Top 100 Quotes About Anarchism
#1. Control and violence that is best reflected in the state, are evil in themselves. In this knowledge lies the great truth of anarchism.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
#2. Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals ...
Emma Goldman
#4. I firmly believe people have the power to make decisions locally and cooperatively. Anarchism is how that is put into practice.
Scott Crow
#5. Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more.
Edward Abbey
#6. Anarchism means all sort of things to different people, but the traditional anarchists' movements assumed that there'd be a highly organized society, just one organized from below with direct participation and so on.
Noam Chomsky
#7. Not whether we accomplish anarchism today, tomorrow, or within ten centuries, but that we walk towards anarchism today, tomorrow, and always.
Errico Malatesta
#8. Anarchism as a political philosophy seeks to dissolve all forms of authority and power, and if possible, wishes their complete abolition.
Peter Marshall
#9. 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
#10. Anarchism does not demand the changing of the labels on the layers, it doesn't want different people on top, it wants us to clamber out underneath.
Colin Ward
#11. Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost.
Johann Most
#12. Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life, it is necessary to inject a certain dose of anarchism.
Bertrand Russell
#14. Anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything,
Rudolf Rocker
#15. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress.
Emma Goldman
#16. anarchism is to Marxism-Leninism what Anabaptism was to the magisterial Reformation: a revolutionary movement predicated upon negating, rather than seizing control of, state power.
Mark Van Steenwyk
#17. Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism
Murray N. Rothbard
#18. Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.
Emma Goldman
#19. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.
Emma Goldman
#20. 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.
Emma Goldman
#21. You don't expect me," he said, "to revolutionize society on this lawn?"
Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly.
"No, I don't," he said; "but I suppose that if you were serious about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do.
G.K. Chesterton
#22. Though I knew so far as Anarchism was concerned I was backing a lost cause, it didn't seem to matter as every other cause had won at some time but that of the people themselves. At least it threw so a light on any other political persuasion.
Albert Meltzer
#23. Our principle is: to prevent all command over man by his fellowmen, to, make state, government, laws, or whatsoever form of compulsion existing, a thing of the past, to establish full freedom for all. Anarchism means first and foremost freedom from all government.
Johann Most
#24. If you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defense, they accuse you of pacifism, without understanding that violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.
Errico Malatesta
#25. People will think you brilliant
only if you tell them what they know.
To avoid being thought brilliant,
avoid knowing what they know.
Write to discover to yourself
what you know.
Anarchism is Not Enough
Laura Riding Jackson
#26. Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism means peace and tranquility to all.
August Spies
#27. 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
#28. Anarchism or freedom is the aim, while the state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses, they have first to be enslaved.
Mikhail Bakunin
#29. Whenever freedom is made into the absolute, the result is not freedom but anarchism. Freedom must be under law, or it is not freedom.
R.J. Rushdoony
#30. I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
Robert Anton Wilson
#31. Today's terrorism is not the product of a traditional history of anarchism, nihilism, or fanaticism. It is instead the contemporary partner of globalization.
Jean Baudrillard
#32. Anarchism has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, "Freedom." Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully." - Lucy Parsons
Lucy Parsons
#33. Cleansed of its leftist residues, anarchy - anarchism minus Marxism - will be free to get better at being what it is.
Bob Black
#34. Science is essentially an anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.
Paul Karl Feyerabend
#35. ANARCHISM: - The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.
Emma Goldman
#36. If all our comrades of Europe, America and other countries, who do not understand what we are doing to Spanish Anarchism, would come to Spain, we could then see how they would react.
Federica Montseny
#37. Peter Kropotkin described Anarchism as the extreme left wing of socialism - a view with which I completely agree. One of my deepest concerns today is that the libertarian socialist core will be eroded by fashionable, post- modernist, spiritualist, mystic individualism.
Murray Bookchin
#38. Let us designate anarchism1 anarchism as you define it. Let us desiginate anarchism2 anarchism as I and the American Heritage College Dictionary define it.
Bryan Caplan
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself.
Andre Breton
#42. I am an Anarchist not because I believe Anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal.
Rudolf Rocker
#43. There is one central characteristic of anarchism on the matter of means, and that central principle is a principle of direct action - of not going through the forms that the society offers you, of representative government, of voting, of legislation, but directly taking power.
Howard Zinn
#44. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal.
Robert Anton Wilson
#45. Philosophically, Communism and Anarchism are poles apart. Practically - i.e. in the form of society aimed at - the difference is mainly one of emphasis, but it is quite irreconcilable. The Communist's emphasis is always on centralism and efficiency, the Anarchist's on liberty and equality.
George Orwell
#46. Anarchism is the revolutionary idea that no one is more qualified than you are to decide what your life will be.
CrimethInc.
#47. That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.
Noam Chomsky
#48. One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call themselves anarchists.
Howard Zinn
#49. Anarchism ... stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral.
Emma Goldman
#50. My sympathies are, of course, with the Government side, especially the Anarchists ; for Anarchism seems to me more likely to lead to desirable social change than highly centralized, dictatorial Communism .
Aldous Huxley
#51. Anarchism means voluntary co-operation instead of forced participation. It means harmony and order in place of interference and disorder.
Alexander Berkman
#52. Anarchism is a theory of political science and is opposed to government in the political sense.
Steven T. Byington
#53. 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
#54. Anarchism is that political philosophy which advocates the maximization of individual responsibility and the reduction of concentrated power regal, dictatorial, parliamentary: the institutions which go loosely by the name of "government" to a vanishing minimum.
Alex Comfort
#55. Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor ... It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.
Emma Goldman
#56. Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints
Ludwig Von Mises
#57. Anarchism's lone objective is to reach a point at which the belligerence of some humans against humanity, in whatever form, comes to a halt.
Gustav Landauer
#58. My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an
impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian.
Robert Anton Wilson
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist thought, that stream whose main components are concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State.
Daniel Guerin
#62. I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to Roman jurisprudence; but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of nature rather than in the state of nature.
Herbert Read
#63. The best argument for anarchism is the twentieth century.
Joseph Sobran
#64. The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.
Benjamin Tucker
#65. 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
#66. For, whatever was the case in de Tocqueville's day, not the passion for egalitarianism but an individualist, that is anti-authoritarian, antinomian though curiously legalistic anarchism, has become the core of the value system in the USA.
Eric Hobsbawm
#67. Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviorism, racism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice.
Henry M. Morris
#68. Direct action is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.
Emma Goldman
#69. Market Anarchism is the doctrine that the legislative, adjudicative, and protective functions unjustly and inefficiently monopolised by the coercive State should be entirely turned over to the voluntary, consensual forces of market society.
Roderick T. Long
#70. This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.
Benjamin Tucker
#71. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.
Benjamin Tucker
#72. Liberalism is to freedom as anarchism is to anarchy.
Ernst Junger
#73. With subjectivism in philosophy, anarchism in politics goes hand in hand.
Bertrand Russell
#74. From my point of view the killing of another, except in defense of human life, is archistic, authoritarian, and therefore, no Anarchist can commit such deeds. It is the very opposite of what Anarchism stands for ...
Jo Labadie
#75. As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#76. At the same time, of course, Marxism arose - Rosa Luxembourg, Leninism, anarchism - and art became political.
Douglas Sirk
#77. Anarchism and anthropology go well together because anthropologists know that a society without a state is possible because so many exist.
David Graeber
#80. Evil does not exist in guerrilla warfare but only in the unorganized and undisciplined activities that are anarchism,
Mao Zedong
#82. In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.
Bertrand Russell
#83. 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
#84. We are, in any case, only one of the forces acting in society
Errico Malatesta
#85. Anarchists have a 'bad name' in the media, not because they can point to one indiscriminate massacre by anarchists--there have been none--but because the one thing holders of power fear is that they personally should be held responsible for their own actions
Stuart Christie
#87. Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
Emma Goldman
#88. Behind every unquestionable belief is a system of control.
Graeme Rodaughan
#89. Victory will not go to those who can inflict the most suffering, but to those who can survive the most.
CrimethInc.
#90. Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.
Alan Moore
#91. An anarchist is someone who rejects the curious notion that crimes become virtues as they grow in size.
Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski
#92. If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticise.
Tacitus
#93. You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education.
Bob Black
#94. Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.
Emma Goldman
#95. Educate the Russian or the American or the Englishman or the Irishman or Frenchman or any real northern European except German, and you get the Anarchist, that is to say the man who dreams of order without organisation - of something beyond organisation ...
H.G.Wells
#96. Anarchy is a state of society where the only government is reason.
Michael Schwab
#97. The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#98. If you are a warrior, the nature and scale of your enemies will determine the nature and scale of your actions. In this sense, it is even more important to choose your enemies more wisely than your friends.
CrimethInc.
#99. Gun Control: A measure to ensure that guns always point in one direction.
CrimethInc.
#100. An anarchist is like an undercover agent who plays the game of Reason in order to undercut the authority of Reason (Truth, Honesty, Justice and so on).
Paul Karl Feyerabend
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