"Anarchism, nihilism, and terrorism are often mistakenly equated, and in most dictionaries will be found at least two definitions of the anarchist. One presents him as a man who believes that government must die before freedom can live. The other dismisses him as a mere promoter of disorder who offers nothing in place of the order he destroys."
"The demand for equality is nothing other than the demand: equal rights for all!"
""Whoever denies authority and fights against it is an anarchist," said Sebastien Faure. The definition is tempting in its simplicity, but simplicity is the first thing to guard against in writing a history of anarchism."
"The anarchist teaching prescribes no method of struggle and rejects none which is in harmony with self-determination and free will."
"Like such titles as Christian and Quaker, "anarchist" was in the end proudly adopted by one of those against whom it had been used in condemnation."
"The complete transformation of everyone's living conditions can never be achieved on the path of slow development, through which at most improvements within a social system are possible."
"Either it is true that humanity by intelligence and by the practice of mutual aid and direct action can reverse processes which appear socially inevitable, or humanity will become extinct by simple maladaptation."
"Anarchists emphatically reject a morality which denies the original concepts of right and wrong."
"The main difference between the anarchists and the socialists, including the Marxists, lies in the fact that while the socialists maintain that the state must be taken over as the first step toward its dissolution, the anarchists argue that, since power corrupts, any seizure of the existing structure of authority can only lead to its perpetuation."
"The freedom of everyone, and thereby the freedom of each individual, requires community in socialism."
"The domination of man by the creation of man is even more ridiculous than the domination of man by man."
"The old motives of profit and self-interest will cease to dominate economic life. Instead the incentive will be the good of the members of society, without distinction."
"The anarchist conclusion is that every kind of human activity should begin from what from what is local and immediate, should link in a network with no centre and no directing agency, hiving off new cells as the original grows."
"The aim is not therefore to liberate some 'essential self' by throwing off the burden of government and the State, but to develop the self in creative and voluntary relations with others."
"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."
"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."
"It is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation."
"Terrorism is tempting with its tremendous possibilities. It offers a mechanical solution, as it were, in hopeless situations."
"And as you are invaded and violated, so you subconsciously revenge yourself by invading and violating others over whom you have authority or can exercise compulsion. physical or moral. In this way all life has become a crazy quilt of authority, of domination and submission, of command and obedience, of coercion and subjection, of rulers and ruled, of violence and force in a thousand and one forms."
"If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion."
"May the enemies of the people be terrified at the unexpected awakening."
"It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep."
