“This, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will.”

The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.

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.

The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.

The student of Liberty must constantly endeavor to disassociate his imagination from sanguinary dramas of assassination and revolt.

Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.

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

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.

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.

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.

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

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.