Anarchist Quotes

The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.
- Peter Kropotkin

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.
- Oscar Wilde

Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.

Emma Goldman

The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.
- Octave Mirbeau

We no longer like to think about bureaucracy, yet it informs every aspect of out existence. It's as if as a planetary civilization, we have decided to clap out hands over our ears and start humming whenever the topic comes up.
- David Graeber

Anarchy is the obliteration of property.
- Ravachol

The anti-sexualism of authoritarian societies and the people who run them does not spring from conviction (they themselves have sex), but from the vague perception that freedom here might lead to a liking for freedom elsewhere.

Alex Comfort

It is often said that anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us.
- Peter Kropotkin

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

Emma Goldman

Women make natural anarchists and revolutionaries because they've always been second-class citizens, kinda having had to claw their way up.

Kim Gordon

People get accustomed to the established order of things and tremble at the idea of change. It is this lethargic spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit

Bhagat Singh

The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.
- August Spies

Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.

Lucy Parsons

There are no hierarchies in nature other than those imposed by hierarchical modes of human thought, but rather differences merely in function between and within living things.

Murray Bookchin

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
- Oscar Wilde

Where classical anarchism is mostly focused on analyzing power relations between people, the economy, and the state, queer theory understands people in relation to the norm and deviant, creating infinite possibilities for resistance.

Susan Song

Anarchy is synonymous with Socialism. Because both signify the abolition of exploitation and of the domination of man over man, whether maintained by the force of arms or by the monopolization of the means of life.

Errico Malatesta

Anarchism's lone objective is to reach a point at which the belligerence of some humans against humanity, in whatever form, comes to a halt.

Gustav Landauer

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.
- Emma Goldman

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.

Edward Abbey

This brings us to anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the state should be abolished.
- Benjamin Tucker

The Bolshevik practice of the last ten years shows clearly the counter-revolutionary role of their dictatorship of the Party.
- Peter Arshinov

We are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.

Lucy Parsons

Anarchism... teaches the possibility of a society in which the needs of life may be fully supplied for all, and in which the opportunities for complete development of mind and body shall be the heritage of all.
- Voltairine de Cleyre

The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans.
- Bob Black

The anarchists, on behalf of the proletariat, therefore consider it necessary to show the proletariat that it will have to win a gigantic battle before it realizes its goals.

Johann Most

Go ahead, vote! Have faith in your delegates, believe in those you have voted for. But if you voted, don't complain.
- Albert Libertad

Those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest.
- Peter Kropotkin

Socialism greatly needs Anarchism as a critic and to keep it from sacrificing the individual and his originality to the domination of the mass.

John William Lloyd

Was traditional anarchism, idealistic and prone to splits, not destined to fail as soon as it found itself confronted by an implacable social struggle, for which it was not in the least way prepared?
- Daniel Guerin