“[W]e have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract–the Constitution–made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions that are to com, but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed or acknowledged…
“And we are so insane, or so wicked, as to destroy property and lives without limit, in fighting to compel men to fulfill a supposed contract, which, inasmuch as it has never been signed by anybody, is on general principles of law and reason–such principles as we are all governed by in regard to other contracts–the merest waste paper, binding upon nobody, fit only to be thrown into the fire, or, if preserved, preserved only to serve as a witness and warning of the folly and wickedness of mankind.”
–Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)
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Quoted in The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations
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