"We won the revolution, what we lost was the war."
"If all our comrades of Europe, America and other countries, who do not understand what we are doing to Spanish anarchism, would come to Spain, we could then see how they would react."
"The love of liberty and the sense of human dignity are the basic elements of the anarchist creed."
"The hundreds of workers' associations organized during the period 1870-1900 and the tens of publications give ample testimony to the energetic anarchist activity designed to destroy bourgeois, state and religious influences among workers."
"We need no messiah and no sterile conception of a god menacing us with hell and purgatory."
"The revolution, in my opinion, comrade delegates, is not, and cannot be, the work of a party. A party does not carry out a revolution; a party cannot do more than organize a coup d'etat and a coup d'etat is not a revolution."
"The revolution consisted in the fact that the workers became masters of the instruments of labor and did not falter in their management of the means of production."
"Even in infancy, while a person is dependent on another, abuses are committed and slavery and tyranny exist. It should be the purpose of free schools to study the reasons for such a lack of solidarity, to draw the attention of the pupils to what they actually see."
"The struggles of doctrinal exclusivism languish at present. My desire is to have contributed to making them disappear entirely."
"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."
"Durruti had learned endless things during the months of civil war, but the main lesson that he received was a full confirmation of the working class's capacity to govern itself and the damage done by the committees' bureaucratic leaderism."
"The revolution is the outcome of many causes whose origin we situate in a higher level of culture of the people, in the discrepancy between their aspirations and the organization that rules and governs the people."
"Men are as we have always known them, neither better nor worse from the hearts of rogues there springs a latent honesty, from the depths of honest men there emerges a brutish appetite -- a thirst for extermination, a desire for blood."
"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, therefore, no solution possible other than an economy directed by the workers through their organizations of control -- through the workers' syndicates."
"Never will the anarchists in Spain be made to suffer as they have been and are in Russia."
"The revolution has cast a powerful net of sympathy among the workers of the entire world, and it would be most unfortunate if we were to deliver ourselves over to debates that are more or less partisan and biased and thus destroy the achievements to which this sympathy has given rise."
"Whoever has not emancipated himself will be left behind with the current movement and will seek redemption in vain. He will die a slave."
"I wish to say that we anarchists have never changed our position. We are anarchists as of old and still pursue the same ideals."
"Freedom, we want nothing more than freedom, since what freedom does not do, not one institution whatsoever will be able to make possible."
"The revolution did not fail, it was defeated militarily. Perhaps with the passage of time it would have developed a paralyzing bureaucracy but we will never know."
"We have confirmed something we only knew in theory, namely that revolution, in which uncontrolled and uncontrollable forces operate imperiously, is blind and destructive, grandiose and cruel."
"Let us not lose time asking an imaginary god for what only human effort can obtain for us."
"Let us not lose time asking others to give us what we can obtain ourselves."
"To analyze ownership, such as it is now constituted, is a chore little more than superfluous. Its justification has yet to be formulated; nobody has ventured to defend it as anything more than something necessary."
"If the Russian revolution was a victory, who won? The workers? No. On the other hand, the Commune of Paris was a great working class victory. Ours, too."
"Ultimately, anarchist collectivism aspires to the spontaneous organization of society by means of free agreement, without asserting processes, or a necessary result."
"In Germany, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Belgium, England, the trade union organizations were political; they tailored their policies to be in accord with the socialist parties; can you deny that they collaborated in the war?"
"Anarchist communism in Spain differs from collectivism in that it denies all organization for the present and for the future."
"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."
"Apart from the individualist faction, we are all socialist anarchists and all in favor of community. I say all, because collectivism, as the Spanish anarchists understand it, is only a degree of the community of which, in their turn, those who call themselves communists do not reject a single word."
"Anarchic socialism and the revolutionary spirit still survive in Spain; they will do their work and the solidarity of the other nations will not fail us."
"The people themselves, and only the people, determine the rhythm of our fight."
"The struggle is so great that the triumph over fascism alone is worth the sacrifice of our lives."
"We tried many times before to speed on the social revolution in Spain; attempted to stir up the feelings of the people and to raise the banner of Libertarian Communism."
"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."
"Authority is something from which we are constantly subtracting, of which there remains always a residue, and which we attempt to make smaller and smaller."
"To us it means nothing that there is a Soviet Union somewhere in the world, for the sake of whose peace and tranquility the workers of Germany and China were sacrificed to Fascist barbarians by Stalin."
"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."
"Anarchy's roots go deep: its spouts from the bosom of a rotten society that is falling apart; it is a violent backlash against the established order; it stands for the aspirations to equality and liberty which have entered the lists against the current authoritarianism."
"We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute."
"In that pitiless war which we have declared on the bourgeoisie, we ask for no pity. We give death, and we know how to endure it."
"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 CNT which is the most powerful organisation in Spain must take up its rightful place in the collective order. Its battles must be in tune with its greatness."
"The liberal government of Spain could have rendered the fascist elements powerless long ago. Instead it compromised and dallied."
"The influence that theoretical anarchists pretend to wield over the revolutionary movement is nil. Today the field is open to action, without weakness or retreat."
"Hanged in Chicago, beheaded in Germany, garroted in Jerez, shot in Barcelona, guillotined in Montbrison and in Paris, our dead are many; but you have not been able to destroy anarchy."
"[President of the court]: This hand that we today see covered in blood. [Emile]: My hands are covered in blood, like your red robe is!"
"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."
"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."
"Drawn at first to socialism, I was not slow in separating myself from that party. I have too much love of freedom, too much respect for individual initiative, too much repugnance for military organization, to assume a number in the ordered army of the fourth estate."
"For us, it is a matter of crushing fascism once and for all. Yes; and in spite of the government."
