Quotes on Anarchy

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.

When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue.

How could you set yourself up as the most powerful institution on earth? You first find out what every man feels at least once a day, establish that as a sin, and set yourself up as the only institution capable of pardoning that sin.

Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws.

On the free market, everyone earns according to his productive value in satisfying consumer desires. Under statist distribution, everyone earns in proportion to the amount he can plunder from the producers.

The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.

If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State.

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.

It's sadly predictable that the only way you can come up with a way to celebrate the liberation you feel at leaving the old system behind is by coming up with a "system of liberation", as if such a thing could exist - but that's what we can expect from those who have never known anything other than systems and systematizing, I guess.

Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it 'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

In this day of wonders no one will say that a thing or an idea is worthless because it is new. To say it is impossible because it is difficult is again not in consonance with the spirit of the age. Things undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible.

Does man's freedom consist in revolting against all laws? We say no, in so far as laws are natural, economic, and social laws, not authoritatively imposed but inherent in things, in relations, in situations, the natural development of which is expressed by those laws. We say YES if they are political and juridical laws, imposed upon men by men.

Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom, but an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual.

The falcon cannot hear the falconer

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evil.

I'd always maintained that much of the anarchy and craziness of the early internet had a lot to do with the fact that governments just hadn't realised it was there.

The roots of the word 'anarchy' are 'an archos,' 'no leaders,' which is not really about the kind of chaos that most people imagine when the word 'anarchy' is mentioned. I think that anarchy is, to the contrary, about taking personal responsibility for yourself.

Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perennially rejuvenated illusions.

The government of man should be the monarchy of reason: it is too often the democracy of passions or the anarchy of humors.

It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy . . . great improvement . . . were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients.