Anthony de Jasay > Quotes

“Rewards, finally, do not spontaneously grow on trees, nor are they generated and distributed to good citizens by good government. They are bargaining counters which the state acquires to its supporters for distribution by taking sides. A presumptive adversary of all in civil society, to obtain the support of some,it must become the actual adversary of others; if there were no class struggle, the state could usefully invent it.”
― Anthony De Jasay, The State

“The law, notably tort law and the law of property based on the principle of exclusion, is historically prior to any proto-statal authority.”
― Anthony De Jasay, Justice and Its Surroundings

“Socialist economic mechanism demands severe enforcement in order to preform anywhere near as intended - yet severe enforcement is costly. However, the innocent belief that the corresponding "Stalinist" features of socialist systems are merely residual effects of the personal proclivities of the individual of the same name, seems nevertheless ineradicable from much public discourse.”
― Anthony De Jasay, Justice and Its Surroundings

“The threat to people's liberty and property can just as well come from the sovereign people as from the sovereign king. The danger, then, lies in sovereign power and not in the character of the tenant who holds it.”
― Anthony De Jasay, The State

“when the state cannot please everybody, it will choose whom it had better please.”
― Anthony De Jasay

“The state is competing with its subjects for the use of the scarce resources that is the liberty and property of each. It restrains them in what they may or not not do and forces them to devote part of their efforts and goods to the state's purposes rather than to their own.”
― Anthony De Jasay, The State