Anarchist Quotes – Page 4 – Daily quotes from anarchist philosophers – Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Durruti, Emma Goldman, and more

No, there is no need to fear life without government; we long for it with all of our hearts.

Power never takes a back step -- only in the face of more power.

There is, therefore, no solution possible other than an economy directed by the workers through their organizations of control -- through the workers' syndicates.

There is no such thing as harmless power.

The republic is nothing whatever but absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty."

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap.

In Spain, we should have enough intelligence, enough sense of individual and collective responsibility to do for ourselves that which would be imposed upon us by a dictatorship.

The criminalization of debt was the criminalization of the very basis of human society.

Most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village; stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other.

The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.

In Russia the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people.

Well I sometimes call myself a libertarian but that's only because most people don't know what anarchist means. Most people hear you're an anarchist and they think you're getting ready to throw a bomb at a building.

Whether individually or as a countless mass, man finds himself at the mercy of this band of drones going under the name of "governors and masters," when in reality they are nothing but straightforward exploiters and oppressors.

The sovereign, self-sufficient "individual" has always been a precarious basis upon which to anchor a left libertarian outlook.

I stubbornly persist in my opposition to the state. But not because, as anarchists so often thoughtlessly declaim, the state is not "necessary". Ordinary people dismiss this anarchist assertion as ludicrous, and so they should. Obviously, in an industrialized class society like ours, the state is necessary.

Every anarchist, as an anarchist, would be perfectly willing to surrender his own scheme directly, if he saw that another worked better.

I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion.

With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.

As set forth by theologians, the idea of "God" is an argument that assumes its own conclusions, and proves nothing.

The state, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity.

The fact that modern wars are fewer in number can hardly be considered a praiseworthy contribution to peace if we take into account the misery they spread from one end of the world to the other.

In the Middle Ages, there was war in some corner of Europe almost every day. But they were little wars with little effects because the powers waging them were little and their resources small.

Instead of taking aim at some vague enemy, it's better wait a moment for him to turn into a friend.

The domination of man by the creation of man is even more ridiculous than the domination of man by man.

I regretted Mathillet's death because he was a prole like us, a slave of bourgeois society. It was his gesture that was fatal.

The act of revolution brings an immediate transformation in the sense that the foundations of society are radically changed, but a progressive transformation in the sense that communism is a constant development.

May the enemies of the people be terrified at the unexpected awakening.

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

Many claim to speak in liberty's name, but few really understand her.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried.

As a social anarchist, I believe that capitalism itself is an inherently exploitative hierarchical situation - you do have a boss, you do have somebody in charge.

Without the rule of one, there would be light, there would be truth, there would be justice. The rule of one is a crime.

Conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting... the truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.

The population of the world is gradually dividing into two classes, anarchists and criminals.

In certain intellectual circles in France, the very basis for discussion - minimal respect for facts and logic - has been virtually abandoned.

The young whites, and blacks, too, are the only hope that America has, the rest of us have always been living in a lie.

Usually, when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.

The Roman Empire was a state in the real sense of the word. To this day it remains the legist's ideal.

The anarchists, on behalf of the proletariat, therefore consider it necessary to show the proletariat that it will have to win a gigantic battle before it realizes its goals.

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The peoples' revolution will arrange its revolutionary organization from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.

For us, it is a matter of crushing fascism once and for all. Yes; and in spite of the government.

The one thing that the public dislike is novelty.

He who negates present society, and seeks social conditions based on the sharing of property, is a revolutionary whether he calls himself an anarchist or a communist.

Like an operating system, the State defines us in relation to itself and each other. It defines us, for example, as citizens or residents, households and taxpayers. And these definitions make clear whether the state approves of our behavior.

The point social ecology emphasizes is not that moral and spiritual persuasion and renewal are meaningless or unnecessary; they are necessary and can be educational. But modern capitalism is structurally amoral and hence impervious to moral appeals.

The realization of the usefulness of cooperation, which should have led to the triumph of solidarity in all human relations, instead gave rise to private property and government, that is to the exploitation of the labor of the whole community by a privileged minority.

I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.

What economists call over-production is but a production that is above the purchasing power of the worker, who is reduced to poverty by capital and state.

The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.

The most that a working-class party could do, even if its politicians remained honest, would be to form a strong faction in the legislatures which might, by combining its vote with one side or another, win certain political or economic palliatives.

Abundant cheap credit would drastically alter the balance of power between capital and labor, and returns on labor would replace returns on capital as the dominant form of economic activity.

Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercize such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.

The Bolshevik government revealed itself to be powerless in the face of a bureaucracy which is super-abundant, parasitic, despotic and dishonest.

To my mind a right-wing anarchist is just a minarchist who'd abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else.

In place of the cowardly phrase, "Obey the law," our cry is "Revolt against all laws!"

The legitimate, the equitable compensation for the loan of money, is the cost of labor in lending it and receiving it back again.

Patriotism is the vice of nations.

Never ever separate thought from action, the things we know, the things we understand, from the things we do, the things with which we carry out our actions.

After all, it means thirteen dollars per month, three meals a day, and a place to sleep. Yet even necessity is not sufficiently strong a factor to bring into the army an element of character and manhood.

Basically, if you're not a utopianist, you're a schmuck.

Anarchists believe we can run our lives without the government.

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.

What economists call over-production is but a production that is above the purchasing power of the worker, who is reduced to poverty by capital and state.

Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence.

Considering that our culture invented napalm and nuclear weapons, I'm not sure we're in a position to judge the smaller scale violence of other cultures.

Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society.

When you create Hope in people, you create expectations. When you do not fulfill those expectations, when the change becomes more of the same old, same old, the Hope that was created can only turn to anger, frustration and bitter disappointment.

I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves.

It’s hard to imagine a surer sign that one is dealing with an irrational economic system than the fact that the prospect of eliminating drudgery is considered to be a problem.

Where crime exists, force must exist to repress it. Who denies it? Certainly not liberty; certainly not the anarchists.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles.

One could wager, considering the number of anarchists when Franco took over, probably a considerable portion of the Spanish population are still anarchists. And if they could get out from under the Franco dictatorship they could attempt to implement anarchism once again.

I know that I live and that I desire to live.

The revolution will be the flowering of humanity as love is the flowering of the heart.

I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.

We no longer like to think about bureaucracy, yet it informs every aspect of out existence. It's as if as a planetary civilization, we have decided to clap out hands over our ears and start humming whenever the topic comes up.

Extractivism is as predatory as capitalism, necessitating the repeated destruction of nature and social life.

Fascism may be briefly described as the reluctant acquiescence of capitalists to governmental regimentation in order to stem the increasing impotency of a one-sided wealth accumulation to satisfy the needs of a country.

The second element of freedom is negative. It is the revolt of the individual against all divine, collective, and individual authority.

I do not expect any help for a libertarian revolution from any government in the world... we expect no help, not even from our own government, in the last analysis.

The state without slavery is unthinkable - and this is why we are the enemies of the state.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

Things tend to organise themselves. If there is any message from contemporary science, it is surely that.

Whoever says "proletarian State" says "State Capitalism" whoever says "dictatorship of the Proletariat" says "Dictatorship of the Communist Party;" whoever says "strong government" says "Tsarist oligarchy of politicians."

Thirty years of crisis, mass unemployment, and flagging growth, and they still want us to believe in the economy. . . . We have to see that the economy is itself the crisis.

We need do no more than repeat: only under communism does the individual become himself and lead his own life.

Equality! I had always thought that it was the natural fruit of Liberty, which has no need of theory nor of constraint.

Man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.

As far as the problem of the state goes, the lesson of the Russian revolution is written on the wall for all to see.

Money should be for ponies, not for war, I think.

Is work a social or a natural law? Work is a natural law worsened by society.

In this country, where we have no continuing anarchist tradition, the young hardly know their tendency at all.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercize it, and degrades those over whom it is exercized.

Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations.

We used to pay too little attention to utopias, or even disregard them altogether, saying with regret they were impossible of realization. Now indeed they seem to be able to be brought about far more easily than we supposed, and we are actually faced by an agonising problem of quite another kind: how can we prevent their final realization?

We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Where the state lacks means of coercion, it is important to control what people think.

Be strong. Overflow with emotional and intellectual energy, and you will spread your intelligence, your love, your energy of action broadcast among others! This is what all moral teaching comes to.

Ableism and heteronormativity are both oppressive ideologies and cultural constructs that hinder the full potential of realizing the scope of human sexuality and modes of being in the world.

Man, according to the diverse conditions in which he moves, is more or less worthy or unworthy. The more he has a sense of his liberty, the more he also has a feeling of his dignity; the more respect he has for himself, and also for his fellows.

Power has become invincible, and rests no longer on the higher national foundations of anointed right, election, or representation, but on violence alone.

Anarchy is synonymous with Socialism. Because both signify the abolition of exploitation and of the domination of man over man, whether maintained by the force of arms or by the monopolization of the means of life.

To truly know freedom, one must develop the human being until one makes sure that no authority has the possibility of existing.

Ask a method? Do you ask Spring her method? Which is more necessary, the sunshine or the rain? They are contradictory - yes; they destroy each other - yes, but from this destruction the flowers result.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

The coming Revolution could render no greater service to humanity than by making the wage system, in all its forms, an impossibility, and by rendering Communism, which is the negation of wage-slavery, the only possible solution.

Our authority is our own conscience. She is the one that pushes us, she is our spur. We are slaves, but to our duty.

The individual is quite a world of federations, a whole universe in himself.

It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to resist and to restrain the violence of the state.

The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression.

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever.

The individualist is like a wolf who prefers the dangers of liberty to the routine of domestication. Individualists compare themselves to the bird who would prefer to suffer and struggle on its branch than to die a slow death in the servitude of a gilded cage.

History shows us that the most beneficial works, which were most effective in achieving their beneficial purposes, were precisely those that were directly managed.

When lifestyle anarchists call for autonomy rather than freedom, they thereby forfeit the rich social connotations of freedom.

Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.

The people themselves, and only the people, determine the rhythm of our fight.

Man as we know him, in the highest actual stage of development, loves learning, yearns alter truth, and identifies his personal happiness with the realization and maintenance of his ideals.

Property is impossible.

We have said and we shall not stop repeating it: no intermediaries, no agents and obedient servants who always end by becoming the real masters!

The state always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the individual - to make him subject to some generality or other.

Those who would like to see society transformed without shocks must make up their minds to surrender the hope; it is impossible. Ideas in the course of evolving lead to revolution.

The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans.

Anarchists no more want to be masters than they want to be servants - they no more want to exercise violence than to submit to it. They expose, they propose, but they do not impose.

I had been told that society's institutions were founded on justice and equality, and all around me I could see nothing but lies and treachery.

When I say Anarchism you hear Chaos, Violence, Mayhem. When I say Anarchism I mean Cooperation, Voluntary Association, Mutual Aid

Governments involve the citizen in national and state responsibilities from which he would choose to be exempt; under these circumstances he can feel no security for person or property.

The state behaves as the same ruler that the church was. The latter rests on godliness, the former on morality.

I am unique. My flesh is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind.

Collective responsibility in revolutionary action... is a fundamental principle, which guides each one of us in our way of understanding the anarchist idea, in our determination that it should penetrate to the masses, in its spirit of sacrifice.

The point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything.

Fear of the people is the defect of all those who belong to authority. The people, as concerns power, is the enemy.

Instead of entrusting the defence of your interests to others, see to the matter by yourselves. Instead of trying to choose advisers that will guide you in future actions, do the thing yourselves, and do it now! Men of good will shall not have to look long in vain for the opportunity. To put on others' shoulders the responsibility of one's actions is cowardice.

What is a utopia? A dream unrealized, but not unrealizable.

As early as World War I, American historians offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a task they called "historical engineering," by which they meant designing the facts of history so that they would serve state police.

Libertarian revolutionists should not continue to remain in isolation, when here is an opportunity to build a mass instrument for social struggle and a way to unify our libertarian forces on firm working class lines.

It's one thing to say, "Another world is possible." It's another to experience it, however momentarily.

I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.

If the existence of bullshit jobs seems to defy the logic of capitalism, one possible reason for their proliferation might be that the existing system isn't capitalism.

Writers: express your rage against all iniquities during all your waking hours.

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine.

The ecological principle of unity in diversity grades into a richly mediated social principle; hence my use of the term social ecology.

Pagan anarchists don't make rules for other people. No one is saying that a Pagan is not allowed to be a supporter of capitalism. You're always allowed to do whatever you choose-but that doesn't mean it makes sense.

We must make the world safe for poverty without dependence on government.

Do something right for once: throw off the straitjacket of legislation; wash yourself off, and clean your body, the social body, of all the parasites and vermin that are devouring you. And then - only then - will you be able to fully come to life.

What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

It has come to pass in history that the workers have defeated capitalism, but the victory then slipped from their grasp, because some state power emerged, amalgamating the interests of private capitalism and those of state capitalism for the sake of success over the toilers.

To weaken authority and criticize its acts is not enough. A negation, in order to be absolute, needs to complete itself with an affirmation. That is why I affirm liberty, why I deduce its consequences.

Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak.

We have no need to get involved with the games of our oppressors, unless we wish to take part in their oppression.

The CNT's prisoners will have to thank the politicians for their release, and that to me who am an anarchist, has enormous implications. I would like to walk free thanks to the efforts of my comrades and not due to the philanthropy of someone whom I have to fight tooth and nail as soon as I am out.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

The critical human flaw is not that as a species we're particularly aggressive. It's that we tend to respond to aggression very poorly.

Anarchists have a 'bad name' in the media, not because they can point to one indiscriminate massacre by anarchists--there have been none--but because the one thing holders of power fear is that they personally should be held responsible for their own actions

The Left (including the Black nationalist movement) really is in a backward stage. Rather than building on the legacy of the 1960's protests, we are instead losing ground and taking reactionary positions.

Private property has crushed true individualism, and set up an individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them.

It is above all over the question of the state that socialists are divided.

No serious-minded man would venture to predict exactly how the Revolution, the indispensable condition for social renovation, will come about.

Plebeian and bourgeois are equivalent. They deserve each other.

The state is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematised.

I offered to stay awake to let the others go to sleep, and everyone laughed, saying that I would not even hear the cannon! But afterwards, one by one, they fell asleep, and I am watchful over all of them, while working for those who are to come.

The Makhnovist movement was founded on the deep feeling of fraternity which characterizes only the most oppressed. During its entire history it did not for an instant appeal to national sentiments.

What do I, a proletarian, care for the tranquility and security of the rich? I care as little for public order as for the proprietor's safety. I ask to live a laborer; otherwise I will die a warrior.

We're supposed to worship Adam Smith but you're not supposed to read him. That's too dangerous. He's a dangerous radical.

Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.

Anarchism was born in a moral revolt against social injustice.

Our cause cannot expect me to become a nun and the movement will not be turned into a cloister.

At their very simplest, anarchist beliefs turn on to two elementary assumptions. The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. The second is that power corrupts.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

The state idea means something quite different from the idea of government.

When we have but the will to do it, that very moment will Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the Earth shall bite the dust.

As a society, western democracies have moved beyond democracy into a new socio-economic formation, the formation/framework of the soft-totalitarian-state.

Eliminating the legal enforcement of DRM -- by criminal, mind, not civil law -- would effectively destroy all business models based on proprietary digital information.

A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation.

We should not put forward revolutionary action as a means of social reform, because that pretended means would simply be an appeal to force, to arbitrariness, in brief, a contradiction.

Anarchism does not depend on theory or programs, which try to grasp man's life in its entirety. It is a teaching, which is based on real life, which outgrows all artificial limitations, which cannot be constricted by any system.

Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist.

Whoever has not emancipated himself will be left behind with the current movement and will seek redemption in vain. He will die a slave.

Generally speaking, individualists are mere philosophers rather than revolutionary activists.

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

The reaction always begins where one tries to bring life to a certain norm. That is why yesterday's revolutionaries so often become today's reactionaries.

If you consider these worthy electors as unable to look after their own interests themselves, how is it that they know how to choose for themselves the shepherds who must guide them? And how will they be able to solve this problem of social alchemy, of producing the election of a genius from the votes of a mass of fools?

I dislike communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

Experience proves to the wise man that revolutions never have lasting results. Reason tells him that lies are not refuted by lies, and that violence isn't destroyed by violence.

During humankind's long centuries societies have risen and fallen, all alike in this one fact which rules all history: the great are protected, the small are crushed.

We are in a society where the power is in the hands of those who are the worst breed of humanity.

Instead of inanely repeating the old formula, "Respect the law," we say, "Despise law and all its attributes!"

Fortunately, no country was ever more suited for anarchist agitation than present-day America.

The darkling plain is here. This is the waste land: England, America, Russia, China, Israel, France....And we are here as victims, or as spectators, or as perpetrators of tortures, massacres, poisonings, manipulations, despoliation.

Private capitalism, condemned by history, only survives today thanks to the arms race on the one hand, and the comparative failure of state communism on the other.

We must ask in a manly and proud posture and not beg on our knees.

Alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.

But we must create in each person a sense of responsibility in order that each one of us can have the right to enjoy all his rights.

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

Above all, what socialist, without flushing with shame, maintains he is not a revolutionary? We say: none!

The deeper we trace the political influences in history, the more are we convinced that the "will to power" has up to now been one of the strongest motives in the development of human social forms.

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