"When society refuses you the right to exist, you have to take it and not help it along, which is cowardice."
"Back down? No. Not even when -- at the end of the road -- with no means of escape, I find myself against the wall of death."
"The internationalism of socialists is just an empty phrase."
"Rest in peace, poor Mata! Someone who never knew you has sworn to avenge you. And the memory of your blood-drenched eyes will drive his dagger; the vision of your mutilated body will render his bomb more effective."
"What consoles me is that there are combatants that remain, because despite all the persecution, the anarchist idea has germinated and the theoretical revolution is ending, being quickly replaced by the practice of action."
"How many times this must be proven in history before the libertarian believers in violent overthrow of the social order see the light is a deep and serious question. Some people never learn."
"In short, progress is out of communism toward individualism, out of a condition of status to one of contract, out from authority toward liberty. But the "herd instinct" still remains."
"Fascism may be briefly described as the reluctant acquiescence of capitalists to governmental regimentation in order to stem the increasing impotency of a one-sided wealth accumulation to satisfy the needs of a country."
"Anarchy is the negation of all authority."
"From the earliest days of the "revolution", anarchists began their trek through moral tragedy along the paths of pain -- the deportations, the exile, the imprisonment, the ghastly persecution and the shootings. Such is the lot of anarchists today. Just as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow."
"The people are conservative: they are satisfied with the society they find. The minority are innovators instead and therefore they rebel."
"I know that I live and that I desire to live."
"I have a god (dio) like everyone else; but this god is myself (io)."
"Maybe I am crazy. But my madness is the most terrible rationality. I see further, I feel life more vividly."
"The anarchists have but one party, and that is humanity."
"Ah well, this is the crime that I am here for: for not recognizing the right of these people to die of plenty while the producers, the creators of all social wealth, starve."
"If this is the road we must take, we cannot do it sustained and fettered by some phoney unproductive sentimentalism without also setting obstacles in the path of what we seek to advance as the goal of energetic rebellion."
"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."
"Not all those who are considered anarchists are pure anarchists. Tolstoy and Kropotkin have to be thrown out, having very little anarchy in their systems. They are anarchists only in the political sphere, and in all other relations between people they remain ardent communists."
"You have accused me of theft, as if a worker that has nothing could be a thief."
"It is Marx's tortured truisms that give a plausibility to his works in their totality."
"Between these two classes, and with the growth of manufacture and commerce, there arose an intermediate class whose affluence depended on personal ingenuity and ability, in whose attitude entered little of either the master or slave psychology but who clearly saw that their well-being depended on the freedom to exercise their abilities."
"In anarchy the Russian, Finn, Jew, Georgian, and Ukrainian are not enemies, but comrades. In short, there is only one conclusion: anarchy inevitably leads to internationalism."
"The human animal is an animated alimentary canal. He has evolved from and differs from the worm only by the appendages which have developed on him."
"I am not a robber but one who has been robbed, someone who brings justice, who says that everything belongs to everyone, and that it is this clear logic of the anarchist idea, which makes your legs tremble."
"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."
"We must ask in a manly and proud posture and not beg on our knees."
"The majority can hardly accept the existence of anything but the two extremes: masters and slaves."
"I am not a thief but a sincere revolutionary, who has the courage of his convictions and who is devoted to his cause."
"Nobody scolded or hated capitalism more than him, but the subtle mind of Proudhon saw the vileness of communism."
"Let us light the fuse on the dynamite of vengeance!"
"I envy the savages. And I will cry to them in a loud voice: "Save yourselves, civilization is coming.""
"To monotonously live the mouldy hours of the ordinary people, the submissive, the accommodated, a life of convenience, is not living, it is only vegetating and carrying around an amorphous mass of flesh and bones. To life one should give the exquisite elevation of the rebellion of the arms and the mind."
"I do not want to unite with the multitude of those who flatter the proletariat, excusing them, praising them, adorning them with wreathes."
"Socialism greatly needs Anarchism as a critic and to keep it from sacrificing the individual and his originality to the domination of the mass."
"High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."
"When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist."
"The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever."
"A man who does not think for himself does not think at all."
"To be really medieval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes."
"Wherever there is a man who exercizes authority, there is a man who resists authority."
"Only the shallow know themselves."
"One should always be a little improbable."
"Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
"Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less."
"The one thing that the public dislike is novelty."
"It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property."
"Ambition is the last refuge of the failure."
"I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood."
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing."
"Charity creates a multitude of sins."
"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."
"The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value."
"As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg."
"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."
"Private property has crushed true individualism, and set up an individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them."
"Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."
"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."
"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
"All the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable."
"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 work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art."
"Alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all."
"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it."
""Know thyself" was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, "Be thyself" shall be written."
"There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor."
"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."
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."
"All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercize it, and degrades those over whom it is exercized."
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
"Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value."
"Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions."
"Patriotism is the vice of nations."
"Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."
"The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy."
"The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes."
"In America, the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever."
"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."
