Anarchist Quotes

• A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

  Lysander Spooner

  Freedom, Men, Years

  Lysander Spooner (1973). “No Treason and a Letter to Thomas F. Bayard”

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• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Kings, Years, Realization

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.18, RosettaBooks

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• Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, 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

  Mean, Responsibility, Self

  Voltairine de Cleyre (2012). “Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre -- Anarchist, Feminist, Genius”, p.156, SUNY Press

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• If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the Anarchists.

  George Orwell

  Revolutionary, Should, Situation

  George Orwell, Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940”, Harvill Secker

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• An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to make him behave.

  Ammon Hennacy

  Needs, Cop, Anarchism

  Ammon Hennacy (2010). “The Book of Ammon”, p.34, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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  The most violent element in society is ignorance.

  Emma Goldman

  Peace, Educational, Book

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.33, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

  Emma Goldman

  War, Apology, Law

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.33, 谷月社

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• Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else.

  Nicolas Walter

  Trust, Father Son, Men

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• I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule and also ruled I will not be.

  John Henry Mackay

  Liberty

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• I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Men, Diversity, Culture

  "God and the State" (1871)

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• If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

  Emma Goldman

  Political, Voting, Nerd

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  Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

  Thomas Paine

  Motivation, War, 4th Of July

  Common Sense (1776)

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• The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Want, Likes

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• We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism.

  Joseph Stalin

  Real, Believe, Enemy

  Joseph Stalin (1971). “Selected works”

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• Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.

  Lucy Parsons

  Believe, Thinking, Self

  Lucy Eldine Parsons (2004). “Freedom, Equality and Solidarity”, Charles H Kerr Publishing Company

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• I want three words: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Atheist, Atheism, Want

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• 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

  War, Men, Opposites

  Alexander Berkman, Jewish Anarchist Federation (1929). “Now and after: the A B C of communist anarchism”

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• As for politics, I’m an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can’t stand caged animals. People must be free.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Hate, Animal, Government

  Charlie Chaplin, Kevin J. Hayes (2005). “Charlie Chaplin: Interviews”, p.121, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Government, Evil, Anarchy

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• Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion.

  Emma Goldman

  Mind, Anarchy, Dominion

  'Anarchism and Other Essays' (1910) p. 68

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• Understand then all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Lying, Passion, Government

  Passage written in 1908 for for 'The Law of Love and the Law of Violence'. "Equality in Liberty and Justice". Book by Antony Flew, p. 89, 2001.

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• The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Christian, Common, Anarchism

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (2007). “Twilight of the Idols with the Antichrist and Ecce Homo”, p.19, Wordsworth Editions

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• In order to create it is necessary to destroy; and the agent of destruction in society is the poet. I believe that the poet is necessarily an anarchist, and that he must oppose all organized conceptions of the State, not only those which we inherit from the past, but equally those which are imposed on people in the name of the future.

  Herbert Read

  Believe, Past, Order

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• Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it!

  Johann Most

  Men, Thinking, Doe

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• The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune.

  Friedrich Engels

  Mean, Organization, Paris

  Letter to Philipp Van Patten, www.marxists.org. April 18, 1883.

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