Political Quotes

Lysander Spooner: It is plain, therefore, that if the people have invested the government with power to make laws that absolutely bind the…

On the record
It is plain, therefore, that if the people have invested the government with power to make laws that absolutely bind the people, and to punish the people for transgressing those laws, the people have surrendered their liberties unreservedly into the hands of the government.
Said by
Lysander Spooner

Editor's note · Context

Spooner critiques the relationship between government power and individual liberties, emphasizing the dangers of absolute authority.

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Why should they not have such an administration of justice as they desire, and can understand?

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

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They cannot claim or expect that the whole people shall practise the folly of taking on trust their pretended superior knowledge, and of committing blindly into their hands all their own interests, liberties, and rights, to be disposed of…

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It would also be making them consent to what they regard as the destruction of their own rights.

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