Quotes About Coercion

It is indeed probable that more harm and misery has been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil. —Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 1960

Genuine biblical Christianity does not impose itself on unwilling people at the point of a sword. If you choose to reject Jesus, you're perfectly free to do so.

Again, the importance of personally taking control of the direction of learning from the very first steps cannot be stressed enough. If a person feels coerced to read a certain book, to follow a given course because that is supposed to be the way to do it, learning will go against the grain. But if the decision is to take that same route because of an inner feeling of rightness, the learning will be relatively effortless and enjoyable.

La fuerza, o la amenaza de emplear la fuerza, es el instrumento contundente a través del cual se ejerce el poder en situaciones extremas.

Lo que quiero decir no es que la coacción ya no sea posible —basta recordar las masacres en Siria—, sino que se ha vuelto más cara y más difícil de sostener a largo plazo.

We live in a universe of codes that we sometimes follow and sometimes do not. And we allow others to direct our behavior through their invocation of such codes. That channel of power does not employ coercion; instead, it activates our sense of moral duty. Perhaps the best example is the Ten Commandments: through them, a higher and unquestioned power unequivocally

C'est un méchant moyen de se faire aimer de quelqu'un que de lui faire violence.

No being has the right to say to another, "Do this, or I will hurt you".

Arabs respect only the language of force.

The State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

The State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming. That coercion is known as "taxation," although in less regularized epochs it was often known as "tribute." Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State's inhabitants, or subjects.

There are two and only two ways that any economy can be organized. One is by freedom and voluntary choice—the way of the market. The other is by force and dictation—the way of the State.

We conclude, therefore, that determining the supply of money, like all other goods, is best left to the free market. Aside from the general moral and economic advantages of freedom over coercion, no dictated quantity of money will do the work better, and the free market will set the production of gold in accordance with its relative ability to satisfy the needs of consumers, as compared with all other productive goods.10

Si los humanos son tan malos, ¿cómo podemos esperar que un gobierno coercitivo, compuesto por humanos, mejore la situación?46 Rothbard responde a estos argumentos y a muchos más.47

War is Mass Murder, Conscription is Slavery, Taxation is Robbery.

It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.

Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

Violence, in all its forms, is integral to the everyday functioning of capitalist society—for it is only through a mix of brute coercion and constructed consent that the system can sustain itself in the best of times. One form of violence cannot be stopped without stopping the others.

If moral knowledge is impossible, then we are left with only political and legal measures to coerce people into compliance.

Fred Singer gave his game away when he denied the reality of the ozone hole, suggesting that people involved in the issue "probably [have] … hidden agendas of their own—not just to 'save the environment' but to change our economic system … Some of these 'coercive utopians' are socialists, some are technology-hating Luddites; most have a great desire to regulate—on as large a scale as possible."33

There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest

If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it, to take their money by force for your own needs, then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.

One 2008 study of Indian brothels found that of Indian and Nepali prostitutes who started as teenagers, about half said they had been coerced into the brothels; women who began working in their twenties were more likely to have made the choice themselves, often to feed their children.