Anarchist Quotes - Page 6

• Part of the heart of anarchy is, dare to go against the grain of the conventional ways of thinking about our realities. Anarchists have always gone against the grain, and that's been a place of hope.

  Bell Hooks

  Heart, Reality, Thinking

  "How Do You Practice Intersectionalism? An Interview with bell hooks". Interview with Randy Lowens, nefac.net. March 15, 2012.

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• From the Anarchist standpoint, these artificial hindrances which are the cause of three main forms of usury-interest, profit, and rent, are, in the order of their importance, monopoly in the control of the circulating medium-money and credit, private property in land not based on occupancy and use, patent rights and copyrights, and tariffs.

  Laurance Labadie

  Order, Land, Rights

  Laurance Labadie (1978). “Selected Essays”

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• Women make natural anarchists and revolutionaries, because they've always been second-class citizens, kinda having had to claw their way up.

  Kim Gordon

  Revolutionary, Natural

  "Kim Gordon Sounds Off" by Lizzy Goodman, www.elle.com. April 22, 2013.

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• 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 Higgs

  Swimming, Floating, Paddling

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• Intolerance of oppression, the desire to be free and develop one personality to its full limits, is not enough to make one an anarchist. That aspiration towards unlimited freedom, if not tempered by a love for mankind and by the desire that all should enjoy equal freedom, may well create rebels who soon become exploiters and tyrants.

  Errico Malatesta

  Tyrants, Personality, Desire

  Errico Malatesta (2015). “Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta”, p.17, PM Press

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• To be an anarchist only means that you believe that aggression is not justified, and that states necessarily employ aggression. And, therefore, that states, and the aggression they necessarily employ, are unjustified. It's quite simple, really. It's an ethical view, so no surprise it confuses utilitarians.

  Stephan Kinsella

  Believe, Mean, Simple

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• The education we all receive from the State, at school and after, has so warped our minds that the very notion of freedom ends up by being lost, and disguised in servitude. It is a sad sight to see those who believe themselves to be revolutionaries unleashing their hatred on the anarchist just because his views on freedom go beyond their petty and narrow concepts of freedom learned in the State school.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Believe, School, Sight

  "The State: Its Historic Role". Book by Peter Kropotkin, www.panarchy.org. 1897.

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• One must choose between God and Man, and all "radicals" and "progressives", from the mildest liberal to the most extreme anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.

  George Orwell

  Men, Atheism, Radical

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.177, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor.  Why should it?  The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent government.  The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes been objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.  Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Country, War, Men

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

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• Anarchism, in my view, is an expression of the idea that the burden of proof is always on those who argue that authority and domination are necessary. They have to demonstrate, with powerful argument, that that conclusion is correct. If they cannot, then the institutions they defend should be considered illegitimate. How one should react to illegitimate authority depends on circumstances and conditions: there are no formulas.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Views, Expression

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• Anarchists should get together who agree, and develop their gifts at a critical point, in a critical place, and form genuine affinity groups in areas where they can have certain results, notable results - not move into areas of great resistance where they're almost certain to be crushed, defeated, demoralized.

  Murray Bookchin

  Moving, Together, Resistance

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.

  Noam Chomsky

  Exercise, Trying, Doe

  "Students Should Become Anarchists". ZEIT Campus Interview, www.indybay.org. June 27, 2011.

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• I would agree that much with people who accept private property - that conscription is an unpardonable transgression, whether it be "corrupt" or not. The Spanish anarchists opposed conscription during the civil war in Spain as a gross expropriation of property, the most precious property that we have, our own physical beings themselves.

  Murray Bookchin

  War, People, Spain

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I think it's terribly important that networks of anarchists establish themselves with a view toward educating people.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Views, People

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• The two great movements of our century -- towards Liberty of the individual and social co-operation of the whole community -- are summed up in Anarchist-Communism.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Two, Community, Liberty

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• In my case I would emphasize anarcho-communalism, along with the ecological questions, the feminist questions, the anti-nuclear issues that exist, and along with the articulation of popular institutions in the community. I think it's terribly important for anarchists to do that because at this moment not very much is happening anywhere in North America.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, America, Issues

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Philosophy, Past, Names

  "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal". Lecture by Peter Kropotkin, translated by Harry Lyman Koopman, dwardmac.pitzer.edu. 1898.

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• Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want the government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.

  William Graham Sumner

  Party, Government, Views

  Speech to the Yale socialists club on November 14, 1911. "My Father Irving Fisher". Book by Irving Norton Fisher, pp. 43-44, praxeology.net. 1956.

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• I don't feel the individualist anarchists, particularly in the American tradition, including the Transcendental tradition of New England, in any way deserve the derogatory comments that are often made about them by the left. When one gets down to it ultimately, my anarcho-communism stems from a commitment to true individuality. My attempt to recover the power and the right of the individual to control his or her life and destiny is the basis to my anarcho-communism.

  Murray Bookchin

  Commitment, Destiny, Individuality

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Dream, Color, Prejudice

  Peter Kropotkin, George Woodcock (1993). “Fugitive writings”, Black Rose Books Ltd

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• An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles.

  Murray Bookchin

  Practice, Principles, Ecological

  Janet Biehl, Murray Bookchin (1999). “The Murray Bookchin Reader”, p.20, Black Rose Books Ltd.

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• As an anarchist, I cannot reconcile myself to any government.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Government, Anarchism, Reconcile

  "Peter Kropotkin: From Prince to Rebel". Book by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumović, p. 428, 1990.

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• Women are natural anarchists...

  Kim Gordon

  Natural

  "Guitars, Guns, Goo". Interview with Kayla Guthrie, www.artinamericamagazine.com. May 3, 2010.

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• The older I get, the more of an anarchist I become, and I don't mean in a punk rock way.

  Killer Mike

  Mean, Rocks, Way

  Source: www.complex.com

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• I'm sorry that some self-styled anarchists have picked up on the word spirit and have turned me into a theological ecologist, a notion which I think is crude beyond all belief.

  Murray Bookchin

  Sorry, Thinking, Self

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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