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Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice.

Lysander Spooner

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Lysander Spooner
Age: 79 †
Born: 1808
Born: January 19
Died: 1887
Died: May 14
Anarchist
Businessperson
Essayist
Journalist
Lawyer
Opinion Journalist
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Justice
Majorities
Taken
Rightfully
Cannot
Deciding
Minorities
Account
Accounts
Questions
Majority

More quotes by Lysander Spooner

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To measure prices by a currency that is called by the same names as gold, but that is really inferior in value to gold, and then - because those prices are nominally higher than gold prices - to say that they are inflated, relatively to gold, is a perfect absurdity.
Lysander Spooner
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That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.
Lysander Spooner
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The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.
Lysander Spooner
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The desertion of Jesus, by his followers, furnishes an argument in support of the supposition that he attempted to be king of the Jews, rather than that he was a superior being.
Lysander Spooner
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There can be no criminal intent in resisting injustice.
Lysander Spooner
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Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other or at least no more accurate definition of a despotism than this.
Lysander Spooner
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To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.
Lysander Spooner
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The commerce of a free people is many times more valuable than that of slaves. Freemen produce and consume vastly more than slaves. They have therefore more to buy and more to sell. Hence the free states have a direct pecuniary interest in the civil freedom of all the other states. Commerce between free and slave states is not reciprocal or equal.
Lysander Spooner
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But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence.
Lysander Spooner
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Men's moral principles are weak enough without their being made subordinate to selfishness and their selfishness is quite active enough, without any such effort as Christianity makes to constitute it the mainspring of all their conduct.
Lysander Spooner
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If it be said that the consent of the strongest party in a nation, is all that is necessary to justify the establishment of a government that shall have authority over the weaker party, it may be answered that the most despotic governments in the world rest upon that very principle, viz.: the consent of the strongest party.
Lysander Spooner
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Children learn many principles of natural law at a very early age. For example: they learn that when one child has picked up an apple or a flower, it is his, and that his associates must not take it from him against his will.
Lysander Spooner
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A man who is without capital, and who, by prohibitions upon banking, is practically forbidden to hire any, is in a condition elevated but one degree above that of a chattel slave. He may live but he can live only as the servant of others compelled to perform such labor, and to perform it at such prices, as they may see fit to dictate.
Lysander Spooner
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Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all defence whatsoever against oppression.
Lysander Spooner
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The trial by jury might safely be introduced into a despotic government, if the jury were to exercise no right of judging of the law, or the justice of the law.
Lysander Spooner
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A man's 'original and natural right' to make all contracts that are 'intrinsically obligatory,' and to coerce the fulfillment of them, is one of the most valuable and indispensable of all human possessions.
Lysander Spooner
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Legally speaking, the term 'public rights' is as vague and indefinite as are the terms 'public health,' 'public good,' 'public welfare,' and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals.
Lysander Spooner
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Doing a thing by law, or according to law, is only carrying the law into execution. And punishing a man by, or according to, the sentence or judgment of his peers, is only carrying that sentence or judgment into execution.
Lysander Spooner
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A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters.
Lysander Spooner
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Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'
Lysander Spooner