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Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Lysander Spooner Quotes

“The 'nations,' as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such 'nations.' ... Our pretended treaties, then, being made with no legitimate or bona fide nations, or representatives of nations, and being made, on our part, by persons who have no legitimate authority to act for us, have intrinsically no more validity than a pretended treaty made by the Man in the Moon with the king of the Pleiades.”

MenPersonsMadeReasonLawIndividualNationsPresidentPrinciplesHe ManKingsMoonAuthoritySlaveryMythIndividualismRepresentativesSecretarySenatorsSovereigntyTreatiesAmbassadorsValidityIndividual RightsMan In The Moon
Book:The collected works of Lysander Spooner
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“If those persons, who fancy themselves gifted with both the power and the right to define and punish other men's vices, would but turn their thoughts inwardly, they would probably find that they have a great work to do at home; and that, when that shall have been completed, they will be little disposed to do more towards correcting the vices of others, than simply to give to others the results of their experience and observation.”

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Book:Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty
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“The rescue of a person, who is assaulted, or restrained of his liberty, without authority of law, is not only morally, but legally, a meritorious act; for every body is under obligation to go to the assistance of one who is assailed by assassins, robbers, ravishers, kidnappers, or ruffians of any kind.”

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Book:A Defence for Fugitive Slaves
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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.”

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Book:An Essay on the Trial by Jury
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“It is with government paper, and bank paper, as it is with the paper of private persons; that is, it is worth just what can be delivered in redemption of it, and no more. We all understand that the notes of the Astors, and Stewarts, and Vanderbilts, though issued by millions, and tens of millions, are really worth their nominal values.”

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Book:A New Banking System: the Needful Capital for Rebuilding the Burnt District
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“The mental capacity of a person to make reasonable contracts, is the only criterion, by which to determine his legal capacity to make obligatory contracts. And his mental capacity to make reasonable contracts is certainly not to be determined by the fact that he is, or is not, twenty-one years of age.”

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Book:A Letter to Grover Cleveland on His False Inaugural Address, the Usurpation and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude of the People
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“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.”

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Book:Individualist anarchist pamphlets
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“And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see.”

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Book:The collected works of Lysander Spooner
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“There has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the power and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their power, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and find all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.”

LifePersonsHas BeensWarFactsLawPoliticsJusticeLibertyMoralOpinionPrinciplesCasesJudgingDutyDrugCriminalsPrimariesUsersExecutionUnjustAccusedJuryResistingParamountConstitutional LawJudge And Jury
Author:Lysander Spooner
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“All the great establishments, of every kind, now in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing a great number of wage laborers, would be broken up; for few or no persons, who could hire capital and do business for themselves would consent to labour for wages for another.”

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Book:A Letter to Grover Cleveland on His False Inaugural Address, the Usurpation and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude of the People
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“For everybody has a natural right not only to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to go to the assistance and defence of every one else whose person or property is invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on earth.”

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Author:Lysander Spooner
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“No man can delegate,... any right of arbitrary dominion over a 3rd person; for that would imply a right in the 1st person, not only to make the 3rd person his slave, but also a right to dispose of him as a slave to still other persons. Any contract to do this is necessarily a criminal one...To call such a contract a “constitution” does not at all lessen its criminality, or add to its validity.”

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Author:Lysander Spooner
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