Lysander Spooner

What else than ignorance of the law is it that excuses persons under the years of discretion, and men of imbecile minds?

They are every day committing errors, which would be crimes, but for their ignorance of the law.

And yet these reasons, which are really no reasons at all, are the only ones, so far as I know, that have ever been offered for this absurd and brutal doctrine.

And he can rightfully be held to no greater knowledge of the law than this.

The will, or the pretended will, of the majority, is the last lurking place of tyranny at the present day.

When two men meet one upon the highway, or in the wilderness, have they a right to dispose of his life, liberty, or property at their pleasure, simply because they are the more numerous party?

The answer is, that they are as reliable for that purpose as are the majority; they are as much presumed to have associated, and are as likely to have associated, for that object, as are the majority; and they have as much interest in such…

It was a principle of the Common Law, as it is of the law of nature, and of common sense, that no man can be taxed without his personal consent.

Juries would refuse to enforce a tax against a man who had never agreed to pay it.

Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is, all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or obligation.

And nobody is bound to take the least notice of them, unless it be to trample them under foot, as usurpations.

If the authority be vested in the government, the governmnt is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with.