Voltairine de Cleyre Quotes

Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies.

The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.

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.

Governmental power is the faculty to beat into submission all those who would dare to disobey the orders issued by the authorities. … Every governmental action is backed by constables, prison guards, and executioners. However beneficial a governmental action may appear, it is ultimately made possible only by the government's power to compel its subjects to do what many of them would not do if they were not threatened by the police and the penal courts.

Government is an apparatus of compulsion and coercion.

The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

Repression is fantastic.

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

If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.

When it comes to tyrants, dictators and terrorists, strength and the threat of force is the only language they understand.

Anyone who goes against my decisions, I liquidate him

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe.

Don't be deceived. There is no justice but strength.

A right not accompanied by the sword is a lost right.

Law … is but words and paper without the hands and swords of men

There is no force greater than the state force.

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

Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.

States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power

How long would authority ... exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen.

Taxation is robbery based on monopoly of weapons

Power depends ultimately on physical force. By teaching people that violence is wrong (except, of course, when the system itself uses violence via the police or the military), the system maintains its monopoly on physical force and thus keeps all power in its own hands.

What I say is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only, never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.