Benjamin Tucker Quotes

The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.

I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like everyone to go about doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed.

Trying to be a socialist and a libertarian is obviously a very difficult balancing act, which nobody has pulled off too successfully in this century.

The real case against socialism is not its economic inefficiency, though on all sides there is evidence of that. Much more fundamental is its basic immorality.

The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism. Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.

Socialists don't like ordinary people choosing, for they might not choose Socialism.

Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit...

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine.

All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?

Socialism: nothing more than the theory that the slave is always more virtuous than his master.

The term "state socialism" is not precise. Under this term many understand an order under which a certain part of the wealth, sometimes a quite considerable part, passes into state ownership or under its control while in the great majority of cases the ownership of plants, factories, and land, remains in private hands.

The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.

All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.

What I experienced in Cuba, I have become a student of what, how communism operates.

Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals.

The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term 'liberals' are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery.

Capitalistic Anarchism ? Oh, yes, if you choose to call it so. Names are indifferent to me; I am not afraid of bugaboos. Let it be so, then, capitalistic Anarchism.

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.

The laissez-faire argument relies on the same tacit appeal to perfection as does communism.

Anarchy, when it works to destroy authority in all its aspects, when it demands the abrogation of laws and the abolition of the mechanism that serves to impose them, when it refuses all hierarchical organization and preaches free agreement - at the same time strives to maintain and enlarge the precious kernel of social customs without which no human or animal society can exist. Only, instead of demanding that those social customs should be maintained through the authority of a few, it demands it from the continued action of all.

We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help me to get the thing.

I'm not an anarchist. I'm not saying, "Burn it to the ground."

Socialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police.

No matter what Donald Trump says, he has deep socialist leanings. He's a nationalist and a populist. And throughout history, whenever you combine those three things it never ends well.

I wrote about why I didn't think libertarians are really doing this kind of thing so that they can have sex with dogs. I discussed some of the reasons that a person might want to live out of the control of our federal, state, local, and every other form of government. Actually, I don't think I even called myself a libertarian. I think Tom Shroder identified me as one.