Lysander Spooner Quotes

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

Moral principles of liberty that endow a person with the right to claim and acquire property at the same time oblige that person to respect every other person’s equal right to do the same.

The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of property, which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution save only by the laws of the land.

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.

The end of all political associations is, the preservation of the rights of man, which rights are liberty, property, and security; that the nation is the source of all sovereignty derived from it...

Why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?

The perception of the right of every man to do pretty much as he pleases…. [which will produce] a general profligacy and corruption such as this country has never known.

Every man is born with a double right. First, a right of freedom to his person, …. Secondly, a right before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his father's goods.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

The laws would not prevent each man from living according to his inclination, unless individuals harmed each other

The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.

I have often asked Americans wherein they consider their freedom superior to that of the English, but have never found them able to indicate a single point in which the individual is worse off in England as regards his private civil rights or his general liberty of doing and thinking as he pleases. They generally turn the discussion to social equality, the existence of a monarchy and hereditary titles and so forth - matters which are, of course, quite different from freedom in its proper sense.

Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.

I don't want to live in a nanny state where people are telling me where I can go and what I can do.

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

I have a natural right to do whatever I want with my body... as long as it doesn't affect anybody else or any other property.

I'm a libertarian-conservative. I believe the state should focus on defending lives, rights, and property instead of depriving its citizens of their God-given liberties.

It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals.

Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.

In France, and other nations, the mere will of the Prince is Law, his word takes off any man's head, imposeth taxes, or seizes any man's estate …. In England the Law is both the measure and the bound of every Subject's duty and allegiance, each man having a fixed Fundamental Right born with him, as to freedom of his person and property in his estate, which he cannot be deprived of, but either by his consent, or some crime, for which the law has imposed such a penalty or forfeiture.