Mutual Aid Quotes

• Solidarity is not an act of charity, but mutual aid between forces fighting for the same objective.

  Samora Machel

  Fighting, Charity, Ethics

  Samora Machel (1981). “Mozambique: Sowing the Seeds of Revolution”

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• By mutual confidence and mutual aid - great deeds are done, and great discoveries made

  Homer

  Discovery, Done, Deeds

  Homer (1809). “The Iliad of Homer”

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• Man is appealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at best tribal, but by his perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can re-trace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support- not mutual struggle- has had the leading part.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Struggle, Men, Mutual Support

  Peter Kropotkin (2012). “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”, p.247, Courier Corporation

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• Mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle.

  Bill Vaughan

  Struggle, Animal, Law

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• Physical separateness can never be overcome by electronics, but only by 'conviviality,' by 'living together' in the most literal physical sense. The physically divided are also the conquered and the controlled. 'True desires' - erotic, gustatory, olfactory, musical, aesthetic, psychic, & spiritual - are best attained in a context of freedom of self and other in physical proximity & mutual aid. Everything else is at best a sort of representation.

  Hakim Bey

  Spiritual, Self, Psychics

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• The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Past, Men, Race

  Peter Kropotkin (2016). “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”, p.342, Peter Kropotkin

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• People are actually very good at being communists in the sense that they instantly abandon capitalism, that they love these relationships of mutual aid, because the astonishing thing about disasters is that people are often weirdly joyous in them, because they've recovered a sense of agency, a sense of power, etc.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Agency, People, Etc

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Struggle, Animal, Law

  "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution". "The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest". Book by Upton Sinclair, 1915.

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• No society of nations, no people within a nation, no family can benefit through mutual aid unless good will exceeds ill will; unless the spirit of cooperation surpasses antagonism; unless we all see and act as though the other man's welfare determines our own welfare.

  Henry Ford II

  Men, Ill Will, People

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• Men invented money Women invented mutual aid

  David Mitchell

  Men, Aids, Mutual

  David Mitchell (2012). “Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel”, p.143, Random House Group

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• the tormented world cries out for internationhood, for co-existence in a harmony of diversity and mutual aid, for an end to self-segregation along secondary or superficial or downright imbecilic lines.

  Clara Fraser

  Self, Diversity, World

  Clara Fraser (1998). “Revolution, She Wrote”, p.138, Red Letter Press

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• Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principle moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Names, Interesting, Political

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• Adam Smith actually took all his best ideas and lines from sources from medieval Persia. But one thing he doesn't take is the underlying assumption they have that the basis of a market is mutual aid.

  David Graeber

  Ideas, Lines, Assumption

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• What is a great man who has made his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, he is a man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has seen the moral issue involved; he is a man who has refused to have his sense of justice distorted; he has listened to his conscience until conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded men, so that they gather about him, and together, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, they make a new period in history.

  Jane Addams

  Men, Thinking, Issues

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• Our civilization is facing a radical, imminent mass change. The alternative to the hierarchical power structure is based on mutual aid and group consensus. As hackers we can learn these systems, manipulate these systems, and shut down these systems if we need to.

  Jeremy Hammond

  Civilization, Groups, Needs

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• The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

  Noam Chomsky

  Space, People, Community

  "Talking With Chomsky". Interview with Laura Flanders, www.counterpunch.org. April 30, 2012.

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• Peter Kropotkin was surely on the left. He was one of the founders of what is now called 'sociobiology' or 'evolutionary psychology' with his book Mutual Aid, arguing that human nature had evolved in ways conducive to the communitarian anarchism that he espoused.

  Noam Chomsky

  Book, Psychology, Way

  Source: libcom.org

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• Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man's supremacy over lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man. They had also brought out the truth that man eats not for enjoyment but to live.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Men, Animal

  Mahatma Gandhi (1948). “Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth”, p.50, Courier Corporation

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