Theodore Kaczynski Quotes

The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.

Even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.

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

How long would authority ... exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen.

Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.

The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

The miners lost because they had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win.

The concept of power we admire is power over someone else.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

Domination delegates the physical violence on which it rests to the dominated.

One of the main ways that leadership stays in power is by, in various ways, convincing people that they should just let those who are in government govern: 'Trust us. Trust me. Just let us take care of things. Stay out of it.' Your opinions don't really matter. You are isolated. You are insignificant.

If there is a State, then there is domination, and in turn, there is slavery.

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Oppression is the essence of power.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate.