Anarchism Quotes

[personman]

Hello folks.

I hope these will be as inspiring to you as they are to me during these days of increasing totalitarianism and class warfare against the poor and working.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1/15/1809 - 1/19/1865

The first self-described anarchist.

“I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else. That is the alpha and omega of my argument.”

“Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.”

“The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!”

“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the public interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”

Mikhail Bakunin, 5/18/1814 – 6/19/1876

“When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called ‘The People's Stick.’”

“Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.”

“Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.”

“I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.”

“They maintain that only a dictatorship -- their dictatorship, of course -- can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.”

Peter Kropotkin, 12/9/1842 – 2/8/1921

"Where there is authority, there is no freedom."

“America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.”

“All things for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men worked to produce them in the measure of their strength, and since it is not possible to evaluate everyone's part in the production of the world's wealth... All is for all!”

“But what right had I to these highest joys, when all around me was nothing but misery and struggle for a moldy bit of bread; when whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live in that world of higher emotions must needs be taken from the very mouths of those who grew the wheat and had not bread enough for their children?”

“Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime?”

Emma Goldman, 6/27/1869 – 5/14/1940

“The most violent element in society is ignorance.”

“If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.”

“The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.”

“Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.”

“The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.”

“Anarchism, 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.”

“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.”

“John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?”

“The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.”

Noam Chomsky, 12/7/1928 -

“The burden of justification is on authority.”

“If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”

“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.”

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

“The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.”

“Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.”

“Personally I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.”

“Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an “innocent victim” only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret.”

“I mean, what are the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions. At the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama said, 'only in this country, only in America, could someone like me appear here.' Well, in some other countries, people much poorer than him would not only talk at the convention - they'd be elected president. Take Lula. The president of Brazil is a guy with a peasant background, a union organizer, never went to school, he's the president of the second-biggest country in the hemisphere. Only in America? I mean, there they actually have elections where you can choose somebody from your own ranks. With different policies. That's inconceivable in the United States.”

“Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must -- namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.”

Howard Zinn, 8/24/1922 -

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

“If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.”

“Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.”

“We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.”

“If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”

“(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other motherlands or fatherlands.”

“I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”

“Why should we accept that the "talent" of someone who writes jingles for an advertising agency advertising dog food and gets $100,000 a year is superior to the talent of an auto mechanic who makes $40,000 a year? Who is to say that Bill Gates works harder than the dishwasher in the restaurant he frequents, or that the CEO of a hospital who makes $400,000 a year works harder than the nurse or the orderly in that hospital who makes $30,000 a year? The president of Boston University makes $300,000 a year. Does he work harder than the man who cleans the offices of the university? Talent and hard work are qualitative factors which cannot be measured quantitatively.”

[Speck Tater]

1. Yes, but...

The president of Boston University makes $300,000 a year. Does he work harder than the man who cleans the offices of the university? Talent and hard work are qualitative factors which cannot be measured quantitatively.

There has always been, and will always be the law of supply and demand. The man who cleans the office could probably be replaced by a competent substitute in one phone call to the temp agency because the supply of people with those skills is greater than the demand. The president is much harder to replace because people capable of doing that job competently are in much shorter supply. Gold costs more than dirt because dirt is so common and gold so rare. Common labor deserves a living wage, to be sure, but common laborers are, well, common, and the supply surplus drives down the price. You can legislate against market pressures, but that, in the end, is just another form of government coercion. Forcing the market to sell gold at the same price as dirt only drives the market for gold underground.

[bhikkhu]

2. so goes the argument for a meritocracy

but we live in a world where supply does not begin to satisfy demand, or desire constantly outstrips resources. What then? Those who enter the game with an advantage - in wealth, connections, etc, - tend to win. And cultural systems tend to encourage this alternative to meritocracy, particularly in this country, if one looks at comparative social mobility statistics.

Not to advocate revolution or anarchy, which chiefly result in suffering and death rather than benefit, but knowledge is better than ignorance.

[rman]

3. anarchy = absense of concentration of power

To bad so many people are misinformed about what anarchism is.

[Jcrowley]

4. Thanks

Nobody chooses to live in slums - but some make a good living from renting them out.

"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community." David Ricardo

"Jack Linden lived in a small cottage in Windley. He had occupied this house ever since his marriage, over thirty years ago. His home and garden were his hobby: he was always doing something; painting, whitewashing, papering and so forth. The result was that although the house itself was not of much account he had managed to get it into very good order, and it was very clean and comfortable. Another result of this industry was that - seeing the improved appearance of the place - the landlord had on two occasions raised the rent. When Linden took the house the rent was five shillings a week. Five years after, it was raised to seven shillings, and after a lapse of another five years it had been increased to eight shillings. During his thirty years of tenancy he had paid altogether nearly £600 in rent, more than double the amount of the present value of the house." The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, Robert Tressell

"Landlords have no rights - they forfeit them by engaging in a criminal enterprise, for which seizure of dwellings by those who actually live in them, and complete discontinuance of paying "rents" are the only remedies." From 'Rent: An Injustice', Fred Woodworth

"It's a typical fudge. (The new laws concerning strict controls on gas appliances) means landlords are ripping out gas fires so you have no heating at all. Or, if the tenant gets a fitter to put the gas fire back, then the landlord can say it's nothing to do with him. In that case you have the crazy situation where technically speaking the safety of the appliance is the tenant's responsibility - it's a very grey area and we're talking about people in poverty who can't afford to get their appliances and chimneys checked; or they can't afford to get into a tussle with their landlord about it if they want to keep the roof over their heads. Worse still, most people I come across don't even know there's a danger." Gas fitter, Leeds 1997

"An English priest was on a visit to a remote part of the north of Ireland. A local farmer offered to show him the sights. 'That's Devil's Mountain,' said the farmer. 'Over there is Devil's Dyke. Devil's Wood starts on the other side of the river.' 'The Devil seems to own a lot of property in these parts,' smiled the priest. 'Aye,' agreed the farmer, 'and like most other landlords he seems to spend most of his time in London.'" Old Irish tale

"Landlord,landlord, My roof has sprung a leak - Don't you 'member I told you about it way last week? Landord, landlord, these steps is broken down. When you come up yourself it's a wonder you don't fall down. Ten Bucks you say I owe you? Ten bucks you say is due? Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'll pay you till you fix this house up new. What? You gonna get eviction orders? You gonna cut off my heat? You gonna take my furniture and throw it in the street? Um-huh! You talking high and mighty. Talk on - till you get through. You ain't gonna be able to say a word if I land a fist on you. Police! Police! Come and get this man! He's trying to ruin the government and overturn the land! Copper's whistle! Patrol bell! Arrest. Precinct Station. Iron cell. Headlines in press: MAN THREATENS LANDLORD. TENANT HELD NO BAIL. JUDGE GIVES NEGRO. 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL." Langston Hughes, 1940

"Johnny Rotten - the man who once screamed about Anarchy in the UK - has booted squatters out of his luxury West London Flat. John ... was furious when squatters moved in at the same time his flat went on the market. Says a spokesman; 'Yes they were punks, but they're not there any longer. I am not sure how John got rid of them. John may have been a punk himself, but he's an upstanding citizen now. I am sure he never had to squat anywhere." News cutting in Raising Hell Fanzine 1987

"Let's lynch the landlord!" Jello Biafra

"Consider the igloo: maximum enclosure of space with minimum of labour. Cost of materials and transportation, nil. And all made of water. Nowadays, of course, the eskimos live on welfare handouts in little northern slums. Man no longer houses himself: he is housed." Colin Ward, 'Anarchy In Action'



THE BIG ISSUE

It's plain mathematics: for the rich to get richer, some of us have to stay poor. But in 'I'm alright Jack' England, reason is in short supply. Everything is blamed on the individual. You lost your job! Lazy bastard! You lost your home! You inadequate bastard! Blaming homelessness on the homeless is as stupid as blaming poverty on the poor.

Shelter estimates that there are 1,928,300 homeless people in the UK, while the Empty Homes Agency estimates that there are 820,000 empty properties in the UK. Figures from The Big Issue

"It (begging) is not acceptable to be out there on the street. There is no justification for it these days. It is a very offensive problem to many people... We think aggressive begging is a menace. Action has been taken against aggressive begging for some time and will continue." John Major, May 28 1994

"We do not want people begging on the streets... I often drop my kids off in the morning at King's Cross and it's quite a frightening place. I'm saying we have to make our streets safe for people." Tony Blair, Jan 6, 1997

"Those among you who have the good fortune to enjoy shelter, warmth and the comfort of a good home, I would ask you to consider just one thing: what would you do if you saw your wife and children condemned to live for years in a single room? I know what you would do. You would move heaven and earth to get something done, and if you knew there were large numbers of empty places which could be used you would protest against it by every means within your power, and so would I. That is what we have done... I, with thousands of other Londoners, want to see something better for our people, and what we claim for ourselves we feel it our duty to find for anyone else." From Ted Bramley's obituary, by Margot Heinemann, 1991 (Ted Bramley played a leading role in the organising of the squatters' movement, when (in 1946) hundreds of families took over empty blocks of luxury flats, demanding that local councils use their powers to requisition all such empty properties. He was tried with four others at the Old Bailey on a catch-all charge of 'conspiracy to incite trespass', where he conducted his own political defence; challenging the crowded court with the above characteristic personal appeal to heart and conscience. The defendants were found guilty, but surprisingly were only bound over instead of the prison sentences they expected; and the requisitioning of homes for the homeless notably increased.)

"(There's) a hidden army which is squatting or living in unsuitable bed and breakfast accomodation. A national inquiry commissioned by charities suggested that there may be 250,000 people aged 17-25 alone in this group." The Guardian

"It was only in the aftermath of Jack Straw's speech in Autumn 1995, urging a crackdown on aggressive beggars, winos and 'squeeze merchants' as part of a New York police style 'Zero Tolerance' campaign, that there was serious cabinet discussion about government policy. Michael Howard, the home secretary, pushed to update the vagrancy laws with what became known in Whitehall as the "sluice 'em down" policy to force beggars off the streets." The Guardian January, 1997

"Since 1979, spending on housing has been more than halved, and fewer houses are being built today in Britain since at any time since the Second world War. Put another way: in 1975 equal amounts were being spent on defence and housing; in 1984 five times as much was spent on military services and on war material. Britain no longer has a national housing programme. While this policy has created more and more homeless people, a phenomenon has emerged. It is the British-Welfare State bank rolling the exploiters of the homeless and the unemployed to the extent of more than £120 million a year. This windfall now enriches owners of so-called hotels and hostels, most of them squalid, where victims of the recession are sent by local authorities and by the Department of Health and Social Security. These are the workhouses of the late twentieth century." From "Heroes", John Pilger

"Shelter announced their 'NATIONAL HOMELESSNESS WEEK' in Febuary '96. They asked the public to 'wear a badge or send a postcard to aid the homeless'. JUSTICE? in Brighton responded with their own self-help campaign against homelessness; they opened a squatted Estate Agency. Its window displayed empty properties complete with helpful information: "Three bedrooms, nice garden, window open at the back". The Labour Brighton Council rushed an eviction order through the courts, so that an Eviction Notice was served on the building within hours of opening." Paraphrased from Schnews, Brighton



THE GOOD SHIP LIFESTYLE

"Lifestylism" is the practise of wrapping yourself in a blinkered, self-perfecting, idealogically-sound cocoon. The captain of The Good Ship Lifestyle rarely leaves his bedroom. He makes pronouncements on how other people should live but doesn't keep his own rules. His idea of politics is not to Fight The Power but to fight the imagined enemies on his own side...

"Nothing like the cocoon of unreality when your life's fucked." Answer Me! Magazine

"If someone gives me a forum to express myself, I will use it. If that means using 'mainstream' channels to do it, then that's all for the better. If you really believe in what you're doing, then why not? By being too cool to publicly talk about these things, we only perpetuate the silence that already exists." Outpunk (taken from Zines, RE SEARCH)

Stalin, Kruschev and Brezhnev are travelling on a train. The train breaks down. 'Fix it!', orders Stalin. They repair it but still the train doesn't move. 'Shoot everyone!' orders Stalin. They shoot everyone but still the train doesn't budge. Stalin dies. 'Rehabilitate everyone!' orders Kruschev. They are rehabilitated, but still the train won't go. Kruschev is removed. 'Close the curtains,' orders Brezhnev, 'and pretend we're moving!' Anon

"Most plans for creating a more just society focus on ameliorating human misery. They address unemployment, hunger, illiteracy, class-based inequity, unequal access to medical care, pollution, overpopulation and discrimination based on sex, race, age, or membership in other devalued groups. While I care about all of those problems, I also wonder why so many of the proposed solutions make me shudder with dread. Perhaps it's because people who take on such enormous political chores are usually suffering from burnout. There's no room in their brave new worlds for fun, creativity, ornamentation, play and desire. I am sceptical of utopian schemes that don't take into account the human need for adventure, risk, competition, self-display, pleasurable stimulation, and novelty. In fact, many theoretical utopias are dreamed up by people who are afraid of diversity and deeply conservative about sex. ... The first duty of a revolutionary may be, as Abbie Hoffman said, to survive. But it's pretty difficult to survive without the nurturance of an all-consuming fantasy about where you are headed and what all this hard work is for." Pat Califia from 'Public Sex - The Culture of Radical Sex'