Benjamin Tucker

Passive resistance and boycotting are now prominent features of every great national movement.

It is the same with the use of force, whether of the mob or of the State, upon diseased society; and not only those who prescribe its indiscriminate use as a sovereign remedy and a permanent tonic, but all who ever propose it as a cure, …

The idea that Anarchy can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve Anarchy; neither can it bring it.

passive resistance is the instrument by which the revolutionary force is destined to secure in the last great conflict the people's rights forever.

Never was there a greater mistake. It is the only resistance which in these days of military discipline resists with any result. There is not a tyrant in the civilized world today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a …

It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth.

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.

But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder. Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act. And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and …

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.

The Anarchists most certainly believe in the Church; only they insist that all its work shall be purely voluntary, and that its discoveries and achievements, however beneficial, shall not be imposed upon the individual by authority.

The Anarchists believe in the State; only they insist that the greater part, if not all, of the necessity for its existence is the result of an artificial limitation of the freedom of civil society, and that the completion of industrial …

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

The Anarchists believe in the family; they only insist that free competition and experiment shall always be allowed in order that it may be determined what form of family best secures this object.

the population of the world is gradually dividing into two classes, Anarchists and criminals.

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

Once for all, then, we are not opposed to the punishment of thieves and murderers; we are opposed to their manufacture.

On the contrary, we are the sternest enemies of invasion of person and property, and, although chiefly busy in destroying the causes thereof, have no scruples against such heroic treatment of its immediate manifestations as circumstances …

Where crime exists, force must exist to repress it. Who denies it? Certainly not Liberty; certainly not the Anarchists.

The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.

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

The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.

Taking this view of the matter, the Anarchists contend that defence is not an essential of the State, but that aggression is.

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. …

This distinction between invasion and resistance, between government and defence, is vital.