Anarchist Quotes – Page 3 – Daily quotes from anarchist philosophers – Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Durruti, Emma Goldman, and more

The true and legitimate meaning of the word treason, then, necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith. Without these, there can be no treason.

An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny.

Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost.

Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force.

Anarchist communism in Spain differs from collectivism in that it denies all organization for the present and for the future.

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.

Anarchism is for liberty, and neither for nor against anything else … I define Anarchism as the belief in the greatest amount of liberty compatible with equality of liberty; or, in other words, as the belief in every liberty except the liberty to invade.

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

Anarchists emphatically reject a morality which denies the original concepts of right and wrong.

Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them.

Well, mutual aid is a very critical and important thing. For a while, I was saying libertarians have no souls, but I promised them I wouldn't if they hammered home the importance of mutual aid.

People get accustomed to the established order of things and tremble at the idea of change. It is this lethargic spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit

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.

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.

That patriotism which tends toward unity without regard to liberty is an evil patriotism.

The work of the anarchist is above all a work of critique. The anarchist goes, sowing revolt against that which oppresses, obstructs, opposes itself to the free expansion of the individual being.

Oppressed brother, banish all power from within you and do not allow any to be established either over you or over your brother, be he near or far!

All the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.

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.

This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of the state is, from the standpoint of the state, its supreme duty and its greatest virtue.

Queer theory seeks to disrupt the normal with the same impulse that anarchists do with relations of hierarchy, exploitation, and oppression.

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

Anarchism will be seen to be an idealistic philosophy in the sense that it believes freedom will come from the conscious activity of men. No automatic process is to bring it about.

A dictatorial committee composed of workers is certainly the thing one could find most inflated with self-importance and nullity and, consequently, the most anti-revolutionary.

If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

The State always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the individual to make him subject to some generality or other;

The majority can hardly accept the existence of anything but the two extremes: masters and slaves.

Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of "grow or die," is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame other phenomena - such as technology or population growth - for growing environmental dislocations.

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.

Our destiny is to reach that state of ideal perfection in which nations will no longer need to be under the tutelage of a government or of another nation; it is the absence of government, it is anarchy, the highest expression of order.

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.

The only revolution is to improve yourself, hoping that others follow. Then the world will improve.

The really wholesome, joyous life of the individual or group is not built up with the aid of power and programs that seek to enclose it within artificial constructs and written laws.

I am sorry to see friends impelled by passion drifting to the idea of vengeance, which is so little scientific, so sterile. But armed defense of a right is not violence.

I think the question is not about communists and individualists, but rather about anarchists and non-anarchists.

The inherent tendency of the state is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error is not by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

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

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

Masters aren't necessary, these people whose idleness is maintained by our labor; everyone must make himself useful to society, by which I mean work according to his ability and his aptitude.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

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

Government means the right to make the law and to impose it on everyone by force: without a police force there is no government.

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

I am a famous man. My name has been trumpeted to the four corners of the globe. All those people who go through so much trouble to get others to talk about them, yet don't succeed, must be very jealous about the publicity that the press has given my humble self.

In other words, what Clinton wants is the opposite of free trade. She wants to keep the wealth of Africa in hands of the heirs and assigns of the same people who stole it, under colonialism.

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.

The people are conservative: they are satisfied with the society they find. The minority are innovators instead and therefore they rebel.

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.

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.

Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?

I think government should be treated like religion, everyone should be able to pick the kind they like. Only it should be contractual not obligatory.

When [the synthesis anarchist organization] develops itself fully (as happened in Spain in '36) it begins to dangerously resemble a party. Synthesis becomes control.

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

Merciless criticism and independent thinking are two traits of revolutionary thinking. Lovers, lunatics and poets are made of the same stuff

Modern anarcho-syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International and which were best understood and most strongly held by the libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance.

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.

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.

You anarchist ministers, you make eloquent speeches and you write brilliant articles, but it is not with speeches and articles that one wins the war and defends the revolution.

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue.

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.

The present Russian regime and the present order of things can not be called bourgeois -- still less can it be called socialistic or communistic.

It is obvious that in calling on anarchists to organise on the basis of a definite program, we are not taking away as such the right of anarchists of other tendencies to organise as they think fit.

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

Anarchism: The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

It is the task of all comrades to think, study and prepare - and to do so with all speed and thoroughly because the times are "dynamic" and we must be ready for what might happen.

States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power.

All laws are wicked, all judgments are unfair, all judges are wrong, all prisoners are innocent.

In this way, the state commune transforms the workers into soulless parts in the huge, centralised communist machine, parts who are obliged to be directed for their whole lives to a single purpose -- the maximum fulfilment of certain production tasks decreed by the state, and who are condemned to a minimum field of initiative, independent action and personal choice.

The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race.

Anarchism is "stateless socialism."

Governmental communism, like theocratic communism, is repugnant to the worker.

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

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

From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called "laissez-faire" was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline.

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

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

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

Anarchism is the attempt to eradicate domination.

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

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.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

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

That the communist sees in you the man, the brother, is only the Sunday side of communism... If you were a "lazy-bones," he would not indeed fail to recognize the man in you, but would endeavour to cleanse him as a "lazy man" from laziness and to convert you to the faith that labor is man's "destiny and calling."

If we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.

There cannot be a history of anarchism in the sense of establishing a permanent state of things called "anarchist." It is always a continual coping with the next situation, and a vigilance to make sure that past freedoms are not lost and do not turn into the opposite.

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.

Ever since the advent of "Scientific Socialism" every attempt to better the conditions of mankind has been labelled "Utopian" by the followers of Karl Marx.

In an informal organization there is no question of synthesis.

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

To achieve liberation, we must reject the binary gender system, which divides us into two mutually exclusive categories.

Every state is a despotism.

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

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.

Idlers do not make history: they suffer it!

Whosoever lays a hand on me in order to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.

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

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.

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

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.

Revolutionary liberation must be a self-liberation that reaches social dimensions, not mass liberation or class liberation behind which lurks the rule of an elite, a hierarchy and a state.

That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

Man will only be able to act usefully when he will have managed to destroy all lies, freed himself from all the superstitions given birth to by error, sought the truth in the jumble of knowledge and observations.

I am an anarchist not because I believe anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal.

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

If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.

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

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

Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.

The growth of technology at the expense of human personality, and especially the fatalistic submission with which the great majority surrender to this condition, is the reason why the desire for freedom is less alive among men today and has with many of them given place completely to a desire for economic security.

When "voluntary association" is spoken of, voluntary adhesion to a plan, a project, a given action, this implies the possibility of refusing the association, adhesion or action.

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.

We might mention the monumental hypocrisy of the regulation of credit unions in the United States, which require that their membership must share some common bond, like working for the same employer.

The individual, his freedom and reason, are the products of society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of individuals comprising it; and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed, the greater his freedom.

There are some whose nature it is to think and plead, and yield and yet return to the address, and so make headway in the minds of their fellowmen; and there are others who are stern and still, resolute, implacable as Judah's dream of God; - and those men strike - strike once and have ended. But the blow resounds across the world.

Every person who ever thought he had a right to assert, and went boldly and asserted it, himself, or jointly with others that shared his convictions, was a direct actionist.

Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.

A white-led movement cannot ever be allowed to usurp the basic role of people of color themselves to fight for their own freedom.

One courageous act has sufficed to upset in a few days the entire governmental machinery, to make the colossus tremble.

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.

The real sense of gradualism remains the same: everything in nature and in life changes by degrees, and this is no less true of anarchy. It can only come about little by little.

I mean, "chaos" is a meaning of the word, but it's not a meaning that has any relevance to social thought. Anarchy as a social philosophy has never meant "chaos" - in fact, anarchists have typically believed in a highly organized society, just one that's organized democratically from below.

We have to see that the economy is not in crisis, the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it.

It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

Children, by nature, are keen, passionate and curious. What was referred to as laziness is often merely an awakening of sensitivity, a psychological inability to submit to certain absurd duties, and a natural result of the distorted, unbalanced education given to them. This laziness, which leads to an insuperable reluctance to learn, is, contrary to appearances, sometimes proof of intellectual superiority and a condemnation of the teacher.

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.

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

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

Anarchists believe we can run our lives without the government.

I believe that it behooves every honest man to urge the toiling masses not to let the flames of revolution be extinguished.

Philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished?

Anarchism was born in a moral revolt against social injustice.

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

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

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

Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.

"Communist society"; in the sense of a society organized exclusively on that single principle - could never exist. But all social systems, even economic systems like capitalism, have always been built on top of a bedrock of actually-existing communism.

We must be communists because we are anarchists, because anarchy and communism are the two essential terms of the revolution.

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.

The freedom of everyone, and thereby the freedom of each individual, requires community in socialism.

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

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

We'll burn off our last round against the cops, and if they don't care to come, we'll certainly know how to find them.

The anarchist believes that the government is the limit of liberty. He hopes, by destroying government, to expand liberty. The true limit is not government, but society. Government is a social product like another. We don't destroy a tree by cutting one of its branches.

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

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

Money has no essence. It's not really anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political contention.

Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges.

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.

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

The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.

As a credo, individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom ("free love") and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing.

Liberty enters the field of journalism to speak for herself because she finds no one willing to speak for her.

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.

If it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.

The fact that the modern state is the organizational form of an authority founded upon arbitrariness and violence in the social life of toilers is independent of whether it may be "bourgeois" or "proletarian."

We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself.

No future and no humanity, no communism and no anarchy is worthy of the sacrifice of my life.

There can be no doubt that the Anarchist Idea, denying government, is by its very nature opposed to violence, which is the essence of every authoritarian system - the mode of action of every government

Federalism is socialist, and for it solidarity is inseparable from liberty.

It is not a crumb of bread, but the harvest of the entire world that the human race needs, without exploiters and without exploited.

The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.

The most complete freedom for the individual, his right to full satisfaction of all his needs, are absolutely legitimate claims, and there was no need to go out to dig up Nietszche and Stirner to give them some consecration.

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

All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.

The wise man knows that the oppressed who complain aspire to be oppressors. He relieves them according to his means, but he doesn't believe in salvation through common action.

No one who knew that the flag consisted of a bit of black stuff on the end of a broomstick would believe it, and no more do you, sir. I wished to show that the laborers were dying of hunger and in need of work. It is the flag of strikes and famines.

All that marching music doesn't concern me.

The revolutionary trade unions, in the view of the anarchists, are not only organs of the struggle against the contemporary structure; they are also the cells of the future society.

To my mind, the struggle for liberty is too great and the few steps we have gained have been won at too great a sacrifice, for the great mass of the people of this 20th century to consent to turn over to any political party the management of our social and industrial affairs.

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

He who has might has right... is this wisdom so hard to attain?

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.

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

Capitalism is the same everywhere. In order to survive and prosper it needs a permanent situation of partial scarcity: it needs it to maintain its prices and to create hungry masses to work under any conditions.

For a long time I have been fascinated by the thought how wonderful it would be if at last, in public opinion on the succession of political and social institutions, the fateful term "one after another" would be replaced through the very simple and self-evident "simultaneously."

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.

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.

...what does it mean for a Pagan to be apolitical? It can only mean that you will allow mountains be blown apart for coal, forests to be clear-cut, rivers to be poisoned, and the Earth to be overheated until it becomes unlivable.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.

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.

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.

There is a conflict between the static and dynamic conceptions of anarchism, between those who want to gregarize and stabilize anarchism and those who want the revolutionary, individualist spirit to remain and simmer permanently within anarchism.

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

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.

Rights have never been granted by authority. They have always been asserted against authority, and won from it.

I actually think that law enforcement should be difficult, and I think it should actually be possible to break the law.

Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

Anarchism is not mysticism; it is not a discourse on beauty; it is not a cry of despair.

"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.

Parliament: A compound word from "parler" (to speak) and "mentir" (to lie).

So that is why anarchists keep coming back to the question of what anarchism is. Because anarchism is not a political movement. Or rather it is, but only in a minor aspect.

The sworn enemy of your emancipation is the state: it is best embodied by the union of these five stereotypes: the property-owner, the soldier, the judge, the priest and the one who serves them all, the intellectual.

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.

There are no hierarchies in nature other than those imposed by hierarchical modes of human thought, but rather differences merely in function between and within living things.

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.

Dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation.

It's called the American Dream, 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it.

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