'Few men are capable enough to rule themselves, and even fewer are capable to rule others'
- Edward Abbey
"as man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy"
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"Anarchism is the natural and inevitable result of the application of the principles of individualism," -Murray Rothbard.
"Anarchism is the belief that people can organize themselves without the need for a government," -Samuel Konkin.
"Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed." - Charles Caleb Colton
Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. - Emma Goldman
"I don't care if a man's theory for tomorrow is correct," she once wrote. "I care if his spirit of today is correct."170 Anarchism and free association were to her logical responses to the confines of government control and capitalism. "It seems to me that these are the new forms of life," she wrote, "and that they will take the place of the old, not by preaching or voting, but by living them."
- Emma Goldman
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution"
- (not exact quote) Emma Goldman
"Anarchy is no guarantee that some people won't kill, injure, kidnap, defraud, or steal from others. Government is a guarantee that some will."
- Gustave de Molinari
"When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty"
- Thomas Jefferson
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
- H. L. Mencken
No Rules, No Rulers
“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”
- Edward Abbey
Anarchy: It is NOT bombs, disorder or chaos. It is NOT robbery and murder. It is NOT a war of each against all. It is NOT a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man. Anarchism is the very opposite of all that. — Alexander Berkman
“Anarchism has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, "Freedom." Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully." — Lucy Parsons
The Anarchist
I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule and also ruled I will not be. — John Henry Mackay46
The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art. — Federico Garcia Lorca
The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy-the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops — William Saroyan
I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly. — Voltairine de Cleyre
If anarchists are idealists, they may simply be likened to someone who finds himself swimming in a cesspool and, rather than paddling about looking for the area with the least amount of floating faeces, seeks to climb out of the pool completely. — Robert Higgs26
Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us. — Ivan Illich
A long long time ago I took an oath to tell all secrets that came my way. Don't tell me a secret, I won't keep it. I'm against secrets, I'm against hierarchies, lineages, all assumption of special knowledge on the part of anyone in the presence of anyone else is abhorrent to me. I mean, I am a true anarchist first and foremost. — Terence McKenna
Voluntaryist Society
I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. — Murray Rothbard
Inner Revolution
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
- Albert Camus
“How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”
- Leo Tolstoy
"So I decided to become a midwife… I wanted to deliver a thousand babies. And as each one arrives, especially the little girls, I’ll be there first to whisper into her tender little ear: REBEL! REBEL!”
- Emma Goldman
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
- Goldman(Paraphrased?)
Total Liberation
“The average man prefers safety over freedom.”
- H.L. Menkin
"We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves."
- Ericco Malatesta
“People only have as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take" - Goldman
“You must always have a secret plan. Everything depends on this: it is the only question. So as not to be conquered by the conquered territory in which you lead your life, so as not to feel the horrible weight of inertia wrecking your will and bending you to the ground, so as not to spend a single night more wondering what there is to do or how to connect with your neighbors and countrymen, you must make secret plans without respite. Plan for adventure, plan for pleasure, plan for pandemonium, as you wish; but plan, lay plans constantly. And when you come to, on the steps of the presidential palace, in the green grass beside the highway, in your cell’s gloomy solitude, your secret plan finished or foiled, ask your comrades, ask your cellmates, ask your wind, the waves, the stars, the sea, ask everything that ponders, everything that wanders, everything that sings, everything that stings ask them what time it is; and your comrades, your cellmates, the wind, the waves, the stars, the sea all will answer: “It is time for a new secret plan. So as not to be the martyred slave of routine, plan adventure, plan pleasure, plan pandemonium, as you wish; but plan, plan secretly and without respite.”
- the anarchist cookbook
"Hanged in Chicago, beheaded in Germany, garroted in Xerez, shot in Barcelona, guillotined in Montbrison and in Paris, our dead are many; but you have not been able to destroy anarchy. Its roots go deep: its spouts from the bosom of a rotten society that is falling apart; it is a violent backlash against the established order; it stands for the aspirations to equality and liberty which have entered the lists against the current authoritarianism. It is everywhere. That is what makes it indomitable..."
- Émile Henry
Creating Anew
"When we can't dream any longer we die."
- Emma Goldman
The best way to predict the future is to design it
- Buckminster Fuller
"The assumption that what currently exists must neccessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking"
- Murray Bookchin
Lies, Truth, Objective Truth, Objective Reality
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. “
- 1984
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
- Voltarie
"Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth"
"You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me." — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Police - The Law Enforcers
"The best way to get an otherwise honorable man to do something despicable is to tell him that it is his duty" -- Napoleon Bonaparte
Dominator Culture -
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
- Alexander Berkman
"The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" ― Steve Biko
Government is Slavery
“The measure of the state's success is that the word 'anarchy' frightens people, while the word 'state' does not.”
- Joseph Sobran
I heartily accept the motto, – “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, – “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.
- Henry David Thoreau
"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. ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "The General Idea of the Revolution" (1851)
"He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy."
- Benjamin R. Tucker | 1890
“If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticise.” ― Tacitus
Voting, Politics
“Democracy is a suggestion box for slaves.”
- Molyneux
"If voting changed anything they would make it illegal."
- Emma Goldman
"Propaganda is to a democracy, what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."
- Noam Chomsky
Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
- Herbert Marcuse
War is the ultimate tool of politics
- Buckminster Fuller
Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician's ear: 'You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.' — Wendy McElroy
"It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen." -- George MacDonald
“A man is no less a slave if he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” -Lysander Spooner
Schooling Indoctrination
"School is the advertising agency which makes you believe you need the society as it is."
- Ivan Illich
Humanity Enslaved
Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?
- Foucault
one must feel intensely the indignity of our social wrongs; one’s very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have become a part of humanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just indignation that accumulates in a human soul, the burning, surging passion that makes the storm inevitable.
- Emma Goldman
“I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.” ― Jorge Luis Borges
Monetary Slavery
“The structure of the world was built by the dead, they were paid in wages, and when the wages were spent and they were dead in the ground, what they had made continued to exist, these cities, roads and factories are their calcified bones.”
- "Nihilist Communism" by Monsieur Dupont
"Work makes a mockery of freedom"
- Bob Black
Aristippus, the king's favorite philosopher, said to Diogenes "if you would only learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on lentils." Diogenes responded, "If only you would learn to live on lentils, you would not have to flatter the king."
"It is fortunate that what is necessary is easy to acquire, and what is difficult to acquire, is not necessary" - Epicurus
Objective Morality, Natural Law
"Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority or the economic system, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship." --Voltairine De Cleyre
"The Liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognised them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatsoever, divine or human, collective or individual."
- Bakunin
Universal Rights
Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no. — Mark Twain
???
“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
- Rosseau
False Revolutionaries
“If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.” ― Mikhail Bakunin