Non Aggression Principle Quotes

Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

Copyright: a system of monopoly privilege over the expression of ideas that enables government to stop consumer-friendly economic development and reward uncompetitive and legally privileged elites to fleece the public through surreptitious use of coercion.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his master's will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate, to his mind, its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness.

~ Frederick Douglass

Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.

~ Gustave De Molinari

Once you understand the economics of the Austrian School and the philosophy of liberty in the tradition of Rothbard, you never look at anything – not the state, the media, the central bank, the political class, nothing – the same way again.

~ Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

~ Henry Grady Weaver

Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men.

~ Auberon Herbert

Set men up to rule their fellow-men, to treat them as mere soulless material with which they may deal as they please, and the consequence is that you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion, trickery and violence, a mere scrambling ground for the strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous.

~ Auberon Herbert

It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.

~ Karl Hess

It's amazing the amount of anger, hostility and hatred some people show towards those of us who want to leave them in freedom. Hysterically, some statists characterize that as the voluntaryists trying to force their views on everyone else. You're oppressing me, by leaving me alone, and wanting me to leave you alone! Meanwhile, they wildly cheer when some politician promises to extort and control them. Go figure.

~ Larken Rose

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

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people’s natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they — the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate — are themselves the government.

~ Robert Higgs

When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you.

~ Frank Chodorov

Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

~ Friedrich A. Hayek

In particular, the State has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly over police and military services, the provision of law, judicial decision-making, the mint and the power to create money, unused land (the public domain), streets and highways, rivers and coastal waters, and the means of delivering mail...the State relies on control of the levers of propaganda to persuade its subjects to obey or even exalt their rulers.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the one, since the initiation of force is wrong (and the assent of even the most overwhelming majority can never make it morally permissible). Opinions—even majority opinions—neither create truth nor alter facts. A lynch mob is democracy in action. So much for mob rule.

~ Morris Tannehill

When I argue with devout statists, sometimes other voluntaryists tell me that I'm wasting my time, opining that a particular statist is never going to get it. I often respond by saying that that's rarely my intention. Most of the time, when I argue with statists, the goal is for ME to learn more about the mentality and psychology of authoritarian indoctrination, and to hopefully help any SPECTATORS--whether statist or anarchist--learn something from the exchange. (Both of those goals can be achieved even if the statist continues to be a lunk-headed dupe.) Earlier today, a funny but possibly profound analogy came to mind about this:When I argue with true believer devout statists, I'm not being a doctor trying to heal an ailing patient; I'm being a coroner, doing an AUTOPSY on a patient who is already beyond any hope of saving, in the hopes that I, and anyone observing, may learn more about the disease of statism, in order to better understand the nature of it, and possibly prevent others from experiencing a similar fate.

~ Larken Rose

Liberty is no less a blessing because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.

~ Lucretia Mott

The instant that any government obtains a monetary printing press, it becomes a deeply dishonest government, empowered to rob people by stealth. A government with the power to print money knows no limits.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Recall that the minimum wage was initially conceived as a method to exclude undesirables from the workforce.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Ultimately, all arguments against markets are arguments against anarchy. Marx understood this much, at least.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

What makes anyone think that government officials are even trying to protect us? A government is not analogous to a hired security guard. Governments do not come into existence as social service organizations or as private firms seeking to please consumers in a competitive market. Instead, they are born in conquest and nourished by plunder. They are, in short, well-armed gangs intent on organized crime. Yes, rulers have sometimes come to recognize the prudence of protecting the herd they are milking and even of improving its ‘infrastructure’ until the day they decide to slaughter the young bulls, but the idea that government officials seek to promote my interests or yours is little more than propaganda—unless, of course, you happen to belong to the class of privileged tax eaters who give significant support to the government and therefore receive in return a share of the loot.

~ Robert Higgs

The man who is not permitted to own is owned.

~ George Santayana

While liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when these consenting adults engage in trade or exchange, the liberals step in to harass, cripple, restrict, or prohibit that trade. And yet both the consenting sexual activity and the trade are similar expressions of liberty in action.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

When the state itself is held to the same moral standards as everyone else, it dies. And that's a wonderful thing.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

Where there is commerce there is peace.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

People are more willing to support the exercise of authority over themselves when they believe it to be an objective, neutral feature of the natural world. This was the idea behind the concept of the divine right of kings. By making the king appear to be an integral part of God's plan for the world rather than an ordinary human being dominating his fellows by brute force, the public could be more easily persuaded to bow to his authority. However, when the doctrine of divine right became discredited, a replacement was needed to ensure that the public did not view political authority as merely the exercise of naked power. That replacement is the concept of the rule of law.

~ John Hasnas

The very term ‘public utility’ … is an absurd one. Every good is useful ‘to the public,’ and almost every good … may be considered ‘necessary.’ Any designation of a few industries as ‘public utilities’ is completely arbitrary and unjustified.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

They who employ force by proxy are as much responsible for that force as though they employed it themselves.

~ Herbert Spencer

In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.

~ Albert Jay Nock

The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

No one wants their stuff stolen. No one wants their physical person harmed. If you understand the implications of those two truths, you can come to see the egregious moral and practical problems of a state-managed society.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Historical definition of a country's borders... ...here's where my murder geography ends and your murder geography begins, at least until I get more murderers to expand my murder-fest.

~ Stefan Molyneux

It is impossible for us to make any real advance until we take to heart this great truth, that without freedom of choice, without freedom of action, there are not such things as true moral qualities; there can only be submissive wearing of the cords that others have tied round our hands.

~ Auberon Herbert

People who can't imagine order without imposition always end up favoring power over liberty.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Government programs didn’t arise because the people demanded them or because the free market was unable to provide needed services. They arose because the politicians found them to be a convenient way to buy votes with other people’s money, a convenient way to enlarge their own power, a convenient way to reward their political cronies, and a convenient way to keep people dependent on government.

~ Harry Browne

When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.

~ Ron Paul

The profit of the one is the profit of the other.

~ Frédéric Bastiat