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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

In times past…it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Ago Long Men Past
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Church Corruption War
Therefore coercion of the non-invasive, when justifiable at all, is to be justified on the ground that it secures, not a minimum of ‘ invasion, but a minimum of pain.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Atheism Coercion Pain
Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Equality Liberty Use
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Book Mean
To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Injury Insult Liberty Men
The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Anarchy Evil Unnecessary
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Banking Competition Wages
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

Disoppessed Land Man Neighbour
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

Democracy Invasion Men
Aggression is simply another name for government.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Aggression Government Names
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Effort Justice Real
There are some troubles from which mankind can never escape …. have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow from authority ….
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Blessing Evil Perfection
The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Names School Socialistic Two
The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Essence Government Transcendentalism
As a choice of blessings, liberty is the greater; as a choice of evils, liberty is the smaller. Then liberty always says the Anarchist. No use of force except against the invader.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Always Bless Choice Invade Liberty

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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