Benjamin Tucker Quotes About Anarchy

Quotes about: Anarchy

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

  Benjamin Tucker

  Government, Anarchy, Anarchist

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1972). “State Socialism and Anarchism and Other Essays”, Ralph Myles Pub

• Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. 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, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Men, Essence, Names

  Address to Unitarian Ministers, 1890.

• 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.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Men, Law, Anarchy

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1898). “A Blow at Trial by Jury: An Examination of the Special Jury Law Passed by the New York Legislature in 1896”

• 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. 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

  Mother, Order, Liberty

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1893). “Instead of a Book”, Ayer Company Pub

• The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that 'the best government is that which governs least,' and that which governs least is no government at all.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Believe, Government, Anarchy

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1972). “State Socialism and Anarchism and Other Essays”, Ralph Myles Pub

• 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

  Men, Democracy, Invasion

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1893). “Instead of a Book”, Ayer Company Pub

• An Anarchist is anyone who denies the necessity and legitimacy of government; the question of his methods of attacking it is foreign to the definition.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Government, Definitions, Anarchy

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

  Benjamin Tucker

  Government, Definitions, Anarchy

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1972). “Instead of a Book”

• 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 .... 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

  Blessing, Evil, Perfection

• Anarchism does not repudiate the right of ownership, but it has a conception thereof sufficiently different from [others'] to include the possibility of an end of that social organization which will arise, not out of the ruins of government, but out of the transformation of government into voluntary association for defence.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Government, Organization, Doe

• There is no freedom that I would grant to any man that I would refuse to woman, and there is no freedom that I would refuse to either man or woman except the freedom to invade ... whoever has the ballot has the freedom to invade, and whoever wants the ballot wants the freedom to invade. Give woman equality with man, by all means; but do it by taking power from man, not giving it to woman.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Mean, Men, Giving

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

  Benjamin Tucker

  Evil, Anarchy, Unnecessary

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1972). “Instead of a Book”

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

  Benjamin Tucker

  Drama, Imagination, Liberty

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