Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.
The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.
Idealists foolish enough to throw caution to the winds have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.
One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; the extreme thing is generally the true thing.
Crime is naught but misdirected energy.
When we can’t dream any longer we die.
Direct action is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.
Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.
Free love? as if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love.
The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn, and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal, outside of the law.
Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination.
Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in.
They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.
It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency.
In the face of this approaching disaster, it behooves men and women not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them.
We shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next door neighbors should hear that freeborn citizens dare not speak in the open.
Sure, nothing succeeds like success. Fact is, dearest, we are fools. We cling to an ideal no one wants or cares about. I am the greater fool of the two of us. I go on eating out my heart and poisoning every moment of my life in the attempt to rouse people’s sensibilities. At least if I could do it with closed eyes. The irony is I see the futility of my efforts and yet I can’t let go.
Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature’s forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life’s essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.
A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and robbery.
Whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world.