"At the basis of Proudhon's economic theory we find two essential ideas, that of value and that of exchange. These two ideas are only of interest in the regime of individual property."
"We won the revolution, what we lost was the war."
"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."
"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."
"It is important not to confuse federalism as it is understood by the Paris Commune with the so-called federalism which exists in Switzerland and in the United States of America."
"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."
"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."
"Federalism is above all the negation of the nation and the state."
"Proudhon was an anti-authoritarian, anti-statist communist, a federalist communist. Was he a communist without knowing it? No, he suspected it, and he said it, at least once."
"No serious-minded man would venture to predict exactly how the Revolution, the indispensable condition for social renovation, will come about."
"Federalism is socialist, and for it solidarity is inseparable from liberty."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
"In Russia the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Common to all Anarchists is the desire to free society of all political and social coercive institutions which stand in the way of development of a free humanity."
"The Anarcho-Syndicalists know that wars are only waged in the interest of the ruling classes; they believe, therefore, that any means is justifiable that can prevent the organised murder of peoples."
"Just as you cannot see, at pleasure, with your ears and you cannot, at will, hear with your eyes so too you cannot make the state act in the interests of the working people. As an organ in the social body, its purpose is for the repression of self-determination."
"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."
"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."
"One who is constantly striving to force everything into a mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling."
"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."
"Thus, on the one hand, the "unionised" are today in a position to understand, study and receive libertarian teachings: on the other, anarchists need not fear that, in taking part in the corporative movement, they will be required to forswear their independence."
"Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace."
"We have come more and more under the dominance of mechanics and sacrificed living humanity to the dead rhythm of the machine without most of us even being conscious of the monstrosity of the procedure."
"Intellectuals: put yourself at the service of the weak. Meditate upon this; this is the really urgent work."
"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."
"The peoples owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength."
"True intellectual culture and the demand for higher interests in life does not become possible until man has achieved a certain material standard of living, which makes him capable of these."
"The view which sees in every capitalist only a profit machine may very well meet the demands of propaganda, but it is conceived much too narrowly and does not correspond to reality."
"While we do preach perfect communism, it is not in the certainty or expectation of communism's being the social form of the future: it is in order to further men's education, and round it off as completely as possible, so that, by the time that the day of conflagration comes, they will have attained maximum emancipation."
"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."
"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."
"Trades organization is still only in the embryonic stages. Once rid of politicians' tyranny, it can stride out freely and, like the child learning to take his first steps, toddle along the road of independence."
"For two decades the supporters of Bolshevism have been hammering it into the masses that dictatorship is a vital necessity for the defense of the so-called proletarian interests against the assaults of counter-revolution and for paving the way for socialism."
"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 reaction always begins where one tries to bring life to a certain norm. That is why yesterday's revolutionaries so often become today's reactionaries."
"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 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."
"I am an anarchist not because I believe anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal."
"Painters: bring back to life, with your talent and your heart, the memory of the great revolts."
"The worst crime of any type of state is just that it always tries to force the rich diversity of social life into definite forms and adjust it to one particular form, which allows for no wider outlook and regards the previously exciting status as finished."
"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."
"In the pettiest struggle, born of the needs of the moment, there must be mirrored the great goal of social liberation, and each such struggle must help to smooth the way and strengthen the spirit which transforms the inner longing of its bearers into will and deed."
"In Russia, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people."
"For us, it is a matter of crushing fascism once and for all. Yes; and in spite of the government."
"For the machine, because of the way it is built, can work only in a given direction, no matter who pulls its levers."
"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."
"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."
"Nobody believes or expects that the coming revolution, however formidable it should be, will realize unadulterated anarchist communism."
"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."
"Dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation."
"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."
