If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner.
The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes-naked greed and misconceived philanthropy.
Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.
Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism – including, of course, legal despotism?
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.
In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so?
Property, the right to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor, the right to work, to develop, to exercise one’s faculties, according to one’s own understanding, without the state intervening otherwise than by its protective action; this is what is meant by liberty.
Competition is merely the absence of oppression.
And this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.
If goods don’t cross borders, armies will.
There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation.
Try to imagine a system of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property rights. If you cannot do so, then you must agree that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.
There is in all of a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because the law makes them so.
Trade barriers constitute isolation; isolation gives rise to hatred, hatred to war, and war to invasion.
Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.
Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving.
If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.