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Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.

— Benjamin Tucker The Relation of the State to the Individual (1890)

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More quotes by Benjamin Tucker

Education is a slow process, and may not come too quickly. Anarchists who endeavor to hasten it by joining in the propaganda of State Socialism or revolution make a sad mistake indeed.

As a general rule, the better people are, the more Anarchists and Socialists will be found among them.

Individual Liberty (1926)

The Anarchists believe in civil society; only they insist that the freedom of civil society shall be complete instead of partial.

Individual Liberty (1926)

Voluntary taxation, far from impairing the "State's" credit, would strengthen it.

Individual Liberty (1926)

There would be but one article in the constitution of a State Socialistic country: “The right of the majority is absolute.”

State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Benjamin Tucker (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.