Lysander Spooner Quotes

A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.

Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.

Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

These so-called governments are in reality only great bands of robbers and murderers, organized, disciplined, and constantly on the alert.

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

No government knows any limits to its power except the endurance of the people.

To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters.

Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'

A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.

All governments, the worst on earth, and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.

The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this - that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.

All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.

The right of revolution, which tyrants, in mockery, accord to mankind, is no legal right under a government; it is only a natural right to overturn a government.

That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.

It is a natural impossibility for any man to make a binding contract, by which he shall surrender to others a single one of what are commonly called his 'natural, inherent, inalienable rights.'

Vices are not crimes.

Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice.

In reality there is no such thing as an inflation of prices, relatively to gold. There is such a thing as a depreciated paper currency.

But that the people are stronger than the government, and will resist in extreme cases, our governments would be little or nothing else than organized systems of plunder and oppression.

Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it no legal sanction.

The trial by jury might safely be introduced into a despotic government, if the jury were to exercise no right of judging of the law, or the justice of the law.

If a jury have not the right to judge between the government and those who disobey its laws, and resist its oppressions, the government is absolute, and the people, legally speaking, are slaves.

The law does not require a man to cease to be a man, and act without regard to consequences, when he becomes a juror.

Money is the great instrumentality for manufacturing.

A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.

The constitution of the United States declares that "no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts."

Jesus never instructed men to do what was right because it was right; yet this is the true reason why they should do it.

The desertion of Jesus, by his followers, furnishes an argument in support of the supposition that he attempted to be king of the Jews, rather than that he was a superior being.

Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby ameliorating their condition.

Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all defence whatsoever against oppression.

The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers.

No body of men can be said to authorize a man to act as their agent, to the injury of a third person.

Any rule, not existing in the nature of things, or that is not permanent, universal and inflexible in its application, is no law, according to any correct definition of the term law.

There can be no criminal intent in resisting injustice.

The secret ballot makes a secret government and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers.

If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this--that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.

No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire.