A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
If any man’s money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
A traitor is a betrayer – one who practices injury, while professing friendship. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, solely because, while professing friendship for the American cause, he attempted to injure it. An open enemy, however criminal in other respects, is no traitor. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
It is a natural impossibility for any man to make a binding contract, by which he shall surrender to others a single one of what are commonly called his ‘natural, inherent, inalienable rights.’ Lysander Spooner Read Quote
Legally speaking, the term ‘public rights’ is as vague and indefinite as are the terms ‘public health,’ ‘public good,’ ‘public welfare,’ and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
To deprive mankind of their natural right and power of creating wealth for themselves, is as great a tyranny as it is to rob them of it after they have created it. And this is done by all laws against honest banking. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
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. Lysander Spooner Read Quote
