Top 90 Lysander Spooner Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.”

— Lysander Spooner

2. “A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.”

— Lysander Spooner

3. “It is manifest that the only security against the tyranny of the government lies in forcible resistance to the execution of the injustice; because the injustice will certainly be executed, unless it be forcibly resisted.”

— Lysander Spooner

4. “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

— Lysander Spooner

5. “Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.”

— Lysander Spooner

6. “The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.”

— Lysander Spooner

7. “The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.”

— Lysander Spooner

8. “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.”

— Lysander Spooner

9. “If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.”

— Lysander Spooner

10. “The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers.”

— Lysander Spooner

11. “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

12. “The apology, that is constantly put forth for the injustice of government, viz., that a man must consent to give up some of his rights, in order to have his other rights protected – involves a palpable absurdity, both legally and politically.”

— Lysander Spooner

13. “The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property, and the right of property is the right of absolute, irresponsible dominion. The two are identical; the one necessarily implying the other.”

— Lysander Spooner

14. “Taking a man’s money without his consent, is also as much robbery, when it is done by millions of men, acting in concert, and calling themselves a government, as when it is done by a single individual, acting on his own responsibility, and calling himself a highwayman.”

— Lysander Spooner

15. “All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” of having “saved the country,” of having “preserved the union,” of establishing a “government of consent,” and of “maintaining the national honor,” are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats – so transparent that they ought to deceive no one.”

— Lysander Spooner

16. “The right and the physical power of the people to resist injustice, are really the only securities that any people ever can have for their liberties. Practically no government knows any limit to its power but the endurance of the people.”

— Lysander Spooner

17. “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

18. “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

19. “The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this – that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.”

— Lysander Spooner

20. “No government knows any limits to its power except the endurance of the people.”

— Lysander Spooner

21. “But that the people are stronger than the government, and will resist in extreme cases, our governments would be little or nothing else than organized systems of plunder and oppression.”

— Lysander Spooner

22. “But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence.”

— Lysander Spooner

23. “What is the motive to the secret ballot? This, and only this: Like other confederates in crime, those who use it are not friends, but enemies; and they are afraid to be known, and to have their individual doings known, even to each other.”

— Lysander Spooner

24. “One essential of a free government is that it rest wholly on voluntary support. And one certain proof that a government is not free, is that it coerces more or less persons to support it, against their will.”

— Lysander Spooner

25. “If two individuals enter into a contract to commit trespass, theft, robbery or murder upon a third, the contract is unlawful and void, simply because it is a contract to violate natural justice, or men’s natural rights.”

— Lysander Spooner

26. “The right of revolution, which tyrants, in mockery, accord to mankind, is no legal right under a government; it is only a natural right to overturn a government.”

— Lysander Spooner

27. “The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take the responsibility of my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If any one denies my right, let him try conclusions with me.”

— Lysander Spooner

28. “No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire.”

— Lysander Spooner

29. “Legally speaking, there are no such things as ‘public rights,’ as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as ‘the public.’”

— Lysander Spooner

30. “For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be a falsehood, or falsehood a truth.”

— Lysander Spooner

31. “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

32. “These so-called governments are in reality only great bands of robbers and murderers, organized, disciplined, and constantly on the alert.”

— Lysander Spooner

33. “Vices are not crimes.”

— Lysander Spooner

34. “All the great establishments, of every kind, now in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing a great number of wage laborers, would be broken up; for few or no persons, who could hire capital and do business for themselves would consent to labour for wages for another.”

— Lysander Spooner

35. “If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.”

— Lysander Spooner

36. “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

37. “There was no difference of principle – but only of degree – between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men’s natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.”

— Lysander Spooner

38. “There can be no criminal intent in resisting injustice.”

— Lysander Spooner

39. “The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing.”

— Lysander Spooner

40. “No middle ground is possible on this subject. Either “taxation without consent is robbery,” or it is not. If it is not, then any number of men, who choose, may at any time associate; call themselves a government; assume absolute authority over all weaker than themselves; plunder them at will; and kill them if they resist.”

— Lysander Spooner

41. “Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby ameliorating their condition.”

— Lysander Spooner

42. “Children learn many principles of natural law at a very early age. For example: they learn that when one child has picked up an apple or a flower, it is his, and that his associates must not take it from him against his will.”

— Lysander Spooner

43. “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

44. “A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.”

— Lysander Spooner

45. “All, or nearly all, the advantage there is in fixing any constitutional limits to the power of a government, is simply to give notice to the government of the point at which it will meet with resistance.”

— Lysander Spooner

46. “Now a slave is not ‘held’ by any legal contract, obligation, duty, or authority, which the laws will enforce. He is ‘held’ only by brute force. One person beats another until the latter will obey him, work for him, if he require it, or do nothing if he require it.”

— Lysander Spooner

47. “The trial by jury is a trial by ‘the country,’ in contradistinction to a trial by the government. The jurors are drawn by lot from the mass of the people, for the very purpose of having all classes of minds and feelings, that prevail among the people at large, represented in the jury.”

— Lysander Spooner

48. “The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.”

— Lysander Spooner

49. “All restraints upon man’s natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.”

— Lysander Spooner

50. “So these villains, who call themselves governments, well understand that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their authority is denied, the first use they always make of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them more money.”

— Lysander Spooner