The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows.
BENJAMIN TUCKERFor, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.
More Benjamin Tucker Quotes
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I define Anarchism as the belief in the greatest amount of liberty compatible with equality of liberty; or, in other words, as the belief in every liberty except the liberty to invade.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
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.
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It will probably surprise many who know nothing of Proudhon save his declaration that ‘property is robbery’ to learn that he was perhaps the most vigorous hater of Communism that ever lived on this planet.
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It is not competition, but monopoly, that deprives labor of its product. Destroy the banking monopoly, establish freedom in finance, and down will go interest on money through the beneficent influence of competition.
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War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.
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One thing, however, is sure, – that in all cases the effort should be to impose all the cost of repairing the wrong upon the doer of the wrong. This alone is real justice, and of course such justice is necessarily free.
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The student of Liberty must constantly endeavor to disassociate his imagination from sanguinary dramas of assassination and revolt.
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Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.
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And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.
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Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.
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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.
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The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.
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After the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.
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He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man … or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.
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The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.
BENJAMIN TUCKER








