Lysander Spooner Quotes

And now, here I was in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six in each thousand of its population. For the 994 to express dissatisfaction with the … system and propose to change it, would have made the whole 6 shudder as one man … It seemed to me that what the 994 dupes needed was a new deal.

Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery.

Men like me, who merely wish to establish political freedom, will in such circumstances lose all their influence, and others will get influence who may become dangerous to all established interests whatsoever.

It's very important to vote. People died for this right.

It is an essential tenet of our whole representative form of government, the idea that there should not be some tyranny which makes it so nobody can even have a chance to vote.

Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.

My sole ambition is to rid Mexico of the class that has oppressed her and given the people a chance to know what real liberty means. And if I could bring that about today by giving up my life, I would do it gladly.

Also, when you escape a Communist regime, you treasure liberty and you understand that as government and state expand, liberty must contract.

In general people feel more relaxed about participating in politics. They aren't frightened as they used to be.

Freedom to vote is valuable primarily as a means to safeguard other freedoms.

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

We talk about freedoms for African-Americans but unless you have more than one option politically, how free are you?

In times not long gone by, the higher and richer classes were in complete possession of the government. Their power was the master grievance of the country. The habit of voting at the bidding of an employer, or of a landlord, was so firmly established, that hardly anything was capable of shaking it

If I were a citizen of Russia, I would resist this communist dictatorship as vigorously as I have endeavored to resist the encroachment upon our democratic institutions in America. I hold that government of one class, denying the other classes the right to participate is tyranny.

The taste of democracy becomes a bitter taste when the fullness of democracy is denied.

Secure to all people a free exercise of the right of suffrage and every other civil right.

I am a person who has never used violence himself. My present opinion is that people who have obtained the ballot should use it and solve their problems in that way. In the case of peoples who have not obtained the ballot, and who cannot control their states, I again find in my own mind a division of opinion, which is not logical, but purely a rough practical judgment. My own forefathers got their political freedom by violence; that is to say, they overthrew the British crown and made themselves a free Republic. Also by violence they put an end to the enslavement of the black race on this continent.

We live in a democracy, and people are free to sometimes choose the wrong leader.

You don't just end up with freedom when you have the vote. The struggle continues.

It is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government: the ballot.

Since 1990, we have been building up the idea that democracy is the best way for sectors that feel socially excluded from politics to win power.

People need to realize that people have died for your vote.

Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating.

The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors; and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.