government” – the notion that some people actually have the moral right to rule over others – has caused immeasurable pain and suffering, injustice and oppression, enslavement and death.

Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we...

The very term ‘public utility’ … is an absurd one. Every good is useful ‘to the public,’ and almost every good … may be considered ‘necessary.’ Any designation of a few industries as ‘public utilities’...

The idea that the government has services or goods that they can pass on is a complete farce. Governments have nothing. They can’t create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from...

People are more willing to support the exercise of authority over themselves when they believe it to be an objective, neutral feature of the natural world. This was the idea behind the concept of the...

He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.

When the state itself is held to the same moral standards as everyone else, it dies. And that’s a wonderful thing.

Statism is an unnatural disaster.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that...

There are two and only two ways that any economy can be organized. One is by freedom and voluntary choice—the way of the market. The other is by force and dictation—the way of the State.

Government should never be able to do anything you can’t do. If you can’t steal from your neighbor, you can’t send the government to steal for you.

There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, this thinking goes. Economics is a matter of acquiring and allocating, not creating. This was the view of the world’s smartest people, all top...

Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting–or even demanding–their own enslavement.

Free markets are the real people’s revolution.

Statism ends with an eye roll.

Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded.

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It’s just ganging up against the weird kid, and I’m always the weird kid.

Where there is commerce there is peace.

When I argue with devout statists, sometimes other voluntaryists tell me that I’m wasting my time, opining that a particular statist is never going to “get it.” I often respond by saying that that’s rarely...

It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the...

In the same way that central banking nearly wrecked the world and created one calamity after another, bitcoin can save the world one transaction at a time.It is time for a new beginning.

When you go with first principles, a giant light goes off in what you think is a city and turns out to be an insane asylum.

The disdain of profit is due to ignorance, and to an attitude that we may if we wish admire in the ascetic who has chosen to be content with a small share of the riches...

While liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when these consenting adults engage in trade or exchange, the liberals step in to harass, cripple, restrict, or prohibit that...

No state, no government exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men.

The instant that any government obtains a monetary printing press, it becomes a deeply dishonest government, empowered to rob people by stealth. A government with the power to print money knows no limits.

If you personally advocate that I be caged if I don’t pay for whatever “government” things YOU want, please don’t pretend to be tolerant, or non-violent, or enlightened, or compassionate. Don’t pretend you believe in...

I wonder how many such men in America would know that Communism, the New Deal, Fascism, Nazism, are merely so-many trade-names for collectivist Statism, like the trade-names for tooth-pastes which are all exactly alike except...

Freedom is the foundation for all wonderful things in life.

When people encounter the free market and they recoil or react negatively to it, they’re merely confessing that voluntaryism, trade and negotiation are foreign and threatening to them, which tells you everything about how tragically...

It is be­cause freedom means the renun­ciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.

tribute.” Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of...

Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people,...

People and institutions that refuse to admit error eventually discredit themselves.

Having a Constitutional political party is a little like telling a car-jacker, “You’re not allowed to do what you’re doing! And if you don’t stop it right now, we are going to ask you to...

In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.

What is a price? It is a proposed point of agreement between a buyer and seller. The proposal is the key. It is not a marching order. Past prices represent deals done in history. Current...

There’s a huge swath of humanity that has developed verbal abilities to extract resources from guilt-ridden people.They used to be priests, and now they’re leftists.

because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing, but not for doing another.” But why should we be reasonable, is the next come-back. Again, the answer is obvious. For one, because it would be...

Ultimately, we need to take control over the money supply out of the hands of our governments and make the production of money again subject to the principle of free association. The first step to...

What makes anyone think that government officials are even trying to protect us? A government is not analogous to a hired security guard. Governments do not come into existence as social service organizations or as...

Without anarchy, there would be chaos.

I’m not scared of the Maos and the Stalins and the Hitlers. I’m scared of the thousands of millions of people that hallucinate them to be “authority”, and so do their bidding, and pay for...

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes,...

Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government. That is, libertarians believe that murder is murder and does not become sanctified by reasons of state...

Tyranny is the wolf cast by the shadows of sheep.

A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, implied in this, a compulsory territorial monopolist of taxation. That is, a government is the ultimate arbiter, for the inhabitants of a given...

As I explain in ‘What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist’, to be an anarchist simply means you oppose aggression, and you realize the state necessarily commits aggression. If you are not an anarchist, it...

Here is a principle to use in all aspects of economics and policy. When you find a good or service that is in huge demand but the supply is so limited to the point that...