.

Modern society, monarchical, parliamentary, and republican alike cries: law and order first and foremost, liberty and progress secondary. Anarchy says: not so; law must not deny liberty, order must not precede progress; they are causes, not results.

The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." "In 1984", Huxley added, "people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure." In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.

Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one is not sanctified when committed by a host.

There is one element that comprises the heart of the statist, an anatomical feature they all share without exception. This element goes by many names, but the one I prefer is intolerance. The statist, at his core, is someone who refuses to tolerate ways of being that are contrary to his own preferences. His motives may be humanitarian, egalitarian, or any of the others listed, but the result is always force, always coercion, always the employment of threats and weapons to control others according to his own desires. To strike at the heart, then, we must loudly and repeatedly call out this intolerance. We must lay bare for the world to see that this person thinks so highly of themselves that they feel it's acceptable and even laudable to impose their enlightened views on others by force. Not only does this get to the crux of the issue, it also highlights the way forward. The path out of statism does not really lie in a technical understanding of the nonaggression principle, though that certainly helps. The path simply consists of humility. Humble yourself, take stock of your ignorance and moral failings, and you will find your statism shedding like skin off a snake. You don't have to understand the intricacies of a stateless society. You don't have to get a master's degree in ethics. You just need to say, "Let's live and let live. You do you, I'll do me, and as long as we leave each other alone, we're cool." Once someone is nodding along with that idea, the battle is already won. Explain what it implies concerning the morality of government, and then watch for the moment when it all suddenly clicks.

Rothbard realized that the limited-government laissez-faire position was "logically untenable" when he was unable to answer the objection raised by left-liberal friends: If people could collectively decide that government should provide police, courts, and military defense, then why couldn’t they decide that government should also operate steel mills or dams? Rothbard's epiphany led him to adopt a pure anarcho-capitalist position.

The power of government in social affairs, like the newly developed atomic power in the physical world, still is an untamed and unharnessed force of great danger; and the supreme danger of our time is that these two forces may be combined somewhere in the world -- even in our own country -- as a force for evil.

Anarchism is just the way people act when they are free to do as they choose, and when they deal with others who are equally free -- and therefore aware of the responsibility to others that entails. This leads to another crucial point: that while people can be reasonable and considerate when they are dealing with equals, human nature is such that they cannot be trusted to do so when given power over others. Give someone such power, they will almost invariably abuse it in some way or another.

No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

By voluntary organization and voluntary taxation it is perfectly possible to protect liberty and property and to restrain crime.

Spooner and Tucker advanced libertarian individualism from a protest against existing evils to pointing the way to an ideal society toward which we can move; and what is more, they correctly located that ideal in the free market which already partially existed and was providing vast economic and social benefits. Thus, Spooner, Tucker, and their movement not only furnished a goal toward which to move, but they also greatly surpassed previous "utopians" in locating that goal in already-existing institutions rather than in a coercive or impossible vision of a transformed mankind. Their achievement was truly remarkable, and we have not yet risen to the level of their insights.

We might compare the alliance between government and big business to the alliance between church and state in the Middle Ages. Of course it's in the interest of both parties to maintain the alliance -- but all the same, each side would like to be the dominant partner, so it's no surprise that the history of such alliances will often look like a history of conflict and antipathy, as each side struggles to get the upper hand. But this struggle must be read against a common background framework of cooperation to maintain the system of control.

Regulation in general, far from coming against the wishes of the regulated interests, was openly welcomed by them in nearly every case.

The government can't create jobs; they'll destroy jobs trying to do it. The government doesn't have any money; all they have is a printing press. We need to free markets to create jobs; if the government wants to help, they should reduce their burden on the economy.

When a "nation" is relatively wise politically it requires considerable force, in the shape of police and army, to keep the populace in their place. Where people are steeped in political ignorance, very little force is necessary, especially when the illusion is kept up that when choosing their rulers they are actually ruling themselves.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

No. I don't believe in politics. I'm an anarchist, I guess you could say. I think people could be just fine looking after themselves.

Most people agree nowadays in the view that the growth of bureaucracy and officialism in the modern State is a serious evil, and that the extension of Government interference and the multiplication of Laws are a great danger. We all know that the institution of the Law and the Courts actually creates and gives rise to huge masses of evil--bribery, blackmail, perjury, spying and lying, wrongful accusation, useless and deliberate suffering and cruelty; that it publicly sanctions and organises violence, even in extreme forms; that it quite directly and deliberately supports vast and obvious wrongs in Society--as for instance land-monopoly; that it is absurd and self-contradictory in much of its theory and practice; that (as Herbert Spencer so frequently insists) it paralyses the folk that submit or trust to it; and finally that it is today for the most part so antiquated and out of date that (even if this were thought desirable) it might well seem impracticable to patch it up for real human use. Yet in these cases--though we admit that the things are evil--our defence usually is that they carry some compensations with them, and that anyhow they are necessary evils, which we cannot dispense with, and without which disorder, violence and social disruption would ensue. It may be worth while to consider this defence more closely; for curiously enough the history of nations and peoples is, on the whole, to contrary effect. Not only have all the early tribes of the world got on and cohered together in order and social amity without any rigid and ponderous system of laws; but even among the peasant peoples of today--like the Irish or the Swedes or the Swiss or the Chinese--where they are still living in moderately primitive conditions, we find the same thing. Governmental law and its operations and institutions occupy but a very small part in their lives.

Anarcho-capitalists are thinking of how competing firms would prevent the rise of abusive protection monopolists in a society where most people don't support the existence of such a monopolist. It is one thing to suppress a "criminal firm" when it stands condemned by public opinion and the values internalized by that firm's employees; it is another thing entirely to suppress our current "criminal firms" (i.e., governments) when qua institution enjoy the overwhelming support of the populace and the state's enforcers believe in their own cause. When a governing class loses confidence in its own legitimacy -- from the Ancien Regime in France to the Communist Party in the USSR -- it becomes vulnerable and weak. Market checks on government could indeed establish an anarchist society if the self-confidence of the governing class were severely eroded by anarchist ideas.

The Anarchist does not want to destroy all existing institutions with a crash and then inaugurate the substituting process on their ruins. He simply asks to be let alone in substituting false systems now, so that they may gradually fall to pieces by their own dead weight. He asks the humble privilege of being allowed to set up a free bank in peaceable competition with the government subsidized class bank on the opposite corner. He asks the privilege of establishing a private post office in fair competition with the governmentally established one. He asks to be let alone in establishing his title to the soil by free occupation, cultivation, and use rather than by a title hampered by vested rights which were designed to keep the masses landless ... He asks not to be taxed upon what has been robbed from him under a machine in which he has practically no voice and no choice. In short, the Anarchist asks for free land, free money, free trade, free love, and the right to free competition with the existing order at his own cost and on his own responsibility, - liberty.

Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations.

It might be charged that our theory of justice in property titles is deficient because in the real world most landed (and even other) property has a past history so tangled that it becomes impossible to identify who or what has committed coercion and therefore who the current just owner may be. But the point of the “homestead principle” is that if we don’t know what crimes have been committed in acquiring the property in the past, or if we don’t know the victims or their heirs, then the current owner becomes the legitimate and just owner on homestead grounds. In short, if Jones owns a piece of land at the present time, and we don’t know what crimes were committed to arrive at the current title, then Jones, as the current owner, becomes as fully legitimate a property owner of this land as he does over his own person. Overthrow of existing property title only becomes legitimate if the victims or their heirs can present an authenticated, demonstrable, and specific claim to the property. Failing such conditions, existing landowners possess a fully moral right to their property.

Because the concept of property, for instance, is so basic that everyone seems to have some immediate understanding of it, most people never think about it carefully and can, as a consequence, produce at best a very vague definition. But starting from imprecisely stated or assumed definitions and building a complex network of thought upon them can lead only to intellectual disaster. For the original imprecisions and loopholes will then pervade and distort everything derived from them. To avoid this, the concept of property must first be clarified.

When people speak in an economic or political context, of the dangers and evils of monopoly, what they mean is a coercive monopoly--that is; exclusive control of a given field of production which is closed to and exempt from competition, so that those controlling the field are able to set arbitrary production policies and charge arbitrary prices, independent of the market, immune from the law of supply and demand. Such a monopoly, it is important to note, entails more than the absence of competition; it entails the impossibility of competition. That is a coercive monopoly’s characteristic attribute--and is essential to any condemnation of such a monopoly. In the whole history of capitalism, no one has been able to establish a coercive monopoly by means of competition on a free market. There is only one way to forbid entry into a given field of production: by law. Every single coercive monopoly that exists or ever has existed--in the United States, in Europe or anywhere else in the world--was created and made possible only by an act of government: by special franchises, licenses, subsidies, by legislative actions which granted special privileges (not obtainable on a free market) to a man or a group of men, and forbade all others to enter that particular field. A coercive monopoly is not the result of laissez-faire; it can result only from the abrogation of laissez-faire and from the introduction of the opposite principle--the principle of statism.

I do believe that time will show the extreme importance of libertarianism to future centuries. I feel that generations will look back to the late-twentieth century and marvel at the early libertarian writers and activists. They will wonder how these early libertarians ever conceived such self-evident notions of voluntaryism and non-coercion. They will be astonished at how anyone could survive the daily barrage of statism--regulation, taxation and aggression.

I ascribe to a philosophy of Gentle Anarchy. I believe people are inherently GOOD, and left to their own devices -- with the free exchange of ideas and information -- a joyful lightness would spread across the face of our dour world.