Benjamin Tucker Quotes

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• 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

  49 Copy quote

• Aggression is simply another name for government.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Government, Names, Aggression

  Address to Unitarian Ministers, 1890.

  35 Copy quote

• The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Power, Men, Tyrants

  25 Copy quote

• Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Anarchist, Democrat

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

  36 Copy quote

• 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.

  29 Copy quote

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

  Benjamin Tucker

  Men, Insult To Injury, Liberty

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1926). “Individual liberty: selections from the writings of Benjamin R. Tucker”

  28 Copy quote

• The moment one abandons the idea that he was born to discover what is right and enforce it upon the rest of the world, he begins to feel an increasing disposition to let others alone and to refrain even from retaliation or resistance except in those emergencies which immediately and imperatively require it.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Ideas, World, Emergencies

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

  22 Copy quote

• 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. Capital will be set free, business will flourish, new enterprises will start, labor will be in demand, and gradually the wages of labor will rise to a level with its product.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Competition, Wages, Banking

  15 Copy quote

• 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”

  12 Copy quote

• Voting is merely a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable... It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the bully, and the bullet.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Lying, Bully, Voting

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.

  Benjamin Tucker

  War, Liberty, Authority

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1970). “Liberty”

  13 Copy quote

• Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual?

  Benjamin Tucker

  Voting, Slavery, Privilege

  14 Copy quote

• The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Perfection, Liberty, Anarchist

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

  10 Copy quote

• It is because peaceful agitation and passive resistance are effective that I uphold them, and it is because force strengthens tyranny that I condemn it. War and Authority are companions; 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.

  Benjamin Tucker

  War, Passive Resistance, Peaceful

  10 Copy quote

• 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. But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when you read his book and find that by property he means simply legally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at all the possession by the labourer of his products.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Book, Mean, Usury

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

  13 Copy quote

• The moment that justice must be paid for by the victim of injustice it becomes itself injustice.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Justice, Moments, Victim

  10 Copy quote

• 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”

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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. 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

  Past, Men, Long Ago

  10 Copy quote

• The right of the majority is absolute.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Majority, Absolutes

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1926). “Individual liberty: selections from the writings of Benjamin R. Tucker”

  10 Copy quote

• 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”

  7 Copy quote

• If I can go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Men, Liberty, May

  "Instead of a Book".

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  2 Copy quote

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