“It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth.”
Individual Liberty (1926), Passive Resistance
Context: It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth. But if you can compel the enemy to waste his ammunition by drawing his fire on some thoroughly protected spot; if you can, by annoying and goading and harassing him in all possible ways, drive him to the last resort of stripping bare his tyrannous and invasive purposes and put him in the attitude of a designing villain assailing honest men for purposes of plunder; there is no better strategy.
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Benjamin Ricketson Tucker 50
American journalist and anarchist 1854–1939Related quotes
“Yet you would not drive a car with your mouth unless you are my mother-in-law.”
NetWorker, November/December 1996
Commenting on the gestures vs. speech debate in computing.
“Erasmus: Madness and Rivalry,” Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996), p. 94