27 Quotes by Voltairine de Cleyre

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.

You will never get right until you start right.

No matter: Man always hopes; Life always hopes. When a definite object cannot be outlined, the indomitable spirit of hope still impels the living mass to move toward something – something that shall somehow be better. What.

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.

There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women.

Would you be always young? Then be an Anarchist, and live with the faith of hope, though you be old.

We in America never knew the village commune. White Civilization struck our shores in a broad tide-sheet and swept over the country inclusively; among us was never seen the little commune growing up from a state of barbarism independently, out of primary industries, and maintaining itself within itself. There was no gradual change from the mode of life of the native people to our own; there was a wiping out and a complete transplantation of the latest form of European civilization.

The idea of the little commune, therefore, comes instinctively to the Anarchists of Europe, – particularly the continental ones; with them it is merely the conscious development of a submerged instinct. With Americans it is an importation. I.

Nearly all the laws which were originally framed with the intention of benefiting the workers, have either turned into weapons in their enemies’ hands, or become dead letters, unless the workers through their organizations have directly enforced the observance. So that in the end, it is direct action that has to be relied on anyway.