John Hospers Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

A fascist is a student who, seeing the representatives of a chemical industry recruiting on campus, cries, 'Let's chase the bastard off! We have the right to free speech but he doesn't!'

John Hospers
Government is the most dangerous institution known to man. Throughout history it has violated the rights of men more than any individual or group of individuals could do: it has killed people, enslaved them, sent them to forced labor and concentration camps, and regularly robbed and pillaged them of the fruits of their expended labor. Unlike individual criminals, government has the power to arrest and try; unlike individual criminals, it can surround and encompass a person totally, dominating every aspect of one's life, so that one has no recourse from it but to leave the country (and in totalitarian nations even that is prohibited).

John Hospers
If each human being is to have liberty, he cannot also have the liberty to deprive others of their liberty.

John Hospers
The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

John Hospers
By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments-that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.

John Hospers
Liberty (or freedom) is the absence of coercion by other human beings.

John Hospers
The only proper role of government, according to libertarians, is that of the protector of the citizen against aggression by other individuals. The government, of course, should never initiate aggression; its proper role is as the embodiment of the retaliatory use of force against anyone who initiates its use.

John Hospers