Daily Inspiration Quote by Benjamin Tucker

Tucker’s sentence is a moral pressure washer: it blasts away the polite language that usually surrounds “self-defense” and leaves a stark claim about legitimacy. Calling the invader’s life “not sacred” isn’t bloodlust so much as a refusal to grant automatic moral standing to someone who has already violated yours. He’s deliberately yanking the argument out of etiquette and into power: if an invader crosses the line, the invaded shouldn’t be forced to play by rules the aggressor has already shredded.

The line “no valid principle of human society” is doing heavy work. Tucker, an individualist anarchist, doesn’t appeal to the state’s monopoly on violence; he appeals to a society of equals where consent is the organizing principle. In that frame, “valid” means grounded in voluntary association, not in laws written to stabilize authority. The subtext is anti-legalistic: if official norms demand your passivity in the face of coercion, those norms are illegitimate, full stop.

“Whatever way they can” is the flash point. Tucker is intentionally rejecting the comfortable liberal fantasy that violence can always be met with tidy, proportional responses. He’s also anticipating the usual trap set for radicals: condemn the oppressed for “going too far,” while treating the original invasion as regrettable but normal. The quote functions as a preemptive rebuttal to that moral asymmetry.

Context matters: Tucker was writing in a late-19th-century America thick with labor conflict, state repression, and debates over political violence after Haymarket. His intent is less to license cruelty than to deny sanctimony to conquest - whether by armies, police, bosses, or laws.