Lysander Spooner Quotes

We should not underestimate the ability of people to do wrong if they want to do so.

Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness; and likewise a variety of particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular external objects.

No intelligent man believes that anybody ever willingly errs or willingly does base and evil deeds; they are well aware that all who do base and evil things do them unwillingly.

Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.

A man given to vice is always an idealist.

Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

You choose sin. You practice sin.

All who do evil and dishonorable things do them against their will.

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

The deepest, the intelligible, part of the nature of man is that part which does not take refuge in causality, but which chooses in freedom the good or the bad.

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose.

We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.

It is better to suffer injustice than to do it.

There is no God dare wrong a worm.

If any man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done wrong.

Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?

I like something with 'vice' in it.

So you would rather suffer an injustice than do an injustice?

T is the will that makes the action good or ill.

Here in St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch wrote, “ I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God – we should seize those moments. There won’t be may

He who has a mind to do mischief will always find a pretense.