Anarchist Quotes - Page 8

• Living more lives than one, knowing people of all classes, all shades of opinion, monarchists, republicans, socialists, anarchists, has had a salutary effect on my mind. If every year of my life, every month of the year, I had lived with reformers and crusaders I should be, by this time, a fanatic. As it is I have had such varied things to do, I have had so many different contacts that I am not even very much of a crank.

  Rheta Childe Dorr

  Years, Class, Knowing

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• The communists basically acted as the police force of the security system of the [Spain] Republic and were very much opposed to the anarchists, partially because [Joseph] Stalin still hoped at that time to have some kind of pact with Western countries against [Adolf] Hitler. That, of course, failed and Stalin withdrew the support to the Republic. They even withdrew the Spanish gold reserves.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Security Systems, Support

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• The communists were mainly responsible for the destruction of the Spanish anarchists. Not just in Catalonia - the communist armies mainly destroyed the collectives elsewhere.

  Noam Chomsky

  Army, Communist, Responsible

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• Those who refuse to support and defend the state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be considered "murder" in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be "Using deadly weapons within city limits," or "Creating a traffic hazard," or other misdemeanor.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Peace, War, Cities

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• When anarchists are having a debate, they're having a debate about tactics, 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?' The question isn't 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?', the primary question is how do you build confidence among the masses of people who experience hierarchies, who experience exploitation, who experience oppression.

  Vijay Prashad

  People, Tactics, Hierarchy

  "“Exiles From the Future”: An Interview with Vijay Prashad". Interview with Andrew Stewart, www.counterpunch.org. August 17, 2016.

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• Anarchists have taken over (the GOP).

  Harry Reid

  Taken, Gop

  Harry Reid's remarks on the Senate floor, September 12, 2013.

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• On the one hand, I'm a kind of crazy anarchist-sympathizer with a hippie background, so this sounds pretty good to me. Make something for the love of it! But the reality is so much more complicated.

  Astra Taylor

  Crazy, Hippie, Reality

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I had relatives in New York City who I stayed with. And in those days, the area from Union Square down Fourth Avenue had small bookstores, many of which were run by Spanish immigrants who'd fled after [Francisco] Franco's victory. I spent time in them, and also in the offices of Freie Arbeiter Stimme (Free Worker's Voice) with anarchists. I picked up a lot of material and talked to people, and it became a major influence.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, New York, Squares

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• The crypto currency community hasn't decided whether they want to be anarchist rebels or to replace the establishment.

  Adi Shamir

  Community, Rebel, Want

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• Iceland is capitalist social democratic, rather like the Nordic countries generally. The capital had a mayor who is an anarchist, but the city has been nothing like that. In fact a few years ago it was super-neoliberal, which led to the crash.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Years, Iceland

  Source: thefifthcolumnnews.com

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• Violence, contrary to popular belief, is not part of the anarchist philosophy. It has repeatedly been pointed out by anarchist thinkers that the revolution can neither be won, nor the anarchist society established and maintained, by armed violence.

  Vernon Richards

  Philosophy, Violence, Revolution

  Vernon Richards (1953). “Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, 1936-1939”

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• Above all do not ask that justice be just: It is just, because it is justice. The idea of a just justice could have originated only in the brain of an anarchist.

  Honore de Balzac

  Ideas, Justice, Brain

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• [Camillo] Berneri proposed that the anarchists should link up with the effort of Northern Africa to overthrow the Spanish government, carry out land reform, attract the base of the Moorish army, and see if they could undermine [Francisco] Franco's army through political warfare in Northern Africa combined with guerrilla warfare in Spain. Historians laughed at that, but I don't think they should have. This was the kind of war that might have succeeded in stopping Spanish fascism.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Army, Thinking

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• Anarchists have always gone against the grain, and that's been a place of hope.

  Bell Hooks

  Gone, Grain

  Source: nefac.net

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• Not until he acquires European manners does the American anarchist become the gentleman who assures you that people cannot be mademoral by Act of Parliament (the truth being that it is only by Acts of Parliament that men in large communities can be made moral, even when they want to).

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Law, People

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• Many businessmen fail to understand Python principles--the ultimate absurdity was an offer from America to buy the 'format' of the Python shows, that is, Monty Python without the Pythons--corporate methods do not have the conceptual framework to deal with an anarchist collective, run by intelligent and arrogant comedians who have proved that their method works.

  Robert Hewison

  Friends, Running, Failure

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• A Christian anarchist has no business belonging to such a reactionary organization [the Catholic Church]. I do not believe in original sin, indulgences, the infallibility of the pope, or obedience to any church official if it is against my conscience. I am not interested in earning "merit" or in being saved by priestly incantation.

  Ammon Hennacy

  Christian, Fear, Believe

  Ammon Hennacy (2010). “The Book of Ammon”, p.475, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy's mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state's mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

  Robert Higgs

  Burden Of Proof, Anarchy, Debate

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• It is the cruelest of all ironies that moderns imagine themselves to be (abstractly understood) "individuals," because in actuality moderns are "types," abstracted and self-abstractive victims of a process of stereotyping that afflicts even would-be rebels and anarchists.

  Kenny Smith

  Self, Rebel, Would Be

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• My aim is to be understood by everyone. I reject the 'depth' that people demand nowadays, into which you can never descend without a diving bell crammed with cabbalistic bullshit and intellectual metaphysics. This expressionistic anarchy has got to stop... A day will come when the artist will no longer be this bohemian, puffed-up anarchist but a healthy man working in clarity within a collectivist society.

  George Grosz

  Artist, Men, People

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• In the Spanish people there is a mixture of Gothic, Frankish and Moorish blood. One can speak of the Spaniard as one would speak of a brave anarchist. The Arabian epoch-the Arabs look down on the Turks as they do on dogs-was the most cultured, the most intellectual and in every way best and happiest epoch in Spanish history. It was followed by the period of the persecutions with its unceasing atrocities.

  Adolf Hitler

  Dog, Blood, People

  Adolf Hitler (1953). “Secret conversations, 1941-1944”

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• The problem of values arises only when men try to fit together their need to be social animals with their need to be free men. There is no problem, and there are no values, until men want to do both. If an anarchist wants only freedom, whatever the cost, he will prefer the jungle of man at war with man. And if a tyrant wants only social order, he will create the totalitarian state.

  Jacob Bronowski

  War, Animal, Men

  Jacob Bronowski (1975). “Science and Human Values”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• In a world where inequality of ability is inevitable, anarchists do not sanction any attempt to produce equality by artificial or authoritarian means. The only equality they posit and will strive their utmost to defend is the equality of opportunity. This necessitates the maximum amount of freedom for each individual. This will not necessarily result in equality of incomes or wealth but will result in returns proportionate to service rendered.

  Laurance Labadie

  Mean, Opportunity, Income

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• The least Anararchic person in that conversation is the person saying 'you can't be an anarchist if you believe in god.' Because that's not an argument, it's just a statement. Why would somebody accept that? Because they either bow to your authority or they are afraid of your aggression. That's threatening to be another kind of ruler. Does that make any sense?

  Stefan Molyneux

  Believe, Doe, Bows

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• An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal.

  Emile Faguet

  Liberty

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