The control of the collective means of violence-backed coercion.
Perry de Havilland, Libertarian Alliance
[libertarianAlliance]
Politics is about how we should decide whom to coerce about what.
[bk]
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
[ambroseBierce]
The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral, or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.
Murray N. Rothbard, Six Myths About Libertarianism
[rothbard]
Politics has always been the institutionalized and established way in which some men have exercised the power to live off the output of other men.
Karl Hess, "The Death of Politics", Playboy, March 1969
[karlHess]
... politics is just another form of residual magic in our culture -- a belief that somehow things come from nothing; that things may be given to some without first taking them from others; that all the tools of man's survival are his by accident or divine right and not by pure and simple inventiveness and work.
Karl Hess, "The Death of Politics", Playboy, March 1969
[karlHess]
Politics consists of 100,000 pressure groups trying to get their hands on the loot.
Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 261
[lewRockwell]