Benjamin Tucker Quotes

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.

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.

People who are in a position of power like to throw their weight around, and that becomes abuse.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them.

The state is force incarnate, its essence is command and compulsion.

I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

Government is the assumption of authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries.

Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.

Some people draw a comforting distinction between force and violence. I refuse to cloud the issue by such word-play. The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence. Call an elephant a rabbit only if it gives you comfort to feel that you are about to be trampled to death by a rabbit.

The heart of government, coated with whatever velvet gloves you want to put on it, is a mailed fist of force and coercion.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

The power that is supported by force alone will have cause often to tremble.

Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a 'government'; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will.

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.

Obviously, a power player in a criminal organization doesn't have to persuade anyone. He can just do what he wants.

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

Power tends to get confused with repression.

That power which had both the purse and the sword, had the government of the whole country, and might extend its powers to any and to every object.