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 TUCKERThe exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.
More Benjamin Tucker Quotes
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Anarchism is for liberty, and neither for nor against anything else. Anarchy is the mother of co-operation, yes, just as liberty is the mother of order; but, as a matter of definition, liberty is not order nor is Anarchism co-operation.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
We are here, on earth. Not one of us has any right to the earth.
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Aggression is simply another name for government.
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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.
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Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement.
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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 -
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.
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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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We are here to let in the light of Liberty upon political superstition.
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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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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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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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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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This, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will.
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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