#That the only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets, until they have assuran… - Lysander Spooner

Through all time, so far as history informs us, wherever mankind have attempted to live in peace with each other, both the natural instincts, and the collective wisdom of the human race, have acknowledged and prescribed, as an indispensable condition, obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz., that each should live honestly towards every other. The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: " To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due." This entire maxim is really expressed in the single words, to live honestly; since to live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due.

For this reason, whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.:

If there be in nature such a principle as justice, it is necessarily the only political principle there ever was, or ever will be. All the other so-called political principles, which men are in the habit of inventing, are not principles at all. They are either the mere conceits of simpletons, who imagine they have discovered something better than truth, and justice, and universal law; or they are mere devices and pretences, to which selfish and knavish men resort as means to get fame, and power, and money.