Lysander Spooner Quotes

In a free society, how can you commit a crime against yourself?

None can do a man so much harm as he doeth himself.

Don't cut my throat, I may want to do that later myself.

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

The greatest crimes are to associate another with God, to vex your father and mother, to murder your own species, to commit suicide, and to swear to lie.

We believe that you know how pernicious the vice of usury is …. We command you all by this apostolic writing not to permit those who are known as usurers to clear themselves by any subterfuge or trick when they are charged with the crime.

Incitement is worse than murder.

No legislation can suppress nature …. We can refuse to brand an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice what is due to ignorance.

You’ve damaged yourself, you have damaged another person, you’ve damaged your peers, and quite honestly you have damaged your own race

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. In vices, the very essence of crime—that is, the design to injure the person or property of another—is wanting. It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practices a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others. Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property, and the corresponding coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property

If for harming himself a man forfeits his freedom, then he was never free in the first place.

Killing and gangbanging, that's just wrong.

He's only harming himself who's bent upon harming another

What man in his right mind would conspire his own hurt? Men are beside themselves when they transgress against their convictions.

A man's venom poisons himself more than his victims.

I am not sure how many "sins" I would recognize in the world. Some would surely be defused by changed circumstances. But I can imagine none that is more irredeemably sinful than the betrayal, the exploitation, of the young by those who should care for them.

Killing a guy and stealing his wife and child isn't too nice a thing to do.

Now, neighbor confines, purge you of your scum! Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance, revel the night, rob, murder, and commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways?

Anger is like a ruin, which, in falling upon its victim, breaks itself to pieces.

Bad deeds, and deeds hurtful to ourselves, are easy to do; what is beneficial and good, that is very difficult to do.

Vices are not crimes.

No man ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a greater to himself.

Often does hatred hurt itself.

Such crimes has superstition caused.