"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?"
"The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood - these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society - the communist state suppressed to the point of extermination."
"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."
"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."
"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.""
"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."
"Nine-tenths of the activities of modern government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better."
"Monopoly and privilege must be destroyed, opportunity afforded, and competition encouraged. This is liberty's work, and "Down with Authority" her war-cry."
"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?"
"Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth!"
"For us, it is a matter of crushing fascism once and for all. Yes; and in spite of the government."
"The individualist anarchist critiques to free themselves and others."
"When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood - a truly free society."
"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."
"He who refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life."
"Then hang us! Here we will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up."
"This brings us to anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the state should be abolished."
"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."
"Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never."
"The task of teachers, those obscure soldiers of civilization, is to give to the people the intellectual means to revolt."
"The state behaves as the same ruler that the church was. The latter rests on godliness, the former on morality."
"Anarchy is the obliteration of property."
"Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations."
"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."
"Our cause cannot expect me to become a nun and the movement will not be turned into a cloister."
"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."
"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?"
"Without the rule of one, there would be light, there would be truth, there would be justice. The rule of one is a crime."
"There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor."
"The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."
"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 "equality of right" is a phantom just because right is nothing more and nothing less than admission, a matter of grace."
"Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species."
"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."
"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."
"The Bolshevik government revealed itself to be powerless in the face of a bureaucracy which is super-abundant, parasitic, despotic and dishonest."
"If revolution results only in a change of dictatorship, then it is hardly worth while."
"May the enemies of the people be terrified at the unexpected awakening."
"For the machine, because of the way it is built, can work only in a given direction, no matter who pulls its levers."
"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!"
"We must be communists because we are anarchists, because anarchy and communism are the two essential terms of the revolution."
"If today we fall without compromising, we can be sure of victory tomorrow."
"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."
"Where crime exists, force must exist to repress it. Who denies it? Certainly not liberty; certainly not the anarchists."
"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."
"One can lose one's illusions about everything and about everyone, but not about what one affirms with one's moral conscience."
"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."
"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."
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."
"Anarchists who endeavor to hasten it by joining in the propaganda of state socialism or revolution make a sad mistake indeed."
"All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercize it, and degrades those over whom it is exercized."
"Disorganization is the twin sister of irresponsibility, and together they lead to impoverished ideas and futile practice."
"Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony."
"The state is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematised."
"The state always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the individual - to make him subject to some generality or other."
"There is no such thing as harmless power."
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
"It is from the love of humanity that we are revolutionaries: it is not our fault if history has forced on us this distressing necessity."
"The state is the most gigantic criminal extant. It manufactures criminals much faster than it punishes them."
"To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it."
"The authoritarian principle has been proven bankrupt by the experience of the Russian Revolution."
"As regards the mestizo population [of mixed Indian and Spanish heritage], which is the majority of the people of Mexico - with the exception of those who inhabited the great cities and large towns - they held the forests, lands, and bodies of water in common, just as the indigenous peoples did."
"The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss."
"Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value."
"A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions."
"Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, "conscience," watches over every motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter of conscience," that is, police business."
"True, we have no conscription; that is, men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force - necessity."
"Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future."
"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."
"Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions."
"Poets and musicians: launch your vibrant stanzas that awaken in the soul of the humble a sense of impatience with their servitude and, during those all-too-frequent moments of discouragement, refresh the ardor of the strong."
"Writers: express your rage against all iniquities during all your waking hours."
"In vices, the very essence of crime - that is, the design to injure the person or property of another - is wanting."
"To go towards freedom, it becomes necessary to develop our individuality."
"To truly know freedom, one must develop the human being until one makes sure that no authority has the possibility of existing."
"Justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity of men... if God exists, all these things are condemned to non-existence."
"But though egoism or altruism, separately, each pushed to its extreme, is pernicious to the individual and society, united they are resolved into a third term, which is the law of future societies. This law is solidarity."
"Patriotism is the vice of nations."
"Free love? As if love is anything but free! Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere."
"It is society that makes criminals and you, jury members, instead of striking you should use your intelligence and your strength to transform society. In one fell swoop you'll suppress all crime. And your work, in attacking causes, will be greater and more fruitful than your justice, which belittles itself in punishing its effects."
"While judging me judge all the unfortunate who poverty, combined with natural pride, made criminals, and who wealth or ease would have made honest men. An intelligent society would have made of them men like any other!"
"Wheresoever it be, there will exist the power of certain men over others, and there will not be freedom, but there will be the oppression of one portion of mankind by another. Therefore power must be abolished."
"Revolution is indeed a violent process."
"The revolution will be the flowering of humanity as love is the flowering of the heart."
"Only the man who has successfully rid himself of the chains of oppression and seen all the horrors being perpetrated against the human race can be persuaded that his freedom and that of his neighbor are inviolable, as are their lives, and that his neighbor is his brother."
"For us, everything that seeks to destroy economic and political oppression, all that which serves to raise the moral and intellectual level of human beings, to give them the consciousness of their rights and of their forces and to persuade them to do their business by themselves, all that provokes hatred against oppression and love between people, brings us closer to our aim."
"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."
"Power makes you drunk, and the best, when invested with authority, become the worst."
"That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess."
"Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."
"A man won't steal, ordinarily, unless that which he steals is something he cannot as easily get without stealing; in liberty the cost of stealing would involve greater difficulties than producing, and consequently he would not be apt to steal."
"Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled utopian."
"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."
"Since the birth of the state, the world of politics has always been and continues to be the stage for unlimited rascality and brigandage."
"As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth."
"The Revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves."
"A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years."
"Fear of the people is the defect of all those who belong to authority. The people, as concerns power, is the enemy."
"The two principles referred to are authority and liberty, and the names of the two schools of socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, state socialism and anarchism."
"Nobody believes or expects that the coming revolution, however formidable it should be, will realize unadulterated anarchist communism."
"A government that shall punish all vices impartially is so obviously an impossibility, that nobody was ever found, or ever will be found, foolish enough to propose it."
"A fist full of might goes farther than a bag full of rights."
"The anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority."
"I repeat that I am a political prisoner. The prosecution, whatever the attorney general may say, is political and nothing else."
"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 a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen."
"Comrades, let us hurry on the revolution as quickly as we can, since, as you see, our enemies are letting us die like this - in prison or in exile, or crazed with sorrow."
"I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen."
"Anarchism seeks to arouse the consciousness of oppression, the desire for a better society, and a sense of the necessity for unceasing warfare against capitalism and the State."
"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."
"Since it seems that every heart that beats for freedom has no right to anything but a little slug of lead, I demand my share. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance."
"One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions - the truth that for our life one law is valid - the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind."
"Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism, or socialism, means the reorganization of society upon scientific principles and the abolition of causes which produce vice and crime. Capitalism first produces these social diseases and then seeks to cure them by punishment."
"We love to have agents provocateurs in the party, because they always propose the most revolutionary motions."
"One courageous act has sufficed to upset in a few days the entire governmental machinery, to make the colossus tremble."
"Our authority is our own conscience. She is the one that pushes us, she is our spur. We are slaves, but to our duty."
"We don't have faith; we have absolutely no confidence in our success."
"The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy."
"Patriotism: a willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."
"The Mexican people hate, by instinct, authority and the bourgeoisie."
"To be good and lead a good life means to give to others more than one takes from them."
"Anarchism is the usher of science - the master of ceremonies to all forms of truth. It would remove all barriers between the human being and natural development."
"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."
"The individualist anarchist is never accountable to anyone but himself for his acts and gestures."
"Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly."
"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."
"It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep."
"The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes."
"The anarchist ideal is large and rich in its diversity. Nevertheless, the role of anarchists in the social struggle of the masses is extremely modest. Their task is to help the masses take the right road in the struggle and in the construction of the new society."
"What we want, therefore, is the complete destruction of the domination and exploitation of man by man; we want men united as brothers by a conscious and desired solidarity, all cooperating voluntarily for the well-being of all; we want society to be constituted for the purpose of supplying everybody with the means for achieving the maximum well-being, the maximum possible moral and spiritual development; we want bread, freedom, love, and science - for everybody."
"Equality! I had always thought that it was the natural fruit of Liberty, which has no need of theory nor of constraint."
"Liberty enters the field of journalism to speak for herself because she finds no one willing to speak for her."
"As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it."
"Anarchy is not perfection, it is not the absolute ideal which like the horizon recedes as fast as we approach it; but it is the way open to all progress and all improvements for the benefit of everybody."
"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."
"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."
"Hate does not produce love; we will not renew the world by hate."
"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."
"If power is to be abolished it must be abolished not by force but by men's consciousness of its uselessness and evil."
"All that which is not liberty is against liberty. Liberty is not a thing that can be allocated."
"The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual."
"He who has might has right... is this wisdom so hard to attain?"
"The police are making more anarchists than I could do in ten years."
"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."
"In America, the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever."
"Anarchism was born in a moral revolt against social injustice."
"To be looked upon as a mere part, part of society, the individual cannot bear - because he is more; his uniqueness puts from it this limited conception."
"It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe."
"Dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation."
"The true and legitimate meaning of the word treason, then, necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith. Without these, there can be no treason."
"If there is a state, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery."
"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
"It is especially in the domain of ethics that the dominating importance of the mutual aid principle appears in full."
"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 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."
"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."
"It is not another state that men aim at, but their union, uniting, this ever-fluid uniting of everything standing."
"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."
"Miss Goldman is a communist; I am an individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it."
"Go ahead, vote! Have faith in your delegates, believe in those you have voted for. But if you voted, don't complain."
"A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation."
"We have no need to get involved with the games of our oppressors, unless we wish to take part in their oppression."
"The social order of Spain ought to be overthrown; must be overthrown, will be overthrown; and Ferrer was doing a mighty work in that direction. The men who killed him knew and understood it well."
"The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism."
"As the uselessness and harmfulness of patriotism have become manifest, so also has increased the power of the government and ruling class to excite patriotism among the people."
"Today the anarchists are numerous enough to overthrow the current state of things, and if that hasn't yet happened, it's because we must complete the education of the followers, give birth in them to the energy and the firm will to assist in the realization of their projects."
"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."
"As moderate as they were, as sensible as they proved themselves to be, the founders of the Circle turned out to be too advanced in the judgment of the guardians of moral order."
