Quote

Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it no legal sanction.

Lysander Spooner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lysander Spooner
Age: 79 †
Born: 1808
Born: January 19
Died: 1887
Died: May 14
Anarchist
Businessperson
Essayist
Journalist
Lawyer
Opinion Journalist
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Slavery
Sanction
Positive
Impart
Gives
Custom
Law
Sanctions
Natural
Legislation
Giving
Customs
Legal
Imparts
Aids
Legalized

More quotes by Lysander Spooner

Image
The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take the responsibility of my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If any one denies my right, let him try conclusions with me.
Lysander Spooner
Image
Money is the great instrumentality for manufacturing.
Lysander Spooner
Image
It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals.
Lysander Spooner
Image
There is not, in the Constitution, a syllable that implies that persons, born within the territorial limits of the United States, have allegiance imposed upon them on account of their birth in the country, or that they will be judged by any different rule, on the subject of treason, than persons of foreign birth.
Lysander Spooner
Image
A slave government is an oligarchy and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.
Lysander Spooner
Image
Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby ameliorating their condition.
Lysander Spooner
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The law does not require a man to cease to be a man, and act without regard to consequences, when he becomes a juror.
Lysander Spooner
Image
Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities and are liable and likely to be equally - perhaps more than equally, because more boldly - rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power.
Lysander Spooner
Image
A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases.
Lysander Spooner
Image
Government is in reality established by the few and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.
Lysander Spooner
Image
One essential of a free government is that it rest wholly on voluntary support. And one certain proof that a government is not free, is that it coerces more or less persons to support it, against their will.
Lysander Spooner
Image
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
Image
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
Lysander Spooner
Image
The constitution of the United States declares that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts.
Lysander Spooner
Image
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
Image
No government knows any limits to its power except the endurance of the people.
Lysander Spooner
Image
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
Image
It is manifest that the only security against the tyranny of the government lies in forcible resistance to the execution of the injustice because the injustice will certainly be executed, unless it be forcibly resisted.
Lysander Spooner