Non Aggression Principle Quotes & Sayings

The idea that the government has services or goods that they can pass on is a complete farce. Governments have nothing. They can't create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept. — Ron Paul

Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual. — Auberon Herbert

Property rights are the foundation necessary to explain the role of non-aggression. In other words, the non-aggression principle is simply another of way of saying individuals have a right against aggression from others as a result of property. Non-aggression alone does not tell us what property rights people have, or why they have these rights to begin with. — Daniel Alexander Brackins

It's amazing the amount of anger, hostility and hatred some people show towards those of us who want to leave them in freedom. Hysterically, some statists characterize that as the voluntaryists trying to "force" their views on everyone else. "You're oppressing me, by leaving me alone, and wanting me to leave you alone!" Meanwhile, they wildly cheer when some politician promises to extort and control them. Go figure. — Larken Rose

The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner. — Albert Jay Nock

A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the Right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional - a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure. — Ilana Mercer

Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle. — Samuel P. Huntington

The man who is not permitted to own is owned. — George Santayana

If we as a society want to cure unemployment, raise real wages, and in other ways improve our economy, we will base public policy on private property rights, the non-aggression principle and the law of free association. In the free and prosperous society, everyone may do precisely as he pleases, provided only that he does not initiate violence against non-aggressors. — Walter Block

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy. — Thomas Sowell

Here's something I still can't get over. Amazes and thrills me every time. I'm sitting here and want a certain book. So I search, click, and then I have the book. Every time, my heart does a little leap of joy. What a beautiful world the market is making. — Jeffrey Tucker

Government is a gun that shoots money at your enemy and blows up in your face. — Stefan Molyneux

Distraction serves evil more than any other mental state. — Stefan Molyneux

The entire Nazi war machine was only possible because of past, present and future violations of the non aggression principle (achievable only through government). — Stefan Molyneux

No one wants their stuff stolen. No one wants their physical person harmed. If you understand the implications of those two truths, you can come to see the egregious moral and practical problems of a state-managed society. — Jeffrey Tucker

The profit of the one is the profit of the other. — Frederic Bastiat

All atheists must examine the Non Aggression Principle. — Stefan Molyneux

Nearly all libertarians were once conservatives or progressives or independent statists of some stripe. But scarcely any conservatives, progressives, or independent statists were once libertarians. This asymmetry in the direction of ideological migration is interesting and perhaps informative. — Robert Higgs

Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). — Robert Nozick

The principle of non-aggression is a deep and fundamental Truth in human interaction. Actions that are coerced have no moral value. A confession under torture is no real confession. Giving money to the poor at gunpoint is not real charity. The aim of Islam, and religion more broadly, is to place moral value in every action, so how can coercion be virtuous? — Davi Barker

It is only you, treading in the blessed path of peace and freedom, who can bring about the true regeneration of society, and with it the true happiness of your own lives. — Auberon Herbert

The goal of parenting is to create self-sufficient virtues in children. Applying external pressure and punishments tends to teach them fear-based compliance rather than the internalization of moral standards. — Stefan Molyneux

Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men. — Auberon Herbert

There are two principles between which there can be no compromise - liberty and coercion. — Frederic Bastiat

Set men up to rule their fellow-men, to treat them as mere soulless material with which they may deal as they please, and the consequence is that you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion, trickery and violence, a mere scrambling ground for the strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous. — Auberon Herbert

To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself. — Auberon Herbert

On the opening day of law school at Yale, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you. — Stephen L. Carter

The war is against children, and all the other wars are just a shadow of the war on children. — Stefan Molyneux

As I explain in 'What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist', to be an anarchist simply means you oppose aggression, and you realize the state necessarily commits aggression. If you are not an anarchist, it means you either condone aggression, or think the state does not necessarily commit aggression. As you say you are not an anarchist, can you please tell us which one describes you? Are you in favor of aggression (like socialists and criminals are)? Or, do you think the state does not commit aggression (like children brainwashed by government schools think)? — N. Stephan Kinsella

People who can't imagine order without imposition always end up favoring power over liberty. — Jeffrey Tucker

If you personally advocate that I be caged if I don't pay for whatever "government" things YOU want, please don't pretend to be tolerant, or non-violent, or enlightened, or compassionate. Don't pretend you believe in "live and let live," and don't pretend you want peace, freedom or harmony. It's a simple truism that the only people in the world who are willing to "live and let live" are voluntaryists. So you can either PRETEND to care about and respect your fellow man while continuing to advocate widespread authoritarian violence, or you can embrace the concepts of self-ownership and peaceful coexistence, and become an anarchist. — Larken Rose

The libertarian approach is a very symmetrical one: the non-aggression principle does not rule out force, but only the initiation of force. In other words, you are permitted to use force only in response to some else's use of force. If they do not use force you may not use force yourself. There is a symmetry here: force for force, but no force if no force was used. — Stephan Kinsella

Historical definition of a country's borders ... ... here's where my murder geography ends and your murder geography begins, at least until I get more murderers to expand my murder-fest. — Stefan Molyneux

Equality cannot be imagined outside of tyranny. — Charles Forbes Rene De Montalembert

People are more willing to support the exercise of authority over themselves when they believe it to be an objective, neutral feature of the natural world. This was the idea behind the concept of the divine right of kings. By making the king appear to be an integral part of God's plan for the world rather than an ordinary human being dominating his fellows by brute force, the public could be more easily persuaded to bow to his authority. However, when the doctrine of divine right became discredited, a replacement was needed to ensure that the public did not view political authority as merely the exercise of naked power. That replacement is the concept of the rule of law. — John Hasnas

It is impossible for us to make any real advance until we take to heart this great truth, that without freedom of choice, without freedom of action, there are not such things as true moral qualities; there can only be submissive wearing of the cords that others have tied round our hands. — Auberon Herbert

It must be noted that the non-aggression alone can never be the starting point in justifying moral behavior or serving as a fundamental principle of ethics. There must be a justification of the non-aggression principle before such a case can be made. The very implication of the term "principle" implies that non-aggression serves as the foundation for a system of ethics, which it cannot be. It is certainly not an axiom since it is not a self-evident truth. — Daniel Alexander Brackins

Socialism, or communism as it is sometimes called, is merely a secular religion, where the State becomes a god. — Stefan Molyneux

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his master's will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate, to his mind, its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness. — Frederick Douglass

In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you. — Albert Jay Nock