Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual?
BENJAMIN TUCKERThe State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.
More Benjamin Tucker Quotes
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We are here, on earth. Not one of us has any right to the earth.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
For, 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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
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 TUCKER -
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
It is because peaceful agitation and passive resistance are effective that I uphold them, and it is because force strengthens tyranny that I condemn it. War and Authority are companions.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when you read his book and find that by property he means simply legally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at all the possession by the labourer of his products.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Man’s only right to land is his might over it. If his neighbor is mightier than he and takes the land from him, then the land is his neighbor’s, until the latter is dispossessed by one mightier still.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
The student of Liberty must constantly endeavor to disassociate his imagination from sanguinary dramas of assassination and revolt.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.
BENJAMIN TUCKER








