quotations about anarchy & anarchism
Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor.... It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.
EMMA GOLDMAN
Anarchism and Other Essays
Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist thought, that stream whose main components are concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State.
DANIEL GUERIN
Anarchism: From Theory to Practice
When the citizenry lose trust and believe that their government [no longer] has their interest at heart, anarchy is unleashed and we mark the beginning of a sorry end.
REGINA ASKIA WILLIAMS
open letter to President Buhari, "Mr. President, where is the change you promised?", Bella Naija, March 7, 2016
Anarchy could never get a man to the moon, but it may the only mode that can allow us to survive on earth.
SHELDON B. KOPP
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients
The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Rant
As a person of color and an anarchist with roots in punk rock, I have become deeply concerned with the lack of diversity within the anarchist movement. As long as we fail to attract significantly diverse participation, thus remaining isolated and politically weakened, and fail to link-up with and support anti-racist struggles, we shouldn't keep our hopes up for any radical social transformation in this country.
OTTO NOMOUS
"Race, Anarchy, and Punk Rock: The impact of cultural boundaries within the anarchist movement", Colours of Resistance
I am an anarchist in my personal life ... but I don't feel we have evolved far enough as a species to make anarchy work in society itself. We still need government to transfer the wealth from those who have too much to those who have too little, to make sure important projects get done, and keep territorial humans from screwing over and killing each other.
JELLO BIAFRA
speech, June 2000
We have only one alternative: either to build a functioning industrial society or see freedom itself disappear in anarchy and tyranny.
PETER DRUCKER
The Future of Industrial Man
So, if anarchists think all politicians are malicious, then by logic, they would want to blow up Washington, right? Wrong. Don't confuse us with those crazed nihilists.
AUBREY SHIRLEY
"Making sense of anarchy: why no government is good government", The Rebel Yell, November 18, 2013
Better the rule of One, whom all obey, than to let clamorous demagogues betray our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
OSCAR WILDE
Libertatis Sacra Fames
Who says anarchy, says negation of government; Who says negation of government, says affirmation of the people; Who says affirmation of the people, says individual liberty; Who says individual liberty, says sovereignty of each; Who says sovereignty of each, says equality; Who says equality, says solidarity or fraternity; Who says fraternity, says social order.
ANSELME BELLEGARRIGUE
Anarchist Manifesto
Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition.
EDMUND BURKE
speech on conciliation with America, 1775
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.
NOAM CHOMSKY
Language and Politics
That anarchy is by nature and sovereignty by convention is a widely received interpretation of Hobbes's theory of the state, where a thick impenetrable wall separates the order of the city from the disorder outside of it. The exit from anarchy is irreversible and the design of the commonwealth requires a consenting individual to obligate oneself to a common power: the movement is typically seen in the ascending direction from political absence to political fullness. Commentators have supposed that the modern problem about political obligation can be traced back to Hobbes's famous formulation of the opposition between nature and sovereignty and the single move from one to the other: he justifies political obligation unequivocally in order to leave no recurrence to anarchy, chaos, rebellion, or civil war. In exiting from barbarism and submitting itself to the law, man's humanity is somehow "acquired" in embarking on the venture of civilization, and, in one influential account, "the transition from the state of nature to civil society ... [occurs] with the conclusion of the social contract."
THEODORE CHRISTOV
Before Anarchy: Hobbes and his Critics in Modern International Thought
Anarchists are committed to treating other people as equals, rather than as either masters or subordinates.
RODERICK LONG
"'Arrow' and anarchophobia", Augusts Free Press, February 10, 2016
There is more than one kind of freedom ... freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale
They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
It follows that the liberal ideal is anarchy, but anarchy is the end of liberal government: therefore, freedom circumscribed by the law is much more freedom than absolute freedom, which is hardly any freedom at all.
NIMROD BAR-AM
In Search of a Simple Introduction to Communication
Anarchy is not a solution, and it certainly is not a recipe for running a county or a country.
SCOTT MCLEOD
"Trump is leading somewhere I just won't go", Smoky Mountain News
It is only those government functions that can be articulated as falling in line with the hypergood that can be brought in line with an anarchist identification. This is necessarily imperfect and temporary, though, because at some point, for anarchy to be achieved, which is understood as a better manifestation of the hypergood, the state will have to be abolished.
EDWARD ANTHONY AVERY-NATALE
Ethics, Politics, and Anarcho-Punk Identifications