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About the book Crisis and Leviathan

“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”

“The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws.”

“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”

“For in [the Romans] is an arrogance which no submission or good behavior can escape. Pillagers of the world, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder, and now they ransack the sea. A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them. They are the only people on earth to whose covetousness both riches and poverty are equally tempting. To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of ‘government’; they create a desolation and call it peace.”

“Before, we had ‘crimes’ that oppressed us; Now, we have ‘laws’ that oppress us.”

“Great empires are not maintained by timidity.”

“No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.”

“The people of the United States are no longer living under a government of laws; but every citizen holds life, liberty and property at the will and pleasure of the army officer in whose military district he may happen to be found.” [1861, after Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus]

“No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.”

“Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.”

“War makes for better reading than peace.”

“No war is inevitable until it breaks out.”

“There is nothing more agreeable in this life than to make peace with the establishment--and nothing more corrupting.”

“In every state power rests with the armed forces; and whoever controls these forces controls, in the last resort, the state itself.”

“All advance, comes from the non-conformists. If there had been no troublemakers, no dissenters, we should still be living in caves.”

“The peace of Versailles lacked moral validity from the start.”

“Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a great war, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one, or to fight it on a limited scale. This was the secret of Great Britain’s greatness so long as she stuck to naval warfare and did not try to become a military power on the continental pattern.”

“The second World War was, in large part, a repeat performance of the first. . . . Grmany fought specifically in the seond war to reverse the verdict of the first and to destroy the settlement which followed it. Her opponents fought, though less consciously, to defend that settlement. . . . If one asks the rather crude question, ‘what was the war about?’ the answer for the first is: ‘to decide how Europe should be remade,’ but for the second merely: ‘to decide whether this remade Europe should continue.’ The first war explains the second and, in fact, caused it, in so far as one event causes another.”

“The academic historians of the West may assert their scholarly independence even when they are employed by a government department; but they are as much ‘engaged’ as though they wore the handsome uniforms designed for German professors by Dr. Goebbels.”

“The whole world proves that there is no fellowship between overflowing treasuries and the happiness of the people; and that there is an invariable concurrency between such treasuries and their oppression. They are the strongest evidence in a civilized nation of a tyrannical government. But need we travel abroad in search of this evidence? Have we not at home a proof that national distress grows so inevitably with the growth of treasuries, as to render even peace and plenty unable to withstand their blighting effects?”

“Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun.”

“Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, ‘Never! Never!’”

“We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave.”

“I ask you, what is the difference between 30 million people dead and 130 million people dead? . . . With 30 million dead, the United States can survive . . .”

“Could we have avoided the tragedy of Hiroshima? Could we have started the atomic age with clean hands? No one knows. No one can find out.”

“Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.”

“I don’t believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.”

“I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted upon more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”

“This government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.”

“Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders --serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men--serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part . . .”

“I think we should be men first, and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

“There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.”

“Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.”

“Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.”

“The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.”

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

“What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.”

“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonels, captains, corporals, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

“I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mender. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended show, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour--for the horse was soon tackled--was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.”

“How does it become a man to act towards the American government today? I answer that he cannot, without disgrace, be associated with it.”

“But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice. Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?”

“Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined.  Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?  The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. . . . In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.”

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

“If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.”

“The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.”

“Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.”

“For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war.”

“Right is only in question between equals. And while the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.”

“Historically, collective violence has flowed regularly out of the central political processes of Western countries. People seeking to seize, hold, or realign the levers of power have continually engaged in collective violence as part of their struggles. The oppressed have struck in the name of justice, the privileged in the name of order, those between in the name of fear:  Great shifts in the arrangements of power have ordinarily produced- and have often depended on--exceptional moments of collective violence.”

“Consider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and thencharges for its reduction. Governments’ provision of protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering.”

“Going to war accelerated the move from indirect to direct rule. Almost any state that makes war finds that it cannot pay for the effort from its accumulated reserves and current revenues. Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat- including men--from reluctant citizens who have other uses for their resources.”

“The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”

“If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.”

“A people which had supported the most crushing laws without complaint, and apparently as if they were unfelt, throws them off with violence as soon as the burden begins to be diminished.”

“. . . above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare them for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood . . .”

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

“The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.“

“The evils which are endured with patience as long as they are inevitable, seem intolerable as soon as a hope can be entertained of escaping them.”

“To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power; the habits, ideas, and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.”

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."

“. . . . I am of the opinion that a centralized administration is fit only to enervate the nations in which it exists, by incessantly diminishing their local spirit. Although such an administration can bring together at a given moment, on a given point, all the disposable resources of a people, it injures the renewal of those resources.”

“Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.”

“If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then result, but it will have been brought about by despotism.”

“The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.”

“What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.”

“The will of men is not shattered (by the welfare state), but softened, bent, and guided. Men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence. It does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, until each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

“It is certain that despotism ruins individuals by preventing them from producing wealth, much more than by depriving them of wealth when they have produced; it dries up the source of riches. . . .”

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

“Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects.”

“Patriotism is the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.”

“The misapprehension springs from the fact that the learned jurists, deceiving themselves as well as others, depict in their books an ideal of government -- not as it really is, an assembly of men who oppress their fellow-citizens, but in accordance with the scientific postulate, as a body of men who act as the representatives of the rest of the nation. They have gone on repeating this to others so long that they have ended by believing it themselves, and they really seem to think that justice is one of the duties of governments. History, however, shows us that governments, as seen from the reign of Caesar to those of the two Napoleons and Prince Bismarck, are in their very essence a violation of justice; a man or a body of men having at command an army of trained soldiers, deluded creatures who are ready for any violence, and through whose agency they govern the State, will have no keen sense of the obligation of justice. Therefore governments will never consent to diminish the number of those well-trained and submissive servants, who constitute their power and influence.”

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.”

“War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.”

“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.”

“Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.”

“The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

“America is today the leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in the defense of vested interests. She now stands for what Rome stood for. Rome consistently supported the rich against the poor in all foreign communities that fell under her sway; and, since the poor, so far, have always and everywhere been far more numerous than the rich, Rome’s policy made for inequality, for injustice, and for the least happiness of the greatest number.”

“It’s the misfortune of all Countries, that they sometimes lie under a unhappy necessity to defend themselves by Arms against the ambition of their Governors, and to fight for what’s their own. If those in government are headless of reason, the people must patiently submit to Bondage, or stand upon their own Defense; which if they are enabled to do, they shall never be put upon it, but their Swords may grow rusty in their hands; for that Nation is surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it.”

“Those, who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.”

“To avoid domestic tyranny, the people must be armed to stand upon [their] own Defense; which if [they] are enabled to do, [they] shall never be put upon it, but [their] Swords may grow rusty in [their] hands; for that Nation is surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it.”

“One free man says frankly what he things and feels in the midst of thousands who by their actions and words maintain just the opposite. It might be supposed that the man who has frankly expressed his thought would remain isolated, yet in most cases it happens that all, or the majority, of the others have long thought and felt the same as he, only they have not expressed it. And what yesterday was the novel opinion of one man becomes today the general opinion of the majority. And as soon as his opinion is established, at once by imperceptible degrees but irresistably, the conduct of man begins to alter.”

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

“In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: Who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: Who does not obey shall not eat.”

“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in ’47, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.”

“Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.”

“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible.”

“If they talk about dying for principles that are bigger than life you say mister you’re a liar. Nothing is bigger than life. There’s nothing noble in death. What’s noble about lying in the ground and rotting? What’s noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What’s noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What’s noble about being an idiot? What’s noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What’s noble about being dead? Because when you’re dead mister it’s all over. It’s the end. You’re less than a dog less than a rat less than a bee or an ant less than a maggot crawling around on a dung heap. You’re dead mister and you died for nothing. You’re dead mister. Dead.”

“If the thing they were fighting for was important enough to die for them it was also important enough for them to be thinking about it in the last minutes of their lives. That stood to reason. Life is awfully important so if you’ve given it away you’d ought to think with all your mind in the last moments of your life about the thing you traded it for. So did all those kids die thinking of democracy and freedom and liberty and honor and the safety of the home and the stars and the stripes forever? You’re goddamn right they didn’t. They died crying in the minds like little babies. They did with only one thought in their minds and that was I want to live I want to live I want to live.”

“We saw the lightning and that was the guns and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.”

“I looked at my hands, to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such a glory over everything, the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.”

“Holding a monopoly, the banker is the worst enemy of the human race, being its chief despoiler; without that monopoly, he is its best friend, being its greatest civilizer.”

“To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.”

“The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows.”

“We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them.”

“The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest possible limits. . . . and [when] the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”

“War is the unfolding of miscalculations.”

“Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.”

“When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?”

“Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties - the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety - the one which can’t bear to be outside the pale; can’t bear to be in disfavor; can’t endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, ‘He’s on the right track.’ Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his life-long principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it happen. In some million of instances.”

“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.”

“Talking of patriotism, what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery.”

“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; its institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags - that is a loyalty of unreason…”

“The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”

“For in a Republic, who is ‘the country?’ Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant--merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.”

“There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.”

“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” (1866)

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

“Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’--with his mouth.”

“The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will--warily and cautiously--object . . . at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.’

Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity.

Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men . . .

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither.”

Battle Hymn of the Republic (Brought Down to Date [1900])

Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps --
His night is marching on.

I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!”

We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;*
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!

In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom – and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich –
Our god is marching on.

NOTE: In Manila the Government has placed a certain industry under the protection of our flag.--Mark Twain

“The power of Congress to create a national bank to operate per se over the Union has been a question of dispute from the origin of the Government . . . my own opinion has been uniformly proclaimed to be against the exercise of any such power by the Government.”

“Wealth can only be accumulated by the earnings of industry and the savings of frugality.”

“. . . There will be found to exist at all times an imperious necessity for restraining all the functionaries of the Government within the range of their respective powers thereby preserving a just balance between the powers granted to this Government and those reserved to the States and to the people.”

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.”

“All warfare is based on deception.”

“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”