“The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.”

But which is the State’s essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.

Peace and Liberty are companions. 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.

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.

[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.

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.

Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike.

Mind your own business” is its own moral law. Interference with another’s business is a crime and the only crime, and as such may properly be resisted.

The right of the majority is absolute.

We are here to let in the light of Liberty upon political superstition.

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.

If I can go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich.

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.

Give woman equality with man, by all means; but do it by taking power from man, not giving it to woman.

If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State.

Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.

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.

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.

Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.

To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.

A society like ours, which professes no one religion and has allowed all religions to decay, which indulges freedom to the point of license and individualism to the point of anarchy, needs all the support that responsible, cultivated homes can furnish. I hope your generation will provide a firmer shelter for civilized standards.