Benjamin Tucker Quotes

• Aggression is simply another name for government.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Government, Aggression

• Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Democrats

• And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, – at least in theory.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Punishment

• Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Comprehend

• First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Socialism, Government

• For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Just, Said

• Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Men

• I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Life

• But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Society

• And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Definition

• Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State’s destruction.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Necessity

• But which is the State’s essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Aggression

• I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Punishment

• In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Matter

• One thing, however, is sure, – that in all cases the effort should be to impose all the cost of repairing the wrong upon the doer of the wrong. This alone is real justice, and of course such justice is necessarily free.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Case, Sure

• Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Murder, Act

• Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Liberty, Security

• Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Labor, Sauce

• The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Abolition

• Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Capital

Benjamin Tucker (31)

Birth:	17th April, 1854
Death:	22nd June, 1939
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Activist, Editor, Publisher, Writer

About

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent, in the 19th century, of American individualist anarchism, which he called "unterrified Jeffersonianism," and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.

Related Authors

• David Starr Jordan
• Mike Farrell
• Sam Brown
• Laurie Holden
• Tom Hayden
• Jose Julian Marti Perez
• Shane Claiborne
• Naomi Ragen
• Dorothy Height
• Tristan Tzara

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 23rd April

Births

• 1986 - Neako
• 1968 - Timothy McVeigh
• 1940 - Willie Herenton
• 1960 - Valerie Bertinelli
• 1959 - Stephen Bennett

Deaths

• 1971 - Cyril Falls
• 1988 - Michael Ramsey
• 1992 - Satyajit Ray
• 1905 - Joseph Jefferson
• 1850 - William Wordsworth