Alexander Berkman Quotes

#1. Existence has become an unreasoning, wild dance around the golden calf, a mad worship of God Mammon. In that dance and in that worship man has sacrificed all his finer qualities of the heart and soul - kindness and justice, honor and manhood, compassion and sympathy with his fellowman.

Alexander Berkman

#2. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

Alexander Berkman

#3. War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood.

Alexander Berkman

#4. In short, Anarchism means a condition or society where all men and women are free, and where all enjoy equally the benefits of an ordered and sensible life.

Alexander Berkman

#5. When the highwayman holds his gun to your head, you turn your valuables over to him. You 'consent' alright, but you do so because you cannot help yourself, because you are compelled by his gun. Are you not compelled to work for an employer? Your need compels you, just as the highwayman's gun.

Alexander Berkman

#6. What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.

Alexander Berkman

#7. Away with the hypocritical horror on the part of capitalist, labor leader, and politician.

Alexander Berkman

#8. The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression.

Alexander Berkman

#9. Violence is the method of ignorance, the weapon of the weak. The strong of heart and brain need no violence, for they are irresistible in their consciousness of being right.

Alexander Berkman

#10. Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.

Alexander Berkman

#11. Anarchism means voluntary co-operation instead of forced participation. It means harmony and order in place of interference and disorder.

Alexander Berkman

#12. It is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation. My prison-house environment is but another manifestation of the Midas-hand, whose cursed touch turns everything to the brutal service of Mammon.

Alexander Berkman

#13. 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

#14. The stupendous task of human regeneration will be accomplished only by the purified vision of hearts that grow not cold.

Alexander Berkman

#15. Socialism, like Christianity destroyed itself to gain power

Alexander Berkman

#16. Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.

Alexander Berkman

#17. Certainly the worker has nothing to lose by a change from government and capitalism to a condition of no government, of anarchy.

Alexander Berkman