Murray Bookchin Quotes

There are some libertarians who are really anarchists, but others are more concerned about the distant relationship between themselves and power. They mistakenly think they want to get rid of government when instead they might just want to have greater access to power.

The passion and will for freedom is always contradicted by the necessity of the state.

It is not the State that orders us; but it is we who order the State!

The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience.

The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.

If libertarianism were easy to explain, and it weren't easy to exaggerate the effects of libertarianism, I think it would have been done already. Many many very intelligent people have applied themselves to crafting an agenda that people could grab ahold of. But the problem of course is that libertarianism isn't political. It is kind of anti-political. It wants to take a lot of things out of the political arena.

For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him.

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

Self Control, Not State Control

No nation can be free unless it is strong enough and active enough to control, whenever necessary, every private individual or group whose action affects the general welfare

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

It has been held, right up to the present day, that the freedom of individual must take second place to the security of the State.....

No government allows absolute liberty

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.

The State practices "violence," the individual must not do so. The state's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the individual, "crime".

Individual liberty depends upon keeping government under control.

Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute.

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity.

The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave.

If people cannot limit government they will not for long be free.

Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.