326 Quotes About Anarchism

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.

Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Every society has the criminals it deserves.

I love men too — not merely individuals, but every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes me happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no “commandment of love.” I have a fellow-feeling with every feeling being, and their torment torments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill them, not torture them.

Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

Terrorism is the use of violence or intimidation in the pursuit of a political aim. The highest political aim is the creation and enforcement of law. Cops use violence and intimidation to enforce law. Therefore, all cops are, by definition, terrorists.

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.