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,...

In monarchies, each man’s desire to do what was right in his own eyes could be restrained by beer, or force, by patronage, or by honor, and by professional standing armies. By contrast, republics had...

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

It’s illegal to forcefully take money from people unless you’re the government. It’s illegal to take someone’s liberty, unless you’re the government. It’s illegal to kill someone, unless you’re the government. Private organizations can do...

Without anarchy, there would be chaos.

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. Society promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, government negatively by restraining our vices. Society encourages intercourse. Government creates distinctions.

The proposal to quit voting is basically revolutionary; it amounts to a shifting of power from one group to another, which is the essence of revolution. As soon as the nonvoting movement got up steam,...

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.

learning” is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children’s true interests—turns learning from a joyful activity into a chore, to be avoided whenever possible. Coercive schooling, which tragically is the norm...

Absolutes are Coercion.Change is absolute.

God’s love for us is uncoerced and so freely given that it does not demand a response. But so freely is it given that it creates freedom in the recipient, so that our response is...

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...

No one can take away your Natural Rights, but they can do great damage making you think they can.

The overwhelming tendency of markets is to bring people together, break down prejudices, persuade people of the need to cooperate regardless of class, race, religion, sex/gender, and physical ability. The same is obviously and especially...

Vengeance against predators is meals on wheels.

Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism.

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

No one has the right to place one human being in a position of political power over another.

No teacher has the right to cure a child of making noises on a drum. The only curing that should be practiced is the curing of unhappiness.

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

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...

If you require force to promote your ideal, there is something wrong with your ideal.

Growing economies are built by billions of actors behaving according to their own interests, coordinated through institutions that no one in particular created.Realizing this requires humility, a trait that is in short supply among would-be...

Deep pockets and empty hearts rule the world. We unleash them at our peril.

The demoralization that the debase­ment of the currency left in its wake played a major role in bring­ing Adolf Hitler into power in 1933.

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...

In spite of its alluring name, the welfare state stands or falls by compulsion. It is compulsion imposed upon us with the state’s power to punish noncompliance. Once this is clear, it is equally clear...

Our lives are led, and our decisions made, within a network of needs and wants, some natural, some arising from the acts of others, some aggravated by the acts of the state. We are all...

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.

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...

True unalienable rights do not require one to trample other unalienable rights.

Recall that the minimum wage was initially conceived as a method to exclude undesirables from the workforce.

Improving the world can be a nasty and ugly and difficult and dangerous business…because when you improve the world, you threaten the entrenched interests of evil people.

For every dollar that is spent on the (boondoggle) bridge a dollar will be taken away from taxpayers. If the bridge costs $1,000,000 the taxpayers will lose $1,000, 000. They will have that much taken...

It is easy to be conspicuously ‘compassionate’ if others are being forced to pay the cost.

Until one nation ceases its attempts to dominate another, there will never be true freedom. Until one religion relinquishes its quest to prove its god superior to that of another, there shall never be world...

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...

Gee, I’d like to go visit Fred, but I can’t because there isn’t a flat thing outside for me to drive on, and I don’t know how to build it and the other 300 million...

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...

Ultimately, all arguments against markets are arguments against anarchy. Marx understood this much, at least.

History is the same story with different costumes.

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary,...

Liberty should be understood as freedom from the government, specifically, freedom from the initiation of physical force by the government.

Liberty is no less a blessing because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.

There is no need for us all to be alike and think the same way, neither do we need a common enemy to force us to come together and reach out to each other. If...

Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the...

It constantly amazes me that defenders of the free market are expected to offer certainty and perfection while government has only to make promises and express good intentions. Many times, for instance, I’ve heard people...

I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.

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

Historical definition of a country’s borders… “…here’s where my murder geography ends and your murder geography begins, at least until I get more murderers to expand my murder-fest.