29 Quotes by Alexander Berkman

Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.

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.

Think it over and see if it is not the law itself, the government which really creates crime by compelling people to live in conditions that make them bad. See how law and government uphold and protect the biggest crime of all, the mother of all crimes, the capitalistic wage system, and then proceeds to punish the poor criminal.

These days even mere attempts to improve capitalism are often called ‘Socialism,’ while in reality they are only reforms.

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

In an absolutism, the autocrat is visible and tangible. The real despotism of republican institutions is far deeper, more insidious, because it rests on the popular delusion of self-government and independence. That is the subtle source of democratic tyranny, and, as such, it cannot be reached with a bullet.

Any one who tells you that Anarchists don’t believe in organization is talking nonsense. Organization is everything, and everything is organization.

If you can see, hear, feel, and think, you should know that King Dollar rules the United States, and that the workers are robbed and exploited in this country to the heart's content of the masters.If you are not deaf, dumb, and blind, then you know that the American bourgeois democracy and capitalistic civilization are the worst enemies of labor and progress, and that instead of protecting them, you should help to fight to destroy them.

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