Category: Thought

It is an American tradition that a standing army is a standing menace to liberty; in Jefferson’s presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It is American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations. It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it we have a standing army of 83,251 men.

Alexander Berkman, editor, Selected works of Voltairine de Cleyre (1914), p. 130.

The employer is, in the nature of things, neither the religious guide, the political guide, nor the intellectual guide of his workpeople. . . .
The workmen are under only one obligation with regard to their employer, and this is the performance of the productive labour for which they receive their wages. If the employer wishes to exact anything beyond this, he is guilty of an error. He invites servility, revolt, or hypocrisy; and is preparing for himself a terrible return.

Yves Guyot, “The Socialism of Employers,” The Tyranny of Socialism (1894), p. 229-230.

The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.

Nicholas Black Elk [Hehaka Sapa], The Sacred Pipe : Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (1953), as told to Joseph Epes Brown.

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.

Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).

[C]an you expect Liberty to undo in a moment what Oppression has been doing for ages?

Voltairine de Cleyre, The Economic Tendency of Freethought (1890).

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765).

A gun is not an argument.

Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).

Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that “It is not Philip, but Philip’s gold that takes the cities of Greece.”

Plutarch’s Lives: “Aemilius,” sec. 12.

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

Plutarch’s Lives: “Sertorius,” sec. 16.

The rights of individuals ought to be the primary object of all government, and cannot be too securely guarded by the most explicit declarations in their favor.

Mercy Otis Warren, Observations on the New Constitution (1788).