Top 28 Voltairine De Cleyre Quotes
#1. when you find out who your not allowed to criticize, then you will realize who is in control".
Voltairine De Cleyre
#2. [The Catholic convent] had been like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and there are white scars on my soul, where ignorance and superstition burnt me with their hell fire in those stifling days.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#3. A man won't steal, ordinarily, unless that which he steals is something he cannot as easily get without stealing; in liberty the cost of stealing would involve greater difficulties than producing, and consequently he would not be apt to steal.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#4. I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#5. I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#6. As to the essence of Commerce and Manufacture, it is this: to establish bonds between every corner of the earth's surface and every other corner, to multiply the needs of mankind, and the desire for material possession and enjoyment.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#7. The paramount question of the day is not political, is not religious, but is economic. The crying-out demand of today is for a circle of principles that shall forever make it impossible for one man to control another by controlling the means of his existence.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#8. No one can hate petitions worse than I, and no one has less faith in them than I. But for my champion I am willing to try any means that invades no other's right, even though I have little hope in it.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#9. Speak, speak, speak,
& remember that whenever
anyone's liberty to speak is denied,
your liberty is denied also, & your place
is where the attack is..
Voltairine De Cleyre
#10. Private enterprise manages better all that to which it is equal. Anarchism declares that private enterprise, whether individual or cooperative, is equal to all the undertakings of society.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#11. A right , in the abstract, is a fact ; it is not a thing to be given, established, or conferred; it is. Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#12. What I say is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only, never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#13. There is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth, the money, and the machines.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#14. Capitalistic Anarchism ? Oh, yes, if you choose to call it so. Names are indifferent to me; I am not afraid of bugaboos. Let it be so, then, capitalistic Anarchism.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#17. As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#18. 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
#19. I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#20. Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#21. Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license," and they will define freedom out of existence.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#22. As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#24. [The married woman is] is a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, and serves her master's passion; [and] who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at his dictation.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#25. There is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#26. It is better to study how to live rather than how to die; ... it is better to have a religion of deeds rather than a religion of creeds; ... it is better to work for humanity than for God.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#27. The question of souls is old - we demand our bodies, now. We are tired of promises, god is deaf, and his church is our worst enemy.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#28. Is it not enough that 'things are cruel and blind'? Must we also be cruel and blind?
Voltairine De Cleyre
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