Robert LeFevre Quotes

Economically speaking, all anarchists are socialists, however they may coalesce to the political spectrum. Economically speaking, the libertarian is an individualist, believing in and supporting the concept of private ownership, individual responsibility and self-government.

The aim of the anarchist is to eliminate private ownership.

We know that men cannot be compelled to be good. They can only be prevented from being bad—a negative condition. We know from bitter experience that men cannot be forced into doing the wise thing, for such a forcement is foolishness.

Government alone, in all man’s inventions, is capable of independent life. Government alone, like Mrs. Shelley’s terrifying creation of the monster born in Frankenstein’s mind, has the power and the ability to turn upon its creators and destroy them.

And thus we see the government is at once both protector and predator. It is not that governments begin in virtue only to end in sin. Government begins by protecting some against others and ends up protecting itself against everyone. This is the course of history.

But the thing all members of governments desire to do is to rule their own people and to collect money from them. This is inherent in their natures. So the United Nations, perforce, will aid and abet the member governments in their universal desire to maintain a coercive hold over their individual subjects. Thus, the United Nations is a government of the governments, by the governments, and for the governments. And it cannot and will not restrain their governments,…

Government may be intrinsically evil; clearly they operate on the basis of tax predation.

Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.

An anarchist is anyone who believes in less government than you do.

But history shows repeatedly the madness of crowds and the irrationality of majorities. The only conceivable merit relating to majority rule lies in the fact that if we obtain monopoly decisions by this process, we will coerce fewer persons than if we permit the minority to coerce the majority. But implicit in all political voting is the necessity to coerce some so that all are controlled.

If men are good, you don’t need government; if men are evil or ambivalent, you don’t dare have one.

Government doesn't cure problems. It aggravates them.

Since I favor total self-control—absolute government of the individual over himself—I believe autarchy more accurately describes, in a positive fashion, the kind of situation I consider most desirable. Some dictionaries define autarchy as a kind of tyranny or despotism, but of necessity it is limited to self-application.

Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible.

The family unit is the incubator for human character; the state is the incubator for human dependency.