Anarchist Quotes – Page 6 – Daily quotes from anarchist philosophers – Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Durruti, Emma Goldman, and more

The existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion.

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value.

In vices, the very essence of crime - that is, the design to injure the person or property of another - is wanting.

In its mad passion for power, the communist state even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy.

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

The paramount question of the day is not political, is not religious, but is economic. The crying-out demand of today is for a circle of principles that shall forever make it impossible for one man to control another by controlling the means of his existence.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.

Resignation is death. Revolt is life.

All that which is not liberty is against liberty. Liberty is not a thing that can be allocated.

For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between state socialism and anarchism.

Emancipation or non-emancipation of woman, emancipation or non-emancipation of man - what does it mean? Is it that by nature one has rights and the other has no rights?

We have come more and more under the dominance of mechanics and sacrificed living humanity to the dead rhythm of the machine without most of us even being conscious of the monstrosity of the procedure.

The wise man knows that the words "The happiness of the people," have no meaning. Happiness is internal and individual. It can only be produced within oneself.

What is a debt, anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence.

Given a choice between anarchism and anarchy, most anarchists would go for the anarchism ideology and subculture rather than take a dangerous leap into the unknown, into a world of stateless liberty.

The true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.

Anarchists prepare for social revolution and use every means- speech, writing, or deed, whichever is more to the point - to accelerate revolutionary development.

Are there any altruists who would go to hell in order that their neighbors should go to heaven? There is no hope of reward in hell, and a true altruist must expect no reward for his acts.

The whole economic system of capitalism is an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christian asceticism and turned away from heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications.

In America, the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.

No government in the world fights fascism to the death. When the bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its grasp, it has recourse to fascism to maintain itself.

Humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal.

In existing states a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil.

Anarchism... teaches the possibility of a society in which the needs of life may be fully supplied for all, and in which the opportunities for complete development of mind and body shall be the heritage of all.

In a republic, all are lords, that is, all despotize one over another.

The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.

We do not doubt that, if the revolution broke out in several European countries, anarchists would suffer the same defeat because they are no less - if not even more so - divided on the plan of ideas and organization.

Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace.

For Christian anarchists...the goal of anarchy is theonomy — the rule, the ordering, the arky of God.

The only thing I am not entitled to is what I do not do with a free cheer, that is, that I do not entitle myself to.

People, beware of demagogues. They are your worst enemies. They caress you only so they can better shear you.

I consider it immoral to be a supporter of a power system.

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.

While governments are subjected to the principle of free experimentation, to free competition, they will improve and perfect themselves on their own. No more aloofness, up in the clouds, which only hides their emptiness. Success for them will entirely depend upon them doing it better and cheaper than the others do.

Organization is, after all, only a means to an end. When it becomes an end in itself, it kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members and sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the characteristic of all bureaucracies.

Voting strongly resembles the capitalist economic system that always accompanies democracy.

The god of the Christians, as we have seen, is the god who makes promises only to break them; who sends them pestilence and disease in order to heal them; a god who demoralizes mankind in order to improve it.

True organisation like true liberty belongs to the future -- and the Socialist Commonwealth, or, as I have termed it elsewhere, the Anarchist Republic.

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

The Puritans had accused the Quakers of "troubling the world by preaching peace to it." They refused to pay church taxes; they refused to bear arms; they refused to swear allegiance to any government.

We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary.

The authoritarian principle has been proven bankrupt by the experience of the Russian Revolution.

Below a certain size, everything fuses, joins, or accumulates. But beyond a certain size, everything collapses or explodes.

The state is the most gigantic criminal extant. It manufactures criminals much faster than it punishes them.

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.

It is not the product of their labors to which the workers have a right. It is the satisfaction of their needs, whatever the nature of those needs.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

What is "being an active agent?" It is women struggling for liberation with their own might. What is "being a passive agent?" It is men's granting liberation to women... what active forces there have been have come from men, and as a result the benefits to women have not equaled those garnered by men.

Overcoming the problem of voluntary servitude, which has proved such a hindrance to radical political projects in the past, implies this sort of ethical questioning of the self, an interrogation of one's subjective involvement and complicity with power.

It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.

Workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe, or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear, and to be housed withal.

Anarchism's lone objective is to reach a point at which the belligerence of some humans against humanity, in whatever form, comes to a halt.

Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted.

The collapse of communist systems nearly two decades ago led to a profound disillusionment in the west, not only with the communist project -- which had been in a state of crisis for some time -- but with radical left-wing politics generally.

In order to fully realise our aspirations, we must create in the masses of the people the sense of sacrifice and responsibility that has been the characteristic of the anarchist movement throughout its historic development in Spain.

To take something from a person and keep it for oneself: that is robbery. To take something from one person and then turn it over to another in exchange for as much money as you can get: that is business.

If this is the price to be paid for an idea, then let us pay. There is no need of being troubled about it, afraid, or ashamed. This is the time to boldly say, "Yes, I believe in the displacement of this system of injustice by a just one; I believe in the end of starvation, exposure, and the crimes caused by them."

Anarchism is a part of human nature, communism its logical extension.

The oppression of one is the oppression of all, and we cannot violate the liberty of one being without violating the freedom of all of us.

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime? Is not the court of a tribunal a school of ferocity?

The equal exchange of labor would give as great a reward for honest and useful employments as for useless and fraudulent ones, and individual and unequivocal responsibilities (if for no other reasons) would induce a preference for the honest.

What if we, as a queer and trans social justice movement, focused on achieving access to many of marriage's forbidden fruits for all people, not just citizen couples, gay, straight, or otherwise?

Not to speak of war and its crimes, from the guilt of which no civilized state is free, can it be denied that chief among the consequences of the existing social system are murder, maladies, and death.

Freedom must be so extensive that it includes the right not to be free.

We are apolitical and take no part in party quarrels. In all spheres we are for the voluntary against the obligatory; for consent against imposition; for reason against violence; for free examination against dogmatism.

Political freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

The Revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves.

As you have undertaken to destroy these races, not inferior, but merely latecomer, you tend in like manner to destroy the working class, which you also qualify as inferior.

At the base of contemporary capitalist society lies the principle of private property, owing to which society is divided into two fundamental classes -- the capitalists and the proletariat.

"God" -- as revealed in his book of edicts and narratives is practically an idiot. He has nothing to say that any sensible person should want to listen to.

We had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty.

Many anarchists, anarcho- and revolutionary-syndicalists, advocates of workers' councils, and other libertarian socialists, have made brilliant analyses of the workers' problems and come up with serious programs, but they continue to talk and dream instead of buckling down to work their ideas out in practice.

The urge for social justice can only develop properly and be effective when it grows out of man's sense of personal freedom and is based on that. In other words Socialism will be free or it will not be at all.

We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.

No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth.

Obviously, the revolution will produce many misfortunes, many sufferings; but if it produced one hundred times more of them, it would still be a blessing relative to what one endures today.

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.

They will die of hunger at the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, "So perish idlers and vagrants!"

The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions.

Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my conscience.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property.

The revolt of the individual against society is not given by that of the masses against governments.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.

While we have entertained the contention that a deed may make more propaganda than hundreds of speeches, thousands of articles, and tens of thousands of pamphlets, we have held that an arbitrary act of violence will not necessarily have such an effect.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Direct action is the logical, consistent method of anarchism.

It is capitalism and government which stand for disorder and violence. Anarchism is the very reverse of it; it means order without government and peace without violence.

In France, Portugal, the United States and the South American republics, the trade union organizations were apolitical; how many of them collaborated in the war? France is the only one where such a reproach is warranted.

There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: "for reasons of state."

While we should mobilise to restrain offenders, we must begin to realise that only the community will effectively deal with the matter. Not the racist Capitalist system, with its repressive police, courts and prisons.

The enemy is very strong because, for centuries past, he has made his living from theft and violence: he has the accumulated experience of that, he has overcome internal crises and now he puts on a new face.

Now for the remedy. It is in one word, the only word that ever brought equity anywhere - LIBERTY!

For the machine, because of the way it is built, can work only in a given direction, no matter who pulls its levers.

The leaders of the "official" anarchist movement, still preoccupied with hiding the weaknesses and the inconsistencies, blurring the responsibility, avoiding the fundamental theoretical problems, avoid discussion or are satisfied with a few reluctant confessions and regrets.

Network executives, talk show hosts, and newspaper publishers and editors travel in the same social circle as the powerful state and corporate figures whom they're theoretically supposed to serve as watchdogs over.

If we hope and even assume that the social question will be answered through communism, and not in this or that country but in the world, any thought of centralization must be a monstrosity.

Side neither with nations nor with parties. Be neither Russians, Poles nor Slavs. Rather, be men who hunger for truth, free from any thoughts of particular interests, and from speculative ideas concerning the Chinese, Africans or Europeans. The patriot always ends up hating the foreigner, and loses the sense of justice that once kindled his enthusiasm.

Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally - perhaps more than equally, because more boldly - rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power. There is no more reason, then, why a man should either sustain, or submit to, the rule of the majority, than of a minority.

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

Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most.

Society will have no need to create special institutions for a social insurance. Since it expects all to work, it will determine the minimum and maximum working ages, before and after which all people will be provided, on an equal footing with others, with the necessities for existence and the comforts of life. Similarly, society will provide for invalids, cripples and the sick.

People who should be shot: Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, people who write lists telling you who should be shot.

Everyone complains about politicians. Everyone says they suck. But where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky; they don't pass through a membrane from a separate reality. They come from American homes, American families, American schools, American churches, and American businesses. And they're elected by American voters. This is what our system produces, folks. This is the best we can do.

The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.

As man grows refined, he comes also to live not only for himself and in himself.

Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.

Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another.

Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.

Every organization has more in common with every other organization than it does with any of the unorganized.

Is it not plain that all these governments are systematic poisoners, interested stupefiers of the masses?

Power makes you drunk, and the best, when invested with authority, become the worst.

The anarchist individualists do not present themselves as proletarians, absorbed only in the search for material amelioration, tied to a class determined to transform the world and to substitute a new society for the actual one.

Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes.

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

Everybody who has ever worked for a corporation knows that corporations conspire all the time. Politicians conspire all the time, pot-dealers conspire not to get caught by the narcs, the world is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is natural primate behavior.

We must consciously create our own world, not according to mindless customs and destructive prejudices, but according to the canons of reason, reflection, and discourse that uniquely belong to our own species.

Ever since FDR and Truman crafted the postwar order at the end of WWII, the central goal of U.S. security policy has been to globalize the economy, expand the volume of international trade and maintain institutional arrangements for propping up global corporate rule.

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a "war against terrorism."

In anarchy, there are as many "moralities" as there are anarchists, taken individually, or groups or associations of anarchists. Thus, in anarchy, one is amoral.

Our standard account of monetary history is precisely backwards. We did not begin with barter, discover money, and then eventually develop credit systems. It happened precisely the other way around.

We are neither for a majority nor for a minority government; neither for democracy not for dictatorship. We are for the abolition of the gendarme. We are for the freedom of all and for free agreement, which will be there for all when no one has the means to force others, and all are involved in the good running of society. We are for anarchy.

I would rather, much rather, be illegitimate according to the statutes of men, than illegitimate according to the unchanging law of nature.

The Anarcho-Syndicalists know that wars are only waged in the interest of the ruling classes; they believe, therefore, that any means is justifiable that can prevent the organised murder of peoples.

Do not preach the straight and narrow way while going joyously upon the wide one. Preach the wide one, or do not preach at all; but do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it.

Poverty is the cause of crime, and the laws that stand in the way of free production and exchange are the cause of poverty.

Idlers do not make history: they suffer it!

Moral influence takes its start where humiliation begins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper down to humility.

Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.

The fight against the destruction of surplus product and against hoarding in Brazil cannot be carried out through the state, but through consumer cooperatives, which affiliated with powerful federations, will be able to deliver to the market and finance production and regulate prices on a fair basis.

Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.

Nor does [our kind of individualist] wish to have anything in common with those armchair Nietzcheans or weekend Stirnerites who imagine, poor wretches, that they are "affirming their individuality" by petty dishonesty in money matters, or by forcing themselves upon the companion of a friend in prison.

Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it!

I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.

Cybernetics is going to drive the whole world to decentralization which is what the anarchists have always urged. -

Once the individual owns his own tools and his product, capitalism ceases to exist.

Anarchism's outward form is a free, non-governed society, which offers freedom, equality and solidarity for its members. Its foundations are to be found in man’s sense of mutual responsibility, which has remained unchanged in all places and times.

Without ecology, society cannot exist, and without humanity and nature, ecology cannot exist.

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.

What underpins every social conflict in the United States today is the demand for the realization of all human potentialities in a fully rounded, balanced, totalistic way of life.

There are no fair elections in America, certainly when the questions of race and political power are evident.

If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the state.

Socialism greatly needs Anarchism as a critic and to keep it from sacrificing the individual and his originality to the domination of the mass.

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