Lysander Spooner Quotes

It is manifest that the only security against the tyranny of the government lies in forcible resista...

If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us ...

Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law g...

The secret ballot makes a secret government and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and ...

It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can ac...

It cannot be said that the Constitution formed 'the people of the United States,' for all time, into...

The trial by jury might safely be introduced into a despotic government, if the jury were to exercis...

Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are it...

The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their...

The right of revolution, which tyrants, in mockery, accord to mankind, is no legal right under a gov...

If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves...

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this--that it is o...

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has eit...

Martyrdom is evidence only of a man's honesty - it is no evidence that he is not mistaken. Men have ...

A traitor is a betrayer - one who practices injury, while professing friendship. Benedict Arnold was...

If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and...

No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not d...

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

The trial by jury is a trial by 'the country,' in contradistinction to a trial by the government. Th...

Now a slave is not 'held' by any legal contract, obligation, duty, or authority, which the laws will...

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life...The go...

If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his...

Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.

A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally...

And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made e...

Legally speaking, the term 'public rights' is as vague and indefinite as are the terms 'public healt...

The mental capacity of a person to make reasonable contracts, is the only criterion, by which to det...

A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally...

If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do no...

That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest p...