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

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...

We’ve got this weird dysgenic situation where we’re basically just paying idiots to breed and taxing intelligent people to stay away from each other with anything remotely resembling fertility.

That effort to undermine competitive markets is no better in the market for labor than it is for goods and services.

The important question is, therefore, not whether anarchy is possible or not, but whether we can so enlarge the scope and influence of libertarian methods that they become the normal way in which human beings...

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...

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...

Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on “society’s” jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to...

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...

You cannot have an agency that defends your property, which also has the right to violate your property rights at will. That’s like hiring a bodyguard that you pay to beat you up randomly.

INDECISION NOW!’ isn’t a battle cry that’s going to rouse anybody’s blood. But I sometimes wonder if it isn’t the sanest one.

Right isn’t always legal.

To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.

I am a libertarian with a small ‘l’ and a Republican with a capital ‘R’. And I am a Republican with a capital ‘R’ on grounds of expediency, not on principle.

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag was the origin of the Nazi salute and Nazi behavior; and the swastika, although an ancient symbol, was also used to represent crossed ‘S’ letters for ‘socialism’ under...

The law is an opinion with a gun.

And then the other guy will look really sheepish, and mumble that, okay, maybe he tried to make a run for it, and maybe he took a drunken swing at the arresting officer, and maybe...

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment …...

The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.

The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the...

Free markets are the real people’s revolution.

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.

The vast majority of people are unthinking prejudice machines.

Throughout the history of our civilisation, two traditions, two opposed tendencies, have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition, the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition, the authoritarian tradition and the libertarian...

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

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...

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...

The market economy is delivering miracles by the minute and yet we hardly notice or care; worse, we denounce the realization of this dream of all of history, this coming of heaven on earth and...

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...

As mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope...

There is nothing worse than certainty. Doubt makes us weak. That is why it’s so important. I’ve wasted too much of my life trying to be powerful.

Making universal prosperity a right is the surest way to universal poverty.

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

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...

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...

The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters.

All atheists must examine the Non Aggression Principle.

I don’t want the technology of the 1950s, but I want the free market of the 1950s.

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another — except brute, physical force.

Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than...

In his 1907 retirement address, Joseph Pulitzer urged his successors to always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with...

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.

There is not the slightest analogy between playing games and the conduct of business within a market society. The card player wins money by outsmarting his antagonist. The businessman makes money by supplying customers with...

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...

Some say it’s wrong to profit from the misfortune of others. I ask my students whether they’d support a law against doing so. But I caution them with some examples. An orthopedist profits from your...

Poverty can be brought about by law; it cannot be forbidden by law.

No, the state is anything but the result of a contract! No one with even just an ounce of common sense would agree to such a contract. I have a lot of contracts in my...

Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given.

If the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the...