Benjamin Tucker Quotes

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion.

When it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the state, as such, will cease to exist.

I think we have to talk about educating the people for critical consciousness about what anarchy is.

Government is an unnecessary evil.

There's nothing wrong with being an anarchist.

I'm by no means convinced that capitalism and the development of technology has made anarchism easier.

When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!

Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State.

That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.

Liberalism is to freedom as anarchism is to anarchy.

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

The state is not abolished, it withers away.

The more reason, the less government.

The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that 'the best government is that which governs least,' and that which governs least is no government at all.

The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.

We have to claim anarchy and realize that systems have a life of their own that is anti-humanist. There is definitely an anti-humanist tendency in all systems.

The thought of how far the human race would have advanced without government simply staggers the imagination.

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.

In the sense that anarchy equals freedom, yes. Anarchy means freedom, but it also means chaos.

Anarchism means voluntary co-operation instead of forced participation. It means harmony and order in place of interference and disorder.

Not whether we accomplish anarchism today, tomorrow, or within ten centuries, but that we walk towards anarchism today, tomorrow, and always.

Whoever says State necessarily says domination, and, consequently, slavery; a State without slavery, open or concealed, is inconceivable: that is why we are enemies of the State.

It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us.

I have been an Anarchist all my life.