Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tuckerwas 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 April 1854
CityDartmout, MA
CountryUnited States of America
war passive-resistance peaceful
It is because peaceful agitation and passive resistance are effective that I uphold them, and it is because force strengthens tyranny that I condemn it. War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions. It is foolish in the extreme not only to resort to force before necessity compels, but especially to madly create the conditions that will lead to this necessity.
men past long-ago
In times past...it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off. Man's only right to land is his might over it. If his neighbor is mightier than he and takes the land from him, then the land is his neighbor's, until the latter is dispossessed by one mightier still.
mother order liberty
Anarchism is for liberty, and neither for nor against anything else. Anarchy is the mother of co-operation, yes, just as liberty is the mother of order; but, as a matter of definition, liberty is not order nor is Anarchism co-operation. I define Anarchism as the belief in the greatest amount of liberty compatible with equality of liberty; or, in other words, as the belief in every liberty except the liberty to invade.
ideas world emergencies
The moment one abandons the idea that he was born to discover what is right and enforce it upon the rest of the world, he begins to feel an increasing disposition to let others alone and to refrain even from retaliation or resistance except in those emergencies which immediately and imperatively require it.
men essence names
Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.
war liberty authority
War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.
men insult-to-injury liberty
To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
power men tyrants
The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows.
names government aggression
Aggression is simply another name for government.
anarchist democrat
Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.
government anarchy individual
If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State.
american-activist divisions evident fully positions prominent understand
That those prominent in the intermediate Socialistic divisions do not fully understand what they are about is evident from the positions they occupy.