Lysander Spooner Quotes

There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.

The master who fears the choices his people will make enough to take those choices away isn't worth serving.

Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.

It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.

I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

The house of Austria has publicly used every effort to deprive the country of its legitimate Independence and Constitution, designing to reduce it to a level with the other provinces long since deprived of all freedom, and to unite all in a common sink of slavery.

Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

Free men have arms; slaves do not.

Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.

Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.

It is bad to have a servant, but worse to have a master.

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?

There are no tyrants where there are no slaves.

If one is free at heart, no man-made chains can bind one to servitude, but if one's mind is so manipulated and controlled by the oppressor, then there will be nothing the oppressed can do to scare his powerful masters.

We are free today because we are the stronger; we will be slaves again when the government becomes the stronger.

There is no freedom in peaceful slavery.

In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business.

If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first person in the history of the world.

I'm a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.

To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers.

I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.