Anarchists from the United States

"I can't speak or write German, but I'am overjoyed because I have bought one of your pictures. Now it is in me. I write music. You are my teacher."

"Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments. Every film studio has a library of "sound effects" recorded on film. With a film phonograph it is now possible to control the amplitude and frequency of any one of these sounds and to give to it rhythms within or beyond the reach of the imagination. Given four film phonographs, we can compose and perform a quartet for explosive motor, wind, heartbeat, and landslide."

"I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored."

"...WHEREAS, IN THE PAST, THE POINT OF DISAGREEMENT HAS BEEN BETWEEN DISSONANCE AND CONSONANCE, IT WILL BE, IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE, BETWEEN NOISE AND SO-CALLED MUSICAL SOUNDS."

"The composer (organizer of sound) will be faced not only with the entire field of sound but also with the entire field of time. The 'frame' or fraction of a second, following established film technique, will probably be the basic unit in the measurement of time. No rhythm will be beyond the composer's reach."

"I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it."

"We need not destroy the past. It is gone."

"I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love."

"A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection."

"I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment."

"A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself."

"Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music."

"Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?"

"David Tudor and I went to Hilversum in Holland to make a recording for the Dutch radio. We arrived at the studio early and there was some delay. To pass the time, we chatted with the engineer who was to work with us. He asked me what kind of music he was about to record. Since he was a Dutchman I said, 'It may remind you of the work of Mondrian.' When the session was finished and the three of us were leaving the studio, I asked the engineer what he thought of the music we had played. He said, 'It reminded me of the work of Mondrian.'"

"So it was that I gave about 1949 my 'Lecture on Nothing' at the Artists' Club on Eighth Street in New York City (started by Robert Motherwell), which predated the popular one associated with Philip Pavia, Bill de Kooning, et al. ). This 'Lecture on Nothing' was written in the same rhythmic structure I employed at the time in my musical compositions (Sonatas and Interludes, Three Dances, etc.) . One of the structural divisions was the repetition, some fourteen times, of a single page in which occurred the refrain, 'If anyone is sleepy let him go to sleep.' Jeanne Reynal, I remember, stood up part way through, screamed, and then said, while I continued speaking, 'John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute.' She then walked out. Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen."

"At Black Mountain College in 1952, I organized an event that involved the paintings of Bob Rauschenberg, the dancing of Merce Cunningham, films, slides, phonograph records, radios, the poetries of w:Charles Olson and M. C. Richards recited from the tops of ladders, and the pianism of David Tudor, together with my 'Juilliard lecture', which ends: 'A piece of string, a sunset, each acts.' The audience was seated in the center of all this activity. Later that summer, vacationing in New England, I visited America's first synagogue, to discover that the congregation was there seated precisely the way I had arranged the audience at Black Mountain."

"Critics frequently cry 'Dada' after attending one of my concerts or hearing one of my lectures. Others bemoan my interest in w:Zen. One of the liveliest lectures I ever heard was given by Nancy Wilson Ross at the Cornish School in Seattle. It was called Zen Buddhism and Dada. It is possible to make a connection between the two, but neither Dada nor Zen is a fixed tangible. They change; and in quite different ways in different places and times, they invigorate action. What was Dada in the 1920's is now, with the exception of the work of Marcel Duchamp, just art. What I do, I do not wish blamed on Zen, though without my engagement with Zen.. .I doubt whether I would have done what I have done. . .I often point out that Dada nowadays has in it a space, an emptiness, that it formerly lacked. What nowadays, America mid-twentieth century, is Zen?"

"I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, 'You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.' I said, 'Well then, I'll beat my head against that wall.' I quite literally began hitting things, and developed a music of percussion that involved noises."

"There is one term of the problem which you are not taking into account: precisely, the world. The real. You say: the real, the world as it is. But it is not, it becomes! It moves, it changes! It doesn’t wait for us to change.. .It is more mobile than you can imagine. You are getting closer to this reality when you say as it 'presents itself'; that means that it is not there, existing as an object. The world, the real is not an object. It is a process."

"Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens."

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."

"Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness."

"As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency."

"When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic — here on Sixth Avenue, for instance — I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound.. .I don't need sound to talk to me."

"They say, 'you mean it's just sounds?' thinking that for something to just be a sound is to be useless, whereas I love sounds just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are. I don't want them to be psychological. I don't want a sound to pretend that it's a bucket or that it's president or that it's in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound."

"What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before."

"I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, 'You have to invent it.' When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons, and events that have influenced my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me."

"We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is."

"John Cage ...once told me, ‘When you start working everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave."

"I'm especially interested in the music of John Cage.. ..I would like to do some experimenting with the relationship between his freeform sound and [my] free-form art."

"The rise of music that is totally without social commitment also increases the separation between composer and public, and represents still another form of departure from tradition. The cynicism with which this particular departure seems to have been made is perfectly symbolized in John Cage's account of a public lecture he had given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famous silent piece [i.e. 4′33″], or his Landscapes for a dozen radio receivers may be of little interest as music, they are of enormous importance historically as representing the complete abdication of the artist's power."

"Object in/ and space – the first impulse may be to give the object – a position – to place the object. (The object had a position to begin with.) Next – to change the position of the object. – Rauschenberg's early sculptures – A board with some rocks on it. The rocks can be anywhere on the board. - Cage's Japanese rock garden – The rocks can be anywhere [within the garden].."

"Once, I made a kind of sculpture of a flag in bronze: it was an edition of three, I think. One of them was given on some occasion to President Kennedy. I became very upset that this was happening. It was given on Flag Day! (he laughs). It seemed to me to be such a terrible thing to happen. I complained bitterly to my very good friend John Cage. He said: "Don't let it worry you. Just consider it as a pun on your work". (he laughs)."

"I met Cummingham around 1953 after a performance I saw. He was teaching and making dances for his company and was already working with John Cage. What interested me initially wasn't just the movement but also the music he worked with, which was unfamiliar to me.. .Later Bob Rauschenberg had been doing sets and costumes for the Cunningham Company.. .I can't say exactly how, but for a period of time, Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg, and I saw each other frequently and exchanged ideas. John [Cage] was very interested in presenting his ideas to other people, so it was impossible to be around and not to learn.. .He could apply his ideas on space and time to painting, or music or architecture.. ..I don't have a clear sense of cause and effect in my painting, but it is probably there."

"Cage's Music of Changes was a further indication that the arts in general were beginning to consciously deal with the 'given' material and, to varying degrees, liberating them from the inherited, functional concepts of control."

"John Cage and I became interested in the use of chance in the 50's. I think one of the very primary things that happened then was the publication of the I Ching, the Chinese book of changes, from which you can cast your fortune: the hexagrams."

"Cage took it to work in his way of making compositions then; and he used the idea of 64 — the number of the hexagrams — to say that you had 64, for example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to find which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which sound came second, cast again, so that it's done by, in that sense, chance operations. Instead of finding out what you think should follow — say a particular sound — what did the I Ching suggest? Well, I took this also for dance."

"I'm just back from Halberstadt (a 20+ hour journey), having attended the ceremonious 13th note change in the hyperdurational sounding of John Cage's Organ2/ASLSP. This is the last note change to occur for seven long years, so it was particularly well attended. The image above is my vantage point -- being among the last to enter the church, I was really only able to watch the proceedings via the many cell phones held above the heads of hundreds of compatriots. (The presence of so much technology in so hallowed a space is, well, jarring.)"

"I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather."

"But now I see I was not plucked for naught, And after in life's vase Of glass set while I might survive, But by a kind hand brought Alive To a strange place."

"Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth."

"Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye."

"The life that I aspire to live No man proposeth me— No trade upon the street Wears its emblazonry."

"My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read, 'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe."

"Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, If juster battles are enacted now Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?"

"When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?"

"Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?"

"The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free."

"The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning."

"I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite — only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it — for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment."

"It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?"

"Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, — returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short."

"Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!"

"You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing."

"A gun gives you the body, not the bird."

"Free in this world as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who have practiced the Yoga gather in Brahmin the certain fruit of their works. Depend upon it; rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. This Yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he heard wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him and he goes, he acts as animating original matter. To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a Yogi."

"Truth, Goodness, Beauty — those celestial thrins, Continually are born; e'en now the Universe, With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles, Its joy confesses at their recent birth."

"Sphere Music — Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music — pure, unmixed music — in which no wail mingles."

"That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess."

"Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such? Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow. This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect. I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible. Such community to be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain."

"Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought."

"Aeschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense. He adverts with chaste severity to all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sincerity and simpleness, naked wonder which mythology had not helped to explain... Whatever the common eye sees at all and expresses as best it may, he sees uncommonly and describes with rare completeness. The multitude that thronged the theatre could no doubt go along with him to the end... The social condition of genius is the same in all ages. Aeschylus was undoubtedly alone and without sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery of the universe."

"On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world."

"An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."

"Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been written. Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. this may be a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed."

"Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul."

"We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes."

"The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison."

"It is a great art to saunter."

"A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter."

"I cannot read a sentence in the book of the Hindoos without being elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and seems as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mounts. Even at this late hour, unworn by time with a native and inherent dignity it wears the English dress as indifferently as the Sanscrit."

"We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn."

"One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been."

"And the cost of a thing it will be remembered as the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it."

"For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it."

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."

"Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve."

"What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through purer stratum. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some far stratum in the sky."

"And now, at half-past ten o'clock, I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day."

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

"Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself."

"The bluebird carries the sky on his back."

"The perception of beauty is a moral test."

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them."

"Every poet has trembled on the verge of science."

"Fire is the most tolerable third party."

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."

"Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand."

"The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth...these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor."

"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."

"This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature."

"It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves."

"If you are describing any occurrence... make two or more distinct reports at different times... We discriminate at first only a few features, and we need to reconsider our experience from many points of view and in various moods in order to perceive the whole."

"The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one."

"You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap."

"The savage in man is never quite eradicated."

"Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it."

"If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible."

"The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment."

"I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

"To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice."

"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."

"When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army."

"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote."

"He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist."

"Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?"

"I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad."

"Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one."

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor."

"I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it. Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, ‘Your money or your life,’ why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man."

"I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject."

"They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head."

"No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day."

"For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?"

"A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies."

"The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual."

"The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich."

"If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn."

"Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."

"Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to future as silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts."

"To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology to-day without the aid of posterity"

"The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere."

"As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day"

"You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be."

"I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks."

"The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine."

"It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God. If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken."

"There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes."

"I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too."

"The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer."

"Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? ... Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad."

"Some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature."

"The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. — I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon which has been preached from this text; almost all other sermons that I have heard, or heard of, have been but poor imitations of this. — It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians."

"It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals."

"It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth."

"It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God. ... In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for the most part offensive to the nostrils. ... There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion."

"The vessel, though her masts be firm, Beneath her copper bears a worm."

"Far from New England's blustering shore, New England's worm her hulk shall bore, And sink her in the Indian seas, Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas."

"Most books belong to the house and streets only, and in the fields their leaves feel very thin."

"While we are reading these sentences, this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca. Tried by a New England eye, or the mere practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already in its dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a place and significance as long as there is a sky to test them by."

"It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green."

"The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time."

"It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear."

"Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard."

"This world is but canvas to our imaginations."

"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters."

"Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us."

"The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it."

"A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view."

"Poetry is the mysticism of mankind."

"A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured."

"If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things."

"The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God."

"As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere."

"What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?"

"It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands."

"The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind."

"My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

"Men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life."

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at."

"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life."

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever.""

"Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."

"Simplify, simplify."

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness."

"A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

"Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul."

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

"None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty."

"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will... The really diligent student... is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome."

"I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do."

"He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man."

"The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army — is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice."

"I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came? — till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man."

"It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others."

"I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me."

"I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them."

"I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character — his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light."

"In wildness is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The city imports it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind."

"Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him."

"Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open."

"There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented."

"My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before — a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy."

"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool."

"I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere, — for I have had a little experience in that business, — that there is a desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country, — and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent."

"I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives."

"I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business."

"If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!"

"Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now."

"The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself."

"Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man."

"As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct."

"Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."

"The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed."

"Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage."

"I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving."

"Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the charity of friends, or a government-pension, — provided you continue to breathe, — by whatever fine synonymes you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse."

"In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up."

"The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? — if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?"

"The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society!"

"I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom."

"Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful."

"Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: — "He soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the nugget."

"It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men."

"In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it."

"You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all the world."

"I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, — that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things."

"In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about."

"To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten."

"While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other."

"When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office."

"I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day."

"We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, — considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition."

"We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up."

"Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, — the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, — to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, — an hypæthral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect."

"It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality."

"Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate, whether we had better know them, — had better let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no culture, no refinement, — but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil? — to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?"

"Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free."

"With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan, — mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards, — because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth, — because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end."

"The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence."

"Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down."

"What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much."

"Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called."

"Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves, — sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely."

"Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?"

"The South may keep her pine-apples, and we will be content with our strawberries, which are, as it were, pine-apples with "going a-strawberrying" stirred into them, infinitely enhancing their flavor."

"A man fits out a ship at a great expense and sends it to the West Indies with a crew of men and boys, and after six months or a year, it comes back with a load of pine-apples; now, if no more gets accomplished than the speculator commonly aims at, if it simply turns out what is called a successful venture, I am less interested in this expedition than in some child’s first excursions a-huckleberrying, in which it is introduced into a new world, experiences a new development, though it brings home only a gill of berries in its basket."

"When the husk gets separated from the kernel, almost all men run after the husk and pay their respects to that. It is only the husk of Christianity that is so bruited and wide spread in this world; the kernel is still the very least and rarest of all things. There is not a single church founded on it."

"The heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high."

"Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art."

"We are not that we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for that we are capable of being."

"The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather."

"We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble with prepared minds, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward, which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upwards to the light."

"Enthusiasm is supernatural serenity."

"The language of excitement is at best but picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles."

"Even the best things are not equal to their fame."

"What is commonly called friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues."

"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes."

"The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it is durable, it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain be."

"Love is a severe critic. Hate can pardon more than love."

"It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains."

"There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages."

"Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion; as if the short spring days were an eternity."

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."

"The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect."

"Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men."

"If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see."

"Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys."

"There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect."

"Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction."

"It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The hero will then know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with him who waiteth wisely."

"My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean's edge as I can go."

"Whate'er we leave to God, God does And blesses us."

"I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light."

"She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart."

"Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climes and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I am at it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night."

"I would say to the readers of the Scriptures, if they wish for a good book, read the Bhagavad-Gita...translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves to be read with reverence even by yankees...Besides the Bhagvat-Geeta, our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green...Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light it is destined to derive thence."

"The Vedas contain a sensible account of God." "The veneration in which the Vedas are held is itself a remarkable feat. Their code embraced the whole moral life of the Hindus and in such a case there is no other truth than sincerity. Truth is such by reference to the heart of man within, not to any standard without."

"The Hindoos are most serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer, more independent and impersonal knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him. The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindoo philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable."

"In the Hindoo scripture the idea of man is quite illimitable and sublime. There is nowhere a loftier conception of his destiny. He is at length lost in Brahma himself 'the divine male.' ... there is no grandeur conception of creation anywhere .... The very indistinctness of its theogeny implies a sublime truth."

"The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a bigger, purer or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita's sanity and sublimity have impressed the minds of even soldiers and merchants."

"The religion and philosophy of the Hebrews are those of a wilder and ruder tribe, wanting the civility and intellectual refinements and subtlety of Vedic culture."

"The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and, united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating original matter. To some extent, and at rare intervals even I am a yogi."

"One may discover the root of a Hindoo religion in his own private history, when, in the silent intervals of the day or night, he does sometimes inflict on himself like austerities with a stern satisfaction."

"'Instead of noble men, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, round a little there and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us'"

"What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen."

"Truths and roses have thorns about them."

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."

"Wealth is the ability to fully experience life."

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

"Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder."

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."

"The tradition of John Burroughs, which you seek to keep alive through these awards, is a long and honorable one. It is a tradition that had its beginnings in even earlier writings. On the other side of the Atlantic it flowered most fully in the works of Richard Jefferies and W. H. Hudson; and in this country the pen of Thoreau - as that of John Burroughs himself-most truly represented the contemplative observer of the world about us. These four, I think, were the great masters. To those of us who have come later, there can scarcely be any greater honor than to be compared to one of them. Yet if we are true to the spirit of John Burroughs, or of Jefferies or Hudson or Thoreau, we are not imitators of them but-as they themselves were - we are pioneers in new areas of thought and knowledge. If we are true to them, we are the creators of a new type of literature as representative of our own day as was their own."

"Thoreau believed that one of the arts of life was to make the most of it. He loved the multum in parvo, or pot-luck; to boil up the little into the big. Thus, he was in the habit of saying, — Give me healthy senses, let me be thoroughly alive, and breathe freely in the very flood-tide of the living world. But this should have availed him little, if he had not been at the same time copiously endowed with the power of recording what he imbibed. His senses truly lived twice."

"His words also were as distinct and true to the ear as those of a great singer, and he had Tennyson's splendid gift in this, that he never went back on his tracks to pick up the fallen loops of a sentence as commonplace talkers do. He would hesitate for an instant now and then, waiting for the right word, or would pause with a pathetic patience to master the trouble in his chest, but when he was through the sentence was perfect and entire, lacking nothing, and the word was so purely one with the man that when I read his books now and then I do not hear my own voice within my reading but the voice I heard that day."

"For Thoreau, the fact that it took him a day to walk or ride into Boston was a benefit—part of living deliberately. But his was the point of view of a rich guy, or at least of a guy without a family to care for, and for whom Ralph Waldo Emerson's second wife, Lidian Jackson, was willing to bake pies."

"Most of the books published during the five-year period leading up to, during, and after the invasion of Mexico were war-mongering tracts. Euro-American settlers were nearly all literate, and this was the period of the foundational "American literature," with writers James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville all active-each of whom remains read, revered, and studied in the twenty-first century, as national and nationalist writers, not as colonialists. Although some of the writers, like Melville and Longfellow, paid little attention to the war, most of the others either fiercely supported it or opposed it...Opposition to the Mexican War came from writers who were active abolitionists such as Thoreau, Whittier, and Lowell. They believed the war was a plot of southern slave owners to extend slavery, punishing Mexico for having outlawed slavery when it became independent from Spain."

"He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself. In his travels, he used the railroad only to get over so much country as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers' and fishermen's houses, as cheaper, and more agreeable to him, and because there he could better find the men and the information he wanted. There was somewhat military in his nature not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise."

"Idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of government, it is needless to say he found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost equally opposed to every class of reformers."

"Before the first friendly word had been spoken for Captain John Brown, he sent notices to most houses in Concord, that he would speak in a public ball on the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited all people to come. The Republican Committee, the Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was premature and not advisable. He replied,—"I did not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak.""

"I think his fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord did not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other longitudes or latitudes, but was rather a playful expression of his conviction of the indifferency of all places, and that the best place for each is where he stands. He expressed it once in this wise: — "I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world.""

"Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion, a person incapable of any profanation, by act or by thought. Of course, the same isolation which belonged to his original thinking and living detached him from the social religious forms. This is neither to be censured nor regretted. Aristotle long ago explained it, when he said, "One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself." Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify the convictions of prophets in the ethical laws by his holy living. It was an affirmative experience which refused to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, capable of the most deep and strict conversation; a physician to the wounds of any soul; a friend, knowing not only the secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by those few persons who resorted to him as their confessor and prophet, and knew the deep value of his mind and great heart. He thought that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished: and he thought that the bigoted sectarian had better bear this in mind."

"In reading Henry Thoreau's Journal, I am very sensible of the vigor of his constitution. That oaken strength which I noted whenever he walked or worked or surveyed wood lots, the same unhesitating hand with which a field-laborer accosts a piece of work which I should shun as a waste of strength, Henry shows in his literary task. He has muscle, & ventures on & performs tasks which I am forced to decline. In reading him, I find the same thoughts, the same spirit that is in me, but he takes a step beyond, & illustrates by excellent images that which I should have conveyed in a sleepy generality. 'Tis as if I went into a gymnasium, & saw youths leap, climb, & swing with a force unapproachable, — though their feats are only continuations of my initial grapplings & jumps."

"Henry Thoreau is like the woodgod who solicits the wandering poet & draws him into antres [sic] vast & desarts [sic] idle, & bereaves him of his memory. & leaves him naked, plaiting vines & with twigs in his hand. Very seductive are the first steps from the town to the woods, but the End is want and madness."

"Thoreau wants a little ambition in his mixture. Fault of this, instead of being the head of American Engineers, he is captain of a huckleberry party."

"...Thoreau gives me in flesh & blood & pertinacious Saxon belief, my own ethics. He is far more real, & daily practicing obeying them, than I; and fortifies my memory at all times with an affirmative experience which refuses to be set aside."

"It is curious that Thoreau goes to a house to say with little preface what he has just read or observed, delivers it in lump, is quite inattentive to any comment or thought which any of the company offer on the matter, nay, is merely interrupted by it, &, when he has finished his report, departs with precipitation."

"Henry avoids all commonplace, & talks birch bark to all comers, & reduces them all to the same insignificance."

"The whole world has given heroic figures to humanity, who in the face of persecution and obloquy have lived and fought for their right and the right of mankind to free and unstinted expression. America has the distinction of having contributed a large quota of native-born children who have most assuredly not lagged behind. Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Voltairine de Cleyre...Moses Harman...Horace Traubel...and quite an array of other brave souls have expressed themselves in keeping with their vision of a new social order based on freedom from every form of coercion. True, the price they had to pay was high. They were deprived of most of the comforts society offers to ability and talent, but denies when they will not be subservient. But whatever the price, their lives were enriched beyond the common lot."

"Numerous American heroes-such as Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and Henry David Thoreau-led rebellious acts to reconcile the government's actions with the country's promise of liberty for all its citizens."

"Truly, Nature absorbed his attention, but I don't think he cared much for what is called the beauties of nature; it was her way of working, her mystery, her economy in extravagance; he delighted to trace her footsteps toward their source .... He liked to feel that the pursuit was endless, with mystery at both ends of it ...."

"He is a singular character — a young man with much of wild original nature still remaining in him; and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a way and method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty. He was educated, I believe, at Cambridge, and formerly kept school in this town; but for two or three years back, he has repudiated all regular modes of getting a living, and seems inclined to lead a sort of Indian life among civilized men — an Indian life, I mean, as respects the absence of any systematic effort for a livelihood. ... Mr. Thoreau is a keen and delicate observer of nature — a genuine observer — which, I suspect, is almost as rare a character as even an original poet; and Nature, in return for his love, seems to adopt him as her especial child, and shows him secrets which few others are allowed to witness."

"I had started reading Marx and Lenin, but at that point I think Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau had more effect on me. What I responded to in my readings were emotional rather than theoretical questions. I was developing a hatred of the brutality of the existing economic system, a hatred of the impersonal degradation of human beings. That's what moved me as a teenager, and stayed with me."

"A line from Walden hangs over one of my desks: "I love a broad margin to my life.""

"Among American writers Thoreau was the pioneer of nature-study. Audubon had preceded him but he worked mainly with the brush; to multitudes Thoreau opened the gate to the secrets of our natural environment. The subtle delicacy of the grass-blade, the crystals of the snowflake, the icicle, the marvel of the weird lines traced by the flocks of wild geese athwart the heavens as they migrated, these he watched and recorded with loving accuracy and sensitive poetic feeling as no one in our land before had done. I have thrown a stone upon the cairn at Walden Pond which has now grown so high through the tributes of his grateful admirers. I shall throw still others in grateful admiration if the opportunity comes to me."

"behind them (The Masses staff) still throbbed the tradition of nineteenth-century American radicalism, the un-ambiguous nay-saying of Thoreau and the Abolitionists. This tradition implied that the individual person was still able to square off against the authority of the state; it signified a stance-one could not quite speak of it as a politics-of individual defiance and rectitude, little concerned because little involved with the complexities of society. The radicalism of nineteenth-century New England had been a radicalism of individual declaration far more than of collective action; and while Max Eastman and his friends were indeed connected with a movement, the Socialist party of Debs, in essential spirit they were intellectual freebooters, more concerned with speaking out than speaking to. They swore by Marx, but behind them could still be heard the voices of Thoreau and Wendell Phillips-and it was a good thing."

"I don't know Thoreau very well. You have to be a New Englander to really read Thoreau."

"When I went to Morehouse as a freshman in 1944, my concern for racial and economic justice was already substantial. During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience" for the first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice."

"As I thought further, I came to see that what we were really doing was withdrawing our cooperation from an evil system, rather than merely withdrawing our support from the bus company. The bus company, being an external expression of the system, would naturally suffer, but the basic aim was to refuse to cooperate with evil. At this point I began to think about Thoreau's "Essay on Civil Disobedience." I became convinced that what we were preparing to do in Montgomery was related to what Thoreau had expressed. We were simply saying to the white community, "We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system." From this moment on I conceived of our movement as an act of massive noncooperation. From then on I rarely used the word "boycott.""

"Thoreau was an American philosopher who, among other things too complex to be explained in a newspaper column, wrote much that could help us live our lives in a more intelligent, more effective, more enjoyable, less anxious way...He wanted us to do what we want to we want to do now...he said this powerful thing that fills us with courage: "Why not let the torrent in, why not open the floodgates and all our gears in motion?" I only have to think about following his advice to feel vitality coursing through my veins. Now, my friends, is happening at this very moment."

"Most major religions and spiritual philosophies going back thousands of years have warned their adherents not to give too much power to wealth. Their wisdom and traditions teach that the obsessive drive for gold, money, and profit is a formidable deviation from other more important spiritual practices that strive to center community on non-market values such as love, generosity, kindness, cooperation, and non-violence. In our own country, American Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau made this point throughout his writings, especially in "Life Without Principle" where he says "the world is a place of business" and that "the ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward." Thoreau saw where the nation was and where it was going."

"Suppose Jonathan Edwards had been born a woman; suppose William James, for that matter, had been born a woman? (The invalid seclusion of his sister Alice is suggestive.) Even from men, New England took its psychic toll; many of its geniuses seemed peculiar in one way or another, particularly along the lines of social intercourse...Thoreau insisted on the values both of solitude and of geographical restriction, boasting that "I have traveled much in Concord." Emily Dickinson-viewed by her bemused contemporary Thomas Higginson as "partially cracked," by the twentieth century as fey or pathological-has increasingly struck me as a practical woman, exercising her gift as she had to, making choices."

"Thoreau's thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, even in a bad woodcut, conveys some hint of the limitations of his mind and character. With his almost acid sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity in act, there went none of that large, unconscious geniality of the world's heroes. He was not easy, not ample, not urbane, not even kind; his enjoyment was hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to be convincing; he had no waste lands nor kitchen-midden in his nature, but was all improved and sharpened to a point. "He was bred to no profession," says Emerson; "he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. When asked at dinner what dish he preferred, he answered, 'the nearest.'" So many negative superiorities begin to smack a little of the prig. From his later works he was in the habit of cutting out the humorous passages, under the impression that they were beneath the dignity of his moral muse; and there we see the prig stand public and confessed."

"A man who must separate himself from his neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in much the same case with one who requires to take opium for the same purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the world, do a man's work, and still preserve his first and pure enjoyment of existence."

"...every idea I've had is there. I needn't have bothered thinking."

"He sounds, as it were, the fatal bottom of our organic existence, and yet claims not merely to accept the universe, as another Transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller, put it, but to rejoice in it. ... To the dark immensity of material Nature's indifference we can oppose only the brief light, like a lamp in a cabin, of our consciousness; the invigorating benison of Walden is to make us feel that the contest is equal, and fair. It has emerged over time as one of the great testaments of American individualism, assuring the New World, traditional reassurances failing, of the value, power, and beauty of the unfettered self."

"Thoreau's disobedience is disobedience as refusal. I won't live in your world. I will live as if your world has ended, as indeed it deserves to end. I will live as if my gesture of refusing your world has destroyed it."

"The history of the world is the history of a privileged few."

"Real awareness comes intermittently, in brief flashes of a second’s duration. The man who can hold it for a minute, relatively speaking, inevitably changes the whole trend of the world. In the span of ten or twenty thousand years a few widely isolated individuals have striven to break the deadlock, shatter the trance, as it were. Their efforts, if we look at the present state of the world superficially, seem to have been ineffectual. And yet the example which their lives afford us points conclusively to one thing, that the real drama of men on earth is concerned with Reality, and not with the creation of civilizations which permit the great mass of men to snore more or less blissfully. A man who wanted to live would not waste even a fraction of a moment in the invention, creation and perpetuation of instruments of death."

"Men are more or less reconciled to the thought of death, but they also know that it is not necessary to kill one another. They know it intermittently, just as they know other things which they conveniently proceed to forget where there is danger of having their sleep disturbed. To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in. But man refuses to stay awake because if he did, he would be obliged to become something other than he now is, and the thought of that is apparently too painful for him to endure. If man were to come to grips with his real nature, if he were to discover his real heritage, he would become so exalted, or else so frightened, that he would find it impossible to go to sleep again. To live would be a perpetual challenge to create. But the very thought of a possible, swift and endless metamorphosis terrifies him. He sleeps now, not comfortably to be sure, but certainly more and more obstinately, in the womb of a creation whose only need of verification is his own awakening."

"Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk."

"She was to me, and still is, the greatest person I have known - one who can truly be called a "devoted" soul. I owe her everything."

"A guy who's always interested in the condition of the world, and changing it, either has no problems of his own, or refuses to face them... not wanting to face things of his own nature."

"This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty ... what you will."

"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive."

"There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books."

"Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death."

"For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens."

"It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris. Paris is simply an artificial stage, a revolving stage that permits the spectator to glimpse all phases of the conflict. Of itself Paris initiates no dramas. They are begun elsewhere. Paris is simply an obstetrical instrument that tears the living embryo from the womb and puts it in the incubator. Paris is the cradle of artificial births. Rocking here in the cradle each one slips back into his soil; one dreams back to Berlin, New York, Chicago, Vienna, Minsk,. Vienna is never more Vienna than Paris. Everything is raised to its apotheosis. The cradle gives up its babes and new ones take their place. You can real here on the walls Zola lived and Balzac and Dante and Strindberg and everybody who ever was anything. Everyone has lived here some time or other. Nobody dies here. . ."

"I am a free man-and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me. Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to anyone, I would've responsible to God alone-if he existed!"

"Sleep, Napoleon! It was not your ideas they wanted, it was your corpse."

"To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?"

"Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood."

"Take a good look at me. Now tell me, do you think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's dead?"

"He saw the humorous aspect of everything, which is the real test of the tragic sense."

"What an astounding thing is the voice! By what miracle is the hot magma of the earth transformed into that which we call speech? If out of clay such an abstract medium as words can be shaped what is to hinder us from leaving our bodies at will and taking up our abode on other planets or between the planets? What is to prevent us from rearranging all life, atomic, molecular, corporeal, stellar, diving? Who or what is powerful enough to eradicate this miraculous leaven which we bear within us like a seed and which, after we have embraced in our mind all the universe, is nothing more than a seed — since to say universe is as easy as to say seed, and we have yet to say greater things, things beyond saying, things limitless and inconceivable, things which no trick of language can encompass."

"To be free, as I then knew myself to be, is to realize that all conquest is vain, even the conquest of self, which is the last act of egotism. To be joyous is to carry the ego to its last summit and to deliver it triumphantly. To know peace is total: it is the moment after, when the surrenderer is complete, when there is no longer even the consciousness of surrender. Peace is at the centre and when it is attainded the voice issues forth in praise and benediction. Then the voice carries far and wide, to the outermost limits of the universe. Then it heals, because it brings light and the warmth of compassion."

"One feels that [in Knossos, c. 1500 B.C.] man […] was religious in the only way which is becoming to man, by making the most of everything that comes to hand, by extracting the utmost of life from every passing minute."

"I'm crazy enough to believe that the happiest man on earth is the man with the fewest needs."

"There ain't no such thing as civilization."

"If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms."

"[T]he aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."

"Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning."

"Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy: I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of it is not my concern."

"The real leader has no need to lead—he is content to point the way."

"It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd."

"All about us we see a world in revolt; but revolt is negative, a mere finishing-off process. In the midst of destruction we carry with us also our creation, our hopes, our strength, our urge to be fulfilled. The climate changes as the wheel turns, and what is true for the sidereal world is true for man. The last two thousand years have brought about a duality in man such as he never experienced before, and yet the man who dominates this whole period was one who stood for wholeness, one who proclaimed the Holy Ghost. No life in the whole history of man has been so misinterpreted, so woefully misunderstood as Christ's. If not a single Man has shown himself capable of following the example of Christ, and doubtless none ever will for we shall no longer have need of Christs, nevertheless this one profound example has altered our climate. Unconsciously we are moving into a new realm of being; what we have brought to perfection, in our zeal to escape the true reality, is a complete arsenal of destruction; when we have rid ourselves of the suicidal mania for a beyond we shall begin the life of here and now which is reality and which is sufficient unto itself. We shall have no need for art or religion because we shall be in ourselves a work of art. This is how I interpret realistically what Gutkind has set forth philosophically; this is the way in which man will overcome his broken state. If my statements are not precisely in accord with the text of Gutkind's thesis, I nevertheless am thoroughly in accord with Gutkind and his view of things. I have felt it my duty not only to set forth his doctrine, but to launch it, and in launching it to augment it, activate it. Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery. I am one man who can truly say that he has understood and acted upon this profound thought of Gutkind's—“the stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything we do.""

"Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement."

"No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance."

"We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests."

"[T]he blind lead the blind, it's the democratic way."

"The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is, different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive."

"A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in...."

"We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world."

"The man who is forever disturbed about the problems of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them."

"Through art then, one finally establishes contact with reality: that is the great discovery. Here all is play and invention; there is no solid foothold from which to launch the projectiles which will pierce the miasma of folly, ignorance and greed. The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another. The power which we long to possess, in order to establish the good, the true and the beautiful, would prove to be, if we could have it, but the means of destroying one another. It is fortunate that we are powerless."

"The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble."

"Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything."

"Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation.[…] The other eight are unimportant."

"In this age, which believes that there is a short-cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way, in the long run, is the easiest."

"A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum—of both books and money! But especially books, for books represent infinitely more than money. A book is not only a friend. It makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold."

"If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without."

"Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. 'Experience! More experience!' I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete."

"My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once."

"I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over."

"Often, when following the trail which meanders over the hills, I pull myself up in an effort to encompass the glory and the grandeur which envelops the whole horizon. Often, when the clouds pile up in the north and the sea is churned with white caps, I say to myself: "This is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked out on from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look.""

"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things."

"The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment."

"It was here in Big Sur that I first learned to say 'amen.'"

"There's nothing wrong with the world. What's wrong is our way of looking at it."

"Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal."

"When a situation gets so bad that no solution seems possible there is left only murder or suicide. Or both. These failing, one becomes a buffoon."

"The Bible is full of miracles, and they have been accepted by thinking and unthinking individuals alike. But the miracle which every one is permitted to experience some time in his life, the miracle which demands no intervention, no intercessor, no supreme exertion of will, the miracle which is open to the fool and the coward as well as the hero and the saint, is love. Born of an instant, it lives eternally. If energy is imperishable, how much more so is love! Like energy, which is still a complete enigma, love is always there, always on tap. Man has never created an ounce of energy, nor did he create love. Love and energy have always been, always will be. Perhaps in essence they are one and the same. Why not? Perhaps this mysterious energy which is identified with the life of the universe, which is God in action, as some one has said, perhaps this secret, all-invasive force is but the manifestation of love."

"In the literature of utter desolation there is always and only one symbol (which may be expressed mathematically as well as spiritually) about which everything turns: minus love. For life can be lived, and usually is lived, on the minus side rather than the plus. Men may strive forever, and hopelessly, once they have elected to rule love out. That high unfathomable ache of emptiness into which all creation might be poured and still it would be emptiness, this aching for God, as it has been called, what is it if not a description of the soul's loveless state?"

"What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly without plan, purpose or goal, and suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death."

"Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep."

"The frantic desire to live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm."

"I blush to think of our origins—our hands are steeped in blood and crime. And there is no letup to the slaughter and pillage."

"To be generous is to say Yes before the man even opens his mouth."

"I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write and write and write."

"Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient."

"The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination."

"Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible."

"The happiest peoples, it is said, are those which have no history. Those who have a history, those who have made history seem only to have emphasized through their accomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content to merely live and enjoy."

"The battle is endless. It had no beginning, nor will it know an end. We who babble and froth at the mouth have been at it since eternity."

"Perhaps the artist is nothing more than the personification of this universal maladjustment, this universal disequilibrium."

"The whole damned universe has to be taken apart, brick by brick, and reconstructed."

"I am against revolutions because they always involve a return to the status quo."

"I am glad to be a maggot in the corpse which is the world."

"Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it."

"Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself."

"The artist who becomes thoroughly aware consequently ceases to be one."

"Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti."

"Emma Goldman. I had nothing but admiration for her. Those speeches she made on behalf of the working man, Jesus! She could inflame you, incite you to riot, [-] Goldman and Berkman, decided to assassinate the head of a big steel company, an industrial magnate named Frick. Well, they decided a gun would be the quickest and most efficient way, but they had the problem of not having enough money to buy one. So, Goldman thinks she'll have to prostitute herself to get the money. She dresses up and fixes herself up in a horrible way. She had no sense whatever in that regard. She stations herself on the street, waiting for customers, and all the while she's looking hideous, monstrous. The first man who approaches her is a gentleman, well dressed, well educated and the like. She tells him everything, all about her work, her beliefs, and even about the assassination plot. The man was completely intrigued with her stories, he wasn't at all interested in fucking her. He handed her a good sum of money [-] Needless to say, she had a profound effect on the lives of nearly everyone who came into contact with her. She was an exceptional figure."

"The Gnostics thought the planet Earth was a cosmic mistake. I too feel that way — I'm through with this Earth before I've even departed from it."

"One day, during one of their sessions, Gurdjieff tells Peters to look out the window and describe what he sees. 'An oak tree' the child answers. 'And what do you see on the oak tree?' 'Acorns' Peters replies. 'How many of these acorns do you suppose will become trees?' Fritz Peters is stumped, [-] 'Maybe five or six?' 'No' retorts Gurdjieff. 'Only one will become a tree, perhaps, none! Nature is always very giving, but it only gives possibility. It takes hard work and great effort to become a tree or a genuine man.'"

"I venerate van Gogh. He was a remarkable human being, a man who knew about love. His work reflects a spirit filled with light, even though his life was a tragedy in many ways."

"Vlaminck and Utrillo were very good friends, drinking buddies. One day they attend a funeral. They're walking behind the hearse in a procession, and they're having a great time conversing with one another. They are completely engrossed when suddenly one asks the other, 'Say, don't you smell something funny?' They look up and they're walking behind a garbage truck! They'd lost the hearse in the middle of their enthusiastic conversation."

"There was one artist who wrote as beautifully as he painted. That was Hokusai - He speaks for all artists, whether they are painters or not. [He wrote]: "I have been in love with painting ever since I became conscious of it at the age of six. I drew some pictures I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all. At seventy three I have at last caught every aspect of nature-birds,fish,animals,insects,trees,grasses, all. When I am eighty I shall have developed still further. And I will really master the secrets of art at ninety. When I reach a hundred my work will be truly sublime, and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line and dot I draw will be imbued with life.""

"The pygmies are one of the most cultured peoples on the face of the earth. They live a wonderful life, a life of purity. Not only are they busy and productive, they're happy and healthy as well. If we puny Americans had to live under their conditions, we'd perish in a day. Modern man has much to learn from the people he calls 'savages'. Before we are down to the last blade of grass it would be wise to study the life of the Pygmies. The secret of our own survival rests with them, the people who know how to make the most out of very little and find complete happiness with the bare essentials."

"I've spoken many times about the Japanese woman. I've praised her again and again. But I have to tell you that I think the Japanese man is the worst. The women are such delicate creatures and they're treated abominably by the men. The Japanese men are pigs - even worse than American men."

"More than anything the French have a profound knowledge of the ways of life. They possess a tolerance and an acceptance of the way things are. Problems are faced with intelligence, patience, and a sense of humanity. I have more respect for them than any other nationality on the face of the earth."

"As far as Bach is concerned, I never came close to liking him [-] My favourite composer is Scriabin -[and] his Fifth sonata, in my mind, the greatest piece of music ever written."

"Wagner wrote an opera titled Tristan and Yseult and in it there is a theme called Love Death theme. It is so sensual, so sexual that he was criticized for having introduced sex into music. And that was quite a few years before the appearance of Elvis Presley!"

"The man who doesn't respond to music, the man without music in his soul is not to be trusted. A man like that is cold and empty, empty to the core."

"Through it all I learned the value of being humble to the dust, reduced to ashes. Everyone should experience that. Before you can recognize you're somebody, you have to know you're nobody. [-] The butterfly was just a lowly worm in its beginning. The worm didn't live with the moment-to-moment expectation of sprouting wings and taking flight. He lived a useful and productive life, the life of a worm. And he had to die a worm in order to be born as an angel! The spinning of the cocoon is, in and of itself, remarkable. It is as wondrous as the emergence and first flight of the butterfly."

"I tell you, struggle is what is missing in the lives of most young people today. If they think I'm going to support them while they create great works of art, then they've missed the point of my work, of my life! In the process of becoming a writer or an artist one has to be willing to starve. Struggle is the most invaluable experience of all. Suffering seems to be the inevitable fate of the creative sensitive types. Poverty, disease, death, unrequited love affairs, and disappointments of every sort fan the flame of the artistic spirit. The greatest works of art were not created by spoiled brats. They were born for the most part out of a sense of despair, and if not despair then just plain hard work. Somewhere along the line the artist learns the art of transformation."

"The important thing was that when this story (""When Women Love Men"") came out no Puerto Rican woman had ever written about sex. My story is just a little story, and it's not Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, but I think I was trying to go in that direction."

""Spontaneity incarnate" is how Anaïs Nin once described Miller."

"Henry Miller came to me in the 70s. He said I didn’t ask to be born. He wrote in a complaining, American working class speech. He was from Williamsburg. It was ugly. It reminded me of Somerville, where I came from. He made it clear that an unprivileged American could be a writer and could have a lot to talk about. He switched constantly from speech to surrealism. That shift was important to me because an unstable self was what I had to use."

"People say, "Well, were you a feminist?" Well, I was writing those things in the mid-fifties. I was aware of a lot of things. I mean it's not as if I was so naïve. I was not naïve. I already knew that I couldn't stand Henry Miller, for instance. Goodness, I already knew that there was a literature that was not about me, sexually."

"(“Did you ever look for women writers, in particular, or look to find your own experience in your reading?”) No, not when I was very young. It's not so much that I looked for women writers, but I had sense enough to know that, like Henry Miller, he wasn't writing for me. That's as far as I went. I knew that these guys, even the Beats-I thought they were nice, nice to see all those boys, and nice to see all the sexual feelings, but I knew it really wasn't written for me at all. It's not so much that I looked for women writers, as that I understood certain much admired writers, like Burroughs, weren't talking to me. There was nothing to get from them. Though at the same time I did get stuff from Proust. That talked to me, but all those ballsy American heroes had nothing to say to me, though my friends thought they were just hot shit, excuse me."

"If we, in 1984, are asked to choose between, on the one hand, the Miller of Tropic of Cancer and ‘the first hundred pages of Black Spring’ and, on the other, the collected works of Auden, MacNeice and Spender, I doubt that many of us would go for old Henry. So it would appear that politically committed art can actually prove more durable than messages from the stomach of the fish."

"You notice that some of the stuff by men that I would call certainly pornographic, Henry Miller, for instance, is taken very seriously. It’s all so obvious. When women do it, it’s silly, when men do it, it’s serious."

"Henry Miller belonged in kind, though not in stature, to the great odd-man-out figures of literature like Blake, Whitman and Lawrence. Despite his incoherence as artist and philosopher he made a powerful impact on his time, thanks chiefly to the assurance and the sheer headlong energy of his work, expressed with equal vehemence in his protest against contemporary civilisation and in the affirmation of his own ego. ... Born in Brooklyn, Miller went to Cornell University and then – after a succession of odd jobs – to Paris where he launched himself on the ebb tide of American expatriate writing. He was already in his forties when his first and most famous novel, Tropic of Cancer, appeared in 1934. It was not until many years later, when it came out as a paperback, that the book was banned in the United States. This made it more celebrated than ever... There were clergymen who found him religious. There were critics who judged him to be some kind of sage and even saint, Ezra Pound admired him... As chief literary anarchist of his day, a kind of low priest celebrating the last rites of what he regarded as a doomed civilisation, it was not surprising that he became a hero of the Sixties beat generation..."

"Now she realized she had read two pages without taking in a single word. Henry Miller had that effect on her. He tended to ramble, and reading him, her mind did too."

"Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it — so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."

"Most Authors cringe and flatter and Fish for compliments. If they fail to get Applause, they say the World is a Scurvy Place and those who dwell therein a Dirty Lot: if they succeed, they give thanks to Nobody, saying they got only what their Meritt entitles them to. But I rather like the World. The Flesh is pleasing and the Devil does not trouble me."

"Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth. The intellectual kings of the earth have seldom been college-bred."

"There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. The sternest comment that can be made against employers as a class lies in the fact that men of Ability usually succeed in showing their worth in spite of their employer, and not with his assistance and encouragement."

"Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow."

"Freedom cannot be bestowed — it must be achieved."

"Life is just one damn thing after another."

"Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed."

"It is not to be wondered that men have worshiped the ocean, for in his depths they have seen mirrored the image of Eternity — of Infinity. Here they have seen the symbol of God's great plan of oneness with His creatures, for the sea is the union of all infinite particles, and it takes the whole to make the one."

"Anyone who idolizes you is going to hate you when he discovers that you are fallible. He never forgives. He has deceived himself, and he blames you for it."

"Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing, and you'll never be criticized."

"Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them."

"He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand."

"If you want work well done, select a busy man ‚ the other kind has no time."

"Some one has said that we are moving so fast that when plans are being made to perform some great feat, these plans are broken into by a youth who enters and says, "I have done it.""

"Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong."

"The graveyards are full of people the world could not do without."

"Piety is the tinfoil of pretense."

"The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter & did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing — "Carry a message to Garcia!""

"If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?"

"Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds — the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off" nor has to go on a strike for higher wages."

"Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and village — in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed and needed badly — the man who can "Carry a Message to Garcia.""

"I believe in the Motherhood of God. I believe in the Blessed Trinity of Father, Mother and Child. I believe that God is here, and that we are as near Him now as ever we shall be. I do not believe He started this world a-going and went away and left it to run by itself. I believe in the sacredness of the human body, this transient dwelling place of a living soul, And so I deem it the duty of every man and every woman to keep his or her body beautiful through right thinking and right living. I believe that the love of man for woman, and the love of woman for man is holy; And that this love in all its promptings is as much an emanation of the Divine Spirit as man's love for God, or the most daring hazards of the human mind. I believe in salvation through economic, social, and spiritual freedom. I believe John Ruskin, William Morris, Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Leo Tolstoy to be Prophets of God, who should rank in mental reach and spiritual insight with Elijah, Hosea, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. I believe that men are inspired to-day as much as ever men were. I believe we are now living in Eternity as much as ever we shall. I believe that the best way to prepare for a Future Life is to be kind, live one day at a time, and do the work you can do best, doing it as well as you can. I believe we should remember the Week-day, to keep it holy. I believe there is no devil but fear. I believe that no one can harm you but yourself. I believe in my own divinity — and yours. I believe that we are all sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. I believe the only way we can reach the Kingdom of Heaven is to have the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts. I believe in every man minding his own business. I believe in sunshine, fresh air, friendship, calm sleep, beautiful thoughts. I believe in the paradox of success through failure. I believe in the purifying process of sorrow, and I believe that death is a manifestation of life. I believe the Universe is planned for good. I believe it is possible that I shall make other creeds, and change this one, or add to it, from time to time, as new light may come to me."

"I AM an Anarchist. All good men are Anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are Anarchists. Jesus was an Anarchist. A Monarchist is one who believes a monarch should govern. A Plutocrat believes in the rule of the rich. A Democrat holds that the majority should dictate. An Aristocrat thinks only the wise should decide; while an Anarchist does not believe in government at all. Richard Croker is a Monarchist; Mark Hanna a Plutocrat; Cleveland a Democrat; Cabot Lodge an Aristocrat; William Penn, Henry D. Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and Walt Whitman were Anarchists. An Anarchist is one who minds his own business. An Anarchist does not believe in sending warships across wide oceans to kill brown men, and lay waste rice fields, and burn the homes of people who are fighting for liberty. An Anarchist does not drive women with babes at their breasts and other women with babes unborn, children and old men into the jungle to be devoured by beasts or fever or fear, or die of hunger, homeless, unhouseled and undone. Destruction, violence, ravages, murder, are perpetrated by statute law."

"I believe that brutality tends to defeat itself. Prizefighters die young, gourmands get the gout, hate hurts worse the man who nurses it, and all selfishness robs the mind of its divine insight, and cheats the soul that would know. Mind alone is eternal. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps. My faith is great: out of the transient darkness of the present the shadows will flee away, and Day will yet dawn. I am an Anarchist."

"No man who believes in force and violence is an Anarchist. The true Anarchist decries all influences save those of love and reason. Ideas are his only arms. Being an Anarchist I am also a Socialist. Socialism is the antithesis of Anarchy. One is the North Pole of Truth, the other the South. The Socialist believes in working for the good of all, while Anarchy is pure Individualism. I believe in every man working for the good of self; and in working for the good of self, he works for the good of all. To think, to see, to feel, to know; to deal justly; to bear all patiently; to act quietly; to speak cheerfully; to moderate one's voice — these things will bring you the highest good. They will bring you the love of the best, and the esteem of that Sacred Few, whose good opinion alone is worth cultivating. And further than this, it is the best way you can serve Society — live your life. The wise way to benefit humanity is to attend to your own affairs, and thus give other people an opportunity to look after theirs. If there is any better way to teach virtue than by practicing it, I do not know it. Would you make men better — set them an example. The millenium will never come until governments cease from governing, and the meddler is at rest. Politicians are men who volunteer the task of governing us, for a consideration. The political boss is intent on living off your labor. A man may seek an office in order to do away with the rascal who now occupies it, but for the most part office-seekers are rank rogues. Shakespeare used the word politician five times, and each time it is synonymous with knave. That is to say, a politician is one who sacrifices truth and honor for policy. The highest motive of his life is expediency — policy. In King Lear it is the "scurvy politician," who through tattered clothes beholds small vices, while robes and furred gowns, for him, covers all."

"Mankind is governed by the worst — the strongest example of this is to be seen in American municipalities, but it is true of every government. We are governed by rogues who hold their grip upon us by and through statute law. Were it not for law the people could protect themselves against these thieves, but now we are powerless and are robbed legally. One mild form of coercion these rogues resort to is to call us unpatriotic when we speak the truth about them. Not long ago they would have cut off our heads. The world moves. Governments cannot be done away with instantaneously, but progress will come, as it has in the past by lessening the number of laws. We want less governing, and the ideal government will arrive when there is no government at all. So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs. So long as men are clubbed, robbed, imprisoned, disgraced, hanged by the governing class, just so long will the idea of violence and brutality be born in the souls of men."

"It takes brains to make money, but any dam fool can inherit. P.S.: I never inherited any money."

"The happiest mortals on earth are ladies who have been bereaved by the loss of their husbands."

"The sad thing about the optimist is his state of mind concerning himself."

"Literary people of the opposite sex do not really love each other. All they really desire is to read their manuscript aloud to a receptive listener."

"If men could only know each other, they would never either idolize or hate."

"Too often the reformer has been one who caused the rich to band themselves against the poor."

"And the worst part about making a soldier of a man is not that a soldier kills brown men or white men, but that the soldier loses his own soul."

"Good people are only half as good, and bad people only half as bad, as other people regard them."

"If we ever damned it will not be because we have loved too much, but because we have loved too little."

"Every spirit makes his own house, but as afterwards the house confines its spirit, you had better build well."

""Should we have an Eleventh Commandment?" asked a youth of the Greatest Living Actress. "Most assuredly, no - we have ten too many now!" answered the divine Sara."

"Knowledge is the distilled essence of our intuitions, corroborated by experience."

"I believe more in the goodness of bad people than i do in the badness of good people."

"A Miracle: An event described by those to whom it was told by men who did not see it."

"Life is a compromise between fate and free will."

"It is the weak man who urges compromise—never the strong man."

"Do not take life too seriously – you will never get out of it alive."

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

"There have always existed three ways of keeping the people loving and loyal. One is to leave them alone, to trust them and not to interfere. This plan, however, has very seldom been practised, because the politicians regard the public as a cow to be milked, and something must be done to make it stand quiet. So they try Plan Number Two, which consists in hypnotizing the public by means of shows, festivals, parades, prizes and many paid speeches, sermons and editorials, wherein and whereby the public is told how much is being done for it, and how fortunate it is in being protected and wisely cared for by its divinely appointed guardians. Then the band strikes up, the flags are waved, three passes are made, one to the right and two to the left; and we, being completely under the hypnosis, hurrah ourselves hoarse. Plan Number Three is a very ancient one and is always held back to be used in case Number Two fails. It is for the benefit of the people who do not pass readily under hypnotic control. If there are too many of these, they have been known to pluck up courage and answer back to the speeches, sermons and editorials. Sometimes they refuse to hurrah when the bass-drum plays, in which case they have occasionally been arrested for contumacy and contravention by stocky men, in wide-awake hats, who lead the strenuous life. This Plan Number Three provides for an armed force that shall overawe, if necessary, all who are not hypnotized. The army is used for two purposes — to coerce disturbers at home, and to get up a war at a distance, and thus distract attention from the troubles near at hand. Napoleon used to say that the only sure cure for internal dissension was a foreign war: this would draw the disturbers away, on the plea of patriotism, so they would win enough outside loot to satisfy them, or else they would all get killed, it really didn't matter much; and as for loot, if it was taken from foreigners, there was no sin. A careful analyst might here say that Plan Number Three is only a variation of Plan Number Two — the end being gained by hypnotic effects in either event, for the army is conscripted from the people to use against the people, just as you turn steam from a boiler into the fire-box to increase the draft. ..."

"Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes."

"Wealth: A cunning device of Fate whereby men are made captive, and burdened with responsibilites from which only Death can file their fetters."

"A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience."

"An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all."

"If your religion does not change you, then you had better change your religion."

"Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes a day. Wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit."

"If you err it is not for me to punish you. We are punished by our sins not for them."

"It is only life and love that give love and life."

"Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world."

"I have no perfect panacea for human ills. And even if I had I would not attempt to present a system of philosophy between the soup and fish, but this much I will say: The distinctively modern custom of marital bundling is the doom of chivalry and death of passion. It wears all tender sentiment to a napless warp, and no wonder is it that the novelist, without he has a seared and bitter heart, hesitates to follow the couple beyond the church door. There is no greater reproach to our civilization than the sight of men joking the boy whose heart is pierced by the first rays of a life-giving sun, or of our expecting a girl to blush because she is twice God's child today she was yesterday."

"The great Big Black Things that have loomed against the horizon of my life, threatening to devour me, simply loomed and nothing more. The things that have really made me miss my train have always been sweet, soft, pretty, pleasant things of which I was not in the least afraid."

"To supply a thought is mental massage; but to evolve a thought of your own is an achievement. Thinking is a brain exercise — and no faculty grows save as it is exercised."

"Do not go out of your way to do good whenever it comes your way. Men who make a business of doing good to others are apt to hate others in the same occupation. Simply be filled with the thought of good, and it will radiate — you do not have to bother about it, any more than you need trouble about your digestion."

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you."

"The newspapers print what the people want, and thus does the savage still swing his club and flourish his spear."

"I am not sure just what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills."

"Do not dump your woes upon people — keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them."

"Men who marry for gratification, propagation or the matter of buttons or socks, must expect to cope with and deal in a certain amount of quibble, subterfuge, concealments, and double, deep-dyed prevarication."

"When you see a tomcat with his whiskers full of feathers, do not say "Canary!" — he'll take offense."

"Academic education is the act of memorizing things read in books, and things told by college professors who got their education mostly by memorizing things read in books."

"Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments."

"The weaknesses of the many make the leader possible—and the man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also. Discipleship is a degenerating process to all parties concerned. People who are able to do their own thinking should not allow others to do it for them."

"A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist."

"Life without absorbing occupation is hell — joy consists in forgetting life."

"Making men live in three worlds at once — past, present and future has been the chief harm organized religion has done."

"Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes."

"Perfume; Any smell that is used to drown a worse one."

"Respectability is the dickey on the bosom of civilization."

"There is no such thing as success in a bad business."

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."

"The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods."

"The way to learn to earn a living is to go at it and earn a living."

"To remain on earth you must be useful, otherwise Nature regards you as old metal, and is only watching for a chance to melt you over."

"Why not be a top-notcher? A top-notcher is simply an individual who works for the institution of which he is a part, not against it."

"Woman's inaptitude for reasoning has not prevented her from arriving at truth; nor has man's ability to reason prevented him from floundering in absurdity."

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."

"No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one."

"I can not say specifically where your father and Mrs. Hubbard were when the torpedoes hit, but I can tell you just what happened after that. They emerged from their room, which was on the port side of the vessel, and came on to the boat-deck. Neither appeared perturbed in the least. Your father and Mrs. Hubbard linked arms — the fashion in which they always walked the deck — and stood apparently wondering what to do. I passed him with a baby which I was taking to a lifeboat when he said, "Well, Jack, they have got us. They are a damn sight worse than I ever thought they were." They did not move very far away from where they originally stood. As I moved to the other side of the ship, in preparation for a jump when the right moment came, I called to him, "What are you going to do?" and he just shook his head, while Mrs. Hubbard smiled and said, "There does not seem to be anything to do." The expression seemed to produce action on the part of your father, for then he did one of the most dramatic things I ever saw done. He simply turned with Mrs. Hubbard and entered a room on the top deck, the door of which was open, and closed it behind him. It was apparent that his idea was that they should die together, and not risk being parted on going into the water."

"I think of what Elbert Hubbard said. It struck me rather strangely the other day. He said: "If you are going to reform the world you had better begin with yourself, and there will be one rogue less in the world." Of course, I did not want to apply that to myself, but I would not object to applying it to you."

"Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren't even mammals."

"I first heard of the 23 Enigma from William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23."

"There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled — by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists."

"No wife, no horse, no mustache."

"Guerrilla ontology The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?'""

"The persons we think we are have been manufactured out of some shotgun wedding of history and and imagination."

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."

"The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty. I use what in modern physics is called the "multi-model" approach, which is the idea that there is more than one model to cover a given set of facts. As I've said, novel writing involves learning to think like other people. My novels are written so as to force the reader to see things through different reality grids rather than through a single grid. It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it. That's what guerrilla ontology is — breaking down this one-model view and giving people a multi-model perspective."

"My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. I suppose an anarchist would say, paraphrasing what Marx said about agnostics being "frightened atheists," that libertarians are simply frightened anarchists. Having just stated the case for the opposition, I will go along and agree with them: yes, I am frightened. I'm a libertarian because I don't trust the people as much as anarchists do. I want to see government limited as much as possible; I would like to see it reduced back to where it was in Jefferson's time, or even smaller. But I would not like to see it abolished. I think the average American, if left totally free, would act exactly like Idi Amin. I don't trust the people any more than I trust the government."

"A true initiation never ends."

"Every national border in Europe," El Eswad added ironically, "marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the others."

"Obviously, the faster we process information, the more rich and complex our models or glosses — our reality-tunnels — will become. Resistance to new information, however, has a strong neurological foundation in all animals, as indicated by studies of imprinting and conditioning. Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show a truly staggering ability to "ignore" certain kinds of information — that which does not "fit" their imprinted/conditioned reality-tunnel. We generally call this "conservatism" or "stupidity", but it appears in all parts of the political spectrum, and in learned societies as well as in the Ku Klux Klan."

"Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil."

"Every morning I have been looking at CNN to see if there is any reason for hope. I see a few large and impressive peace protests here and there around the world, but mostly I see empty robot faces monotonously reciting the magic incantations, "We must support the President" and "We must support our troops", both of which mean the killing must continue."

"We live in an age of artificial scarcity, maintained by ignorance and fear. The government has been paying farmers not to grow food for fifty years--while millions starve. Labor unions, business and government conspire to hold back the Microprocessor Revolution--because none of them know how to deal with the massive unemployment it will cause. (Fuller's books could tell them.) The utilities advertise continually that "solar power is at least forty years in the future" when my friend Karl Hess, and hundreds of others, already live in largely solar-powered houses. These propaganda advertisements are just a delaying action, because the utilities still haven't figured out how to put a meter between us and the sun."

"I'm using myself as a typical 20th century model as I'm trying to make sense out of the world around me … typical in the sense of being one of the damn good models around these days. I am typical in the sense that ...a lot of people are on the same wave length as me. I get fan mail from people that are absolutely stunned that there's somebody else besides themselves who thinks this way. So, we're a minority, but there are a lot of us. On a planet this overcrowded, a minority can have a few million numbers. … More scientific than religious. More open than dogmatic. More optimistic than pessimistic. More future oriented than past oriented. And more humorous than serious. I really dread serious people. Especially serious, dogmatic people. I regard them as sort of what Reich called the emotional plague. I regard them as very dangerous."

"He {Wilhelm Reich} had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government. Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned. Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a civil liberties issue. When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who ever lived and discovered the basic secrets of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve further investigation."

"Well I sometimes call myself a libertarian but that's only because most people don't know what anarchist means. Most people hear you're an anarchist and they think you're getting ready to throw a bomb at a building. They don't understand the concept of voluntary association, the whole concept of replacing force with voluntary cooperation or contractual arrangements and so on. So libertarian is a clearer word that doesn't arouse any immediate anxiety upon the listener. And then again, libertarians, if they were totally consistent with their principles would be anarchists. They take the position which they call minarchy, which is the smallest possible government... The reason I don't believe in the smallest possible government is because we started out with that and it only took us 200 years to arrive at the czarist occupation of government that we have now. I think any government is dangerous no matter how small you make it. Instead of governments we should have contractual associations that you can opt out of if you don't like the way the association is going. Religions fought for hundreds of years over which one should dominate Europe and then they finally gave up and made a truce, and they all agreed to tolerate each other — at least in this part of the world... But I think government should be treated like religion, everyone should be able to pick the kind they like. Only it should be contractual not obligatory. I wouldn't mind paying tax money to a local association to maintain a police force, as long as we need one. But I hate like hell paying taxes to help the US government build more nuclear missiles to blow up more people I don't even know and don't think I'd hate them if I did know them. A lot of anarchists had a major roll in influencing my political thinking, especially the individualist anarchists. Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner especially. But I've also been influenced by Leo Tolstoy's anarcho-pacifism. And I find a lot of Kropotkin compatible even though he was a communist anarchist. Nothing wrong with communist anarchism as long as it remains voluntary. Any one that wants to go make a commune, go ahead, do it. I got nothing against it. As long as there's room to the individualist to do his or her own thing."

"I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut it…."

"Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory."

"Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different."

"I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions."

"I regard the two major male archetypes in 20th Century literature as Leopold Bloom and Hannibal Lecter. M.D. Bloom, the perpetual victim, the kind and gentle fellow who finishes last, represented an astonishing breakthrough to new levels of realism in the novel, and also symbolized the view of humanity that hardly anybody could deny c. 1900-1950. History, sociology, economics, psychology et al. confirmed Joyce’s view of Everyman as victim. Bloom, exploited and downtrodden by the Brits for being Irish and rejected by many of the Irish for being Jewish, does indeed epiphanize humanity in the first half of the 20th Century. And he remains a nice guy despite everything that happens... Dr Lecter, my candidate for the male archetype of 1951-2000, will never win any Nice Guy awards, I fear, but he symbolizes our age as totally as Bloom symbolized his. Hannibal's wit, erudition, insight into others, artistic sensitivity, scientific knowledge etc. make him almost a walking one man encyclopedia of Western civilization. As for his "hobbies" as he calls them — well, according to the World Game Institute, since the end of World War II, in which 60,000,000 human beings were murdered by other human beings, 193, 000,000 more humans have been murdered by other humans in brush wars, revolutions, insurrections etc. What better symbol of our age than a serial killer? Hell, can you think of any recent U.S. President who doesn't belong in the Serial Killer Hall of Fame? And their motives make no more sense, and no less sense, than Dr Lecter's Darwinian one-man effort to rid the planet of those he finds outstandingly loutish and uncouth."

"Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history."

"No, they were not exactly automatons, but they did not know what they were doing. They take down a boy’s britches. They stare at his buttocks. They cane him until the buttocks bleed. And they believe this is virtue, because it is done in a school, and it becomes vice only if it is done in a place with a red lantern over the door."

"Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation."

"All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense."

"Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of existence (which has no size...)"

"There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this world."

"Conspiracy is just another name for coalition."

"The creative faculty, the god-power, is not used here with anything less than literalness. When beauty was created by a godly mind, beauty existed, as surely as the paintings of Botticelli or the concerti of Vivaldi exist. When mercy was created, mercy existed. When guilt was created, guilt existed. Out of a meaningless and pointless existence, we have made meaning and purpose; but since this creative act happens only when we relax after great strain, we feel it as 'pouring into us' from elsewhere. Thus, we do not know our own godhood and we are perpetually swindled by those who assure us that it is indeed elsewhere, but they can give us access to it, for a reasonable fee. And when we as a species were ignorant enough to be duped in that way, the swindlers went one step further, invented original sin and other horrors of that sort, and made us even more 'dependent' upon them."

"The illusion of Sin and Guilt, the madness of our species, is the act of cursing the world under the misapprehension that one is cursing only one part of it. To curse the fig tree, as in the funniest and most misunderstood parable of Jesus, is to curse the soil in which it grew, the seed, the rains, the sun; the whole world, eventually — because no part is truly separate from the whole. The fallacy is that one can judge the part in isolation from the whole is "the Lie that all men believe.""

"The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth."

""Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment."

"Why does the sexual appetite cause so much unspeakable joy and irrational misery, so much suicidal and homicidal madness, and so much absurd theological ranting? Because every sexual choice is going to play a role in determining the temperament and talents of the next generation, and of all future generations who will inherit the earth from us. To be simple about it for once, a single friendly fuck can fill a continent with morons or geniuses in only a few thousand years."

"The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles."

"Each mans spills the drink he loves."

"Everybody who has ever worked for a corporation knows that corporations conspire all the time. Politicians conspire all the time, pot-dealers conspire not to get caught by the narcs, the world is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is natural primate behavior."

"The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now."

"Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd."

"There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already."

"ONLY THE MADMAN IS ABSOLUTELY SURE."

"The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness."

"And Spaceship Earth, that glorious and bloody circus, continued its four-billion-year-long spiral orbit about the Sun; the engineering, I must admit, was so exquisite that none of the passengers felt any motion at all. Those on the dark side of the ship mostly slept and voyaged into worlds of freedom and fantasy; those on the light side moved about the tasks appointed for them by their rulers, or idled waiting for the next order from above."

"Comparative religion and philosophy show that the Thinker can regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both mortal and immortal (the reincarnation model) or even as non-existent (Buddhism). It can think itself into living in a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a scientific-relativistic universe, or a Nazi universe—among many possibilities. As psychiatrists and psychologists have often observed (much to the chagrin of their medical colleagues), the Thinker can think itself sick, and can even think itself well again. The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. To cite a notorious example which unleashed incredible horrors earlier in this century, if the Thinker thinks that all Jews are rich, the Prover will prove it. It will find evidence that the poorest Jew in the most run-down ghetto has hidden money somewhere."

"Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion."

"Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper."

"The current rampages of territorial-emotional pugnacity sweeping this planet are not just another civilization failing … They are the birth-pangs of a cosmic Prometheus rising out of the long nightmare of domesticated primate history."

""Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see your own back (without mirrors)."

"Mind and its contents are functionally identical: My wife only exists, for me, in my mind. Not being a solipsist, I recognize the converse: I only exist, for her, in her mind. Lest the reader exclaim, like Byron of Wordworth, "I wish he would explain his explanation!", let us try it this way: If I am so fortunate as to be listening to the Hammerklavier sonata, the only correct answer, if you ask me suddenly, "Who are you?" would be to hum the Hammerklavier. For, with music of that quality, one is hypnotized into rapt attention: there is no division between "me" and "my experience"."

"You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it."

"The A∴A∴ must rank as the most secretive secret society in the world. Perhaps nobody, not even the few writers who have discussed it, knows for sure when the A∴A∴ began, which group claiming to be the A∴A∴ at present is the real A∴A∴, or even what the symbols A∴A∴ stand for — although many claim to know these things of course. … Occult historians generally agree that V.V.V.V.V. signified Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici ("By the force of truth I have conquered the universe"), one of the eleven magic mottoes of Aleister Crowley."

"Most historians merely mention that Bruno was charged with the heresy of teaching Copernican astronomy, but Frances Yates, a historian who specialized in the occult aspects of the scientific revolution, points out that Bruno was charged with 18 heresies and crimes, including the practice of sorcery and organizing secret societies to oppose the Vatican. Yates thinks Bruno may have had a role in the invention of either Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry or both. Bruno's teachings combined the new science of his time with traditional Cabalistic mysticism. He believed in a universe of infinite space with infinite planets, and in a kind of dualistic pantheism, in which the divine is incarnate in every part but always in conflicting forms that both oppose and support each other. Whatever his link with occult secret societies, he influenced Hegel, Marx, theosophy, James Joyce, Timothy Leary, Discordianism, and Dr. Wilhelm Reich."

"Many tribal peoples have both all-male and all-female secret societies, which help maintain the cultural values or reality tunnel. Freemasonry is certainly the largest, and probably the oldest, and still the most controversial of the all-male secret societies surviving in our world. No two scholars can even agree on how old it is, much less on how "good" or "evil" it is. … Although Masonry is often denounced as either a political or religious "conspiracy", Freemasons are forbidden to discuss either politics or religion within the lodge. Gary Dryfoos of the Massachusetts Institute of technology, who maintains the best Masonic site on the web, always stresses these points and also offers personal testimony that after many years as a Mason, including high ranks, he has not yet been asked to engage in pagan or Satanic rituals or plot for any reason for or against any political party. The more rabid anti-Masons, of course, dismiss such testimony as flat lies. The enemies of Masonry, who are usually Roman Catholics or Fundamentalist Protestants, insist that the rites of the order contain "pagan" elements, e.g., the Yule festival, the Spring Solstice festival, the dead-and-resurrected martyr (Jesus, allegedly historical, to Christians; Hiram, admittedly allegorical, to Masons). All these and many other elements in Christianity and Masonry have a long prehistory in paganism, as documented in the 12 volumes of Sir James George Frazer's Golden Bough. The major offense of Masonry to orthodox churches is that it, like our First Amendment, encourages equal tolerance for all religions, and this tends, somewhat, to lessen dogmatic allegiance to any one religion. Those who insist you must accept their dogma fervently and renounce all others as devilish errors, correctly see this Masonic tendency as inimitable [sic] — to their faith."

""Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still."

"You need the "is of identity" to describe conspiracy theories. Korzybski would say that proves that illusions, delusions, and "mental" illnesses require the "is" to perpetuate them. (He often said, "Isness is an illness.") Korzybski also popularized the idea that most sentences, especially the sentences that people quarrel over or even go to war over, do not rank as propositions in the logical sense, but belong to the category that Bertrand Russell called propositional functions. They do not have one meaning, as a proposition in logic should have; they have several meanings, like an algebraic function."

"Dr. Wilhelm Reich was condemned for unscientific claims by the Food and Drug Administration in 1956 because of his theories about sexual freedom and his discovery of an alleged "orgone" energy. He quickly became the most world-famous victim of the FDA's quest to impose One True Faith on medical practice in the United States, because the Feds not only destroyed all the equipment in Dr. Reich's experimental laboratory but burned all his books, too, in an incinerator, and then they put him in jail where he died of a heart attack. Since many disapprove of this unconstitutional way of silencing heresy, Dr. Reich has remained a center of controversy. … In addition to his bio-physical heresies, Dr. Reich vastly offended many people by his sociological theory, which holds that fascism is just an exaggerated form of the basic structure of sex-negative societies and has existed under other names in every civilization based on sexual repression. In this theory, the character and muscular armor of the average citizen — a submissive and frightened attitude anchored in body reflexes — causes the average person to want a strong authority figure above them. Tyranny, in this model, is not created by tyrants alone but by neurotic masses who want tyrants."

"Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone's B.S. too seriously, especially your own."

"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous, rather than cowardly."

"One of the most profound and important scientific philosophers of this century … His vast intelligence and sharp wit are sufficient to shock and enlighten the most heavily imprinted domesticated primate nervous system."

"In a world where we are all giants in a pygmy's hut, fighting over the space, he was one of the few trying to knock down the walls and stretch his legs."

"Robert Anton Wilson is the unacknowledged elephant in our cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and commentary. … Wilson is a primary source for the ironic style of conspiracism, a sensibility that treats alleged cabals not as intrigues to be exposed or lies to be debunked but as a bizarre mutant mythos to be mined for laughs, metaphors, and social insights."

"We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means--all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity."

"I would say that when hope dies, action begins."

"A very poor kid came up to me after a talk and said 'I want to go blow up a factory.' I asked how old he was and he said 17. I said 'have you ever had sex?' He said 'no.' I said 'just remember if you get caught you aren't going to have sex for twenty years at least.' That's not saying that one person having sex is worth the salmon. I'm not saying it's a reason not to act, I'm saying don't be stupid."

"I've never written this before in public, but my first thought on September 11 when I heard someone was attacking the World Trade Center is, 'Ah, so now it begins. Someone is finally fighting back. Given the terror that the United States routinely inflicts on people (including nonhumans, of course) the world over (and of course now a couple of years later the United States calls these programs of systematic terror 'Shock and Awe'), I'm surprised it didn't happen long ago. The poor have been very patient and long suffering, more patient and long suffering than anyone could ever expect.' That is what I thought."

"I want to bring down civilization. It's really clear that civilization is killing the planet. I’m interested in living in a world that has more wild salmon every year than the year before. A world that has more migratory songbirds every year than the year before. A world that has less dioxins and flame retardants in mothers' breast milk. A world not being destroyed. A world where krill populations aren’t collapsing. A world where there are not dead zones in the oceans. A world not being systematically dismantled. I want to live in a world that is not being killed. I will do whatever it takes to get there."

"People often say that violence accomplishes nothing, that it's ineffective. Violence is dreadfully effective. That's why those in power use it."

"Is it possible to talk about fundamental social change without asking ourselves questions we too often refuse to ask, such as 'What if those in power are murderous? What if they're not willing to listen to reason at all? Should we continue to approach them nonviolently? . . . When is violence an appropriate means to stop injustice?' But with the world dying - or rather being killed - we no longer have the luxury to change the subject or delete the question. It's a question that won't go away."

"Jeanette [Armstrong, "a traditional Okanagan Indian"] said, 'Attitudes about the species communication are the primary difference between western and indigenous philosophies. Even the most progressive western philosophers still generally believe that listening to the land is a metaphor.' She paused, then continued emphatically, 'It's not a metaphor. It's how the world is.'"

"I sat at the computer at work, debugging. I was bored. It was afternoon. I was twenty-two. It was June. Along the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, thunderheads move in almost every afternoon between May and early July. They materialize, darken the day, spit a few drops, open the sky with lightning, then disappear like so many dreams."

"Turning away from the computer I saw through my own narrow window (at least it opened) the green, the blue, the flashes. I looked to the clock, the screen, the window. An hour passed, then two. I looked again at the clock and saw it had been only twenty minutes. I willed the second-hand, the minute-hand, the hour-hand to move faster, to deliver me to five o'clock when I would be released as from my prison term. Then suddenly I stopped, struck by the absurdity of wishing away the only thing I've got. Eight hours, eighty years, it was all too similar. Would I wish away the years until the day of my retirement, until my time was once again my own? At work I tried to keep busy to make the hours pass quickly. It was no different when watching television, socializing, moving frenetically--there are so many ways to kill time."

"I remember staring at the computer screen--light green letters on dark--then at the clock, and finally at my outstretched fingers held a foot in front of my face. And then it dawned on me: selling the hours of my life was no different from selling my fingers one by one. We've only so many hours, so many fingers; when they're gone, they're gone for good."

"I quit work two weeks later--having sold another eighty of my hours--and knew I could never again work a regular job."

"I could not have learned to listen to coyotes without having first learned to listen to my unwillingness to sell my hours, then to listen to the signals of my body, then to listen to the disease that has made my insides my home, and thus become a part of me. And I could not have learned to listen to coyotes without having talked to other people courageous enough to validate my perception of an animate world. I talked to the writer Christoper Manes, who said, 'For most cultures through history--including our own in preliterate times--the entire world used to speak. Anthropologists call this animism, the most pervasive worldview in human history. Animistic cultures listen to the natural world. For them, birds have something to say. So do worms, wolves, and waterfalls.' Later the philosopher Thomas Berry told me, 'The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees--all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.'"

"In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities."

"There can be no real peace when living with someone who has already declared war, no peace but capitulation. And even that, as we see around us, doesn't lead to further peace but to further degradation and exploitation. We're responsible for not only what we do but for what is in our power to stop. Before we can speak of peace, we have to speak honestly of stopping, by any and all means possible, those who have declared war on the world and on us. Those who destroy wont stop because we ask nicely. There is only one language that they understand, and everyone here knows what it is. Yet we don't speak of it openly."

"If we wish to stop the atrocities, we will need to understand and change the social and economic conditions that cause them."

"If your community is founded on an injustice, that injustice cannot be questioned."

"How, precisely, do you define a police state? Is it the number of police per capita? How about the number of prisons? Police use of machine guns or armored personnel carriers? The use of the police or the military to put down strikes, or to otherwise "keep the trains running on time," as was Mussolini's specialty? Perhaps it's the use of the police or the military to halt civil unrest. Or maybe the widespread use of curfews. Arbitrary confiscation of private property. How about this: could a police state be defined, as in Nazi Germany, by the use of force to segregate members of a specific race into concentration camps or prisons?"

"Perception creates behavior. Perception encourages behavior. And because this institution--this artifice--continues to socially reinforce patterns of perception and behavior, if this behavior is destructive, it may not be a bad idea to eliminate or curtail the institution."

"Much was made by abolitionists that the King James version of the Bible didn't use the word slaves, but, instead, servants. This meant, in their minds, that God didn't really approve of slavery. But that argument was linguistic at best. Slavery was codified and even sanctified in the tenth commandment, throwing slaves (and wives) in with other property belonging to one's neighbor that one must not covet. The Bible even regulated--as opposed to banning outright--the killing of slaves, stating that if a slave were beaten to death, the slave owner should be punished (though not killed himself, as would be his fate were he to kill a freeman), but if the slave didn't die until a day or two after the beating, the slave owner "shall not be punished, for he [the slave] is his money.""

"To believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity."

"If any thing can be predicated as universally true of uncultivated man, it is that he will not labour beyond what is absolutely necessary to maintain his existence."

"Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves."

"In order for a slave--or, for that matter, a slaveholder--to become free, a series of successive perceptions must be realized. First, the person must perceive that the owners (and slaves) are merely human, that is, putting all rhetoric aside, that there exists a dichotomy of privilege and exploitation, and that the privilege is a result of exploitation. … The second realization is, once again, that the owners and slaves are merely human, meaning this time that the exploitation and consequent privilege are not inevitable, but the result of social arrangements and force (as well as a huge dollop of bad luck on the part of those enslaved). … The third realization is yet again that the owners are merely human, by which I now mean they are vulnerable. Wealth does not protect them."

"I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes."

"Property has always been the central consideration of the United States government, but it has become even more so over time. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to provide just one obvious, and in some ways, silly, example (silly because all of the terms are seemingly obvious, yet in fact nearly impossible to adequately define) and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, the inalienable right with which men [sic] are self-evidently endowed by their Creator, and which may not be abridged by the State, changed from "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," to life, liberty, and property. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during the KKK's maiden reign of terror, ostensibly to protect the rights of blacks from racist state governments, has been used far more often to protect the rights to property: Of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen dealt with the rights of blacks, while two hundred and eighty-eight dealt with the rights of corporations."

"I thought that, given the system of rewards central to our economic system, in which profit maximization is valued above all else and specifically above life, it is probably just as irresistible to the owners of capital (human or otherwise) to exploit workers (and the land): "Nothing personal," they say as they load their property onto the ship bound for the Middle Passage, "but a man's gotta turn a dime.""

"It seems to me that entitlement is the key to nearly all atrocities, and that any threat to perceived entitlement will provoke hatred. The man who flayed the cat presumably felt that his employers were entitled to the cat's skin. Europeans felt that they were (and are) entitled to the land of North and South America. Slave owners clearly felt they were entitled to the labor (and the lives) of their slaves, not only in partial payment for protecting slaves from their own idleness, but also simply as a return on their capital investment. Owners of nonhuman capital today feel they, too, are entitled to the "surplus return on labor," as economists put it, as part of their reward for furnishing jobs, and to provide a return on their investment in capital. Rapists act on the belief that they are entitled to their victims' bodies, and entitled to inflict cruelty upon them. Americans act as though we are entitled to consume the majority of the world's resources, and the change the world's climate. All industrialized humans act like they're entitled to anything they want on this planet."

"From the perspective of those who are entitled, the problems begin when those they despise do not go along with--and have the power and wherewithal to not go along with--the perceived entitlement."

"Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state--where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised--to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized. Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remain underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode."

"Love does not imply pacifism."

"From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation."

"Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims."

"Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it's not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default of our culture."

"I am not the first to make the case-as I have in my other work-that the industrial economy, indeed, civilization (which underpins and gives inevitable rise to it), is incompatible with human and nonhuman freedoms, and in fact with human and nonhuman life. If you accept that the industrial economy-and beneath it, civilization-is destroying the planet and creating unprecedented human suffering among the poor (and if you don't accept this, go ahead and put this book down, back away slowly, turn on the television, and take some more soma: the drug should kick in soon enough, your agitation will disappear, you'll forget everything I've said, and then everything will be perfect again, just like the voices from the television tell you over and over), then it becomes clear that the best thing that can happen, from the perspective of essentially all nonhumans as well as the vast majority of humans, is for the industrial economy (and civilization) to go away, or in the shorter run for it to be slowed as much as humanly possible during the time we await its final collapse."

"I've always wanted to blow up dams in order to save salmon, sturgeon, and other creatures whose lives depend on wild and living rivers. But that's not right. We need to blow up dams for the rivers themselves, so they can be again the rivers they once were, forever, the rivers they still want to be, the rivers they themselves are struggling and fighting to once again become."

"Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now! Whatever you would do then, do it now. When you run up against obstacles, people, or things that won't let you live that way, then begin to think about how to get over or around or under that obstacle, or how to push it out of the way, and your politics will be concrete and practical."

"The chessboard was reflected in her eyes. Eager to beat her, first I looked on her eyes. I made a Spanish move, an ancient one, and broken was the red rank of pawns in her light eyes. Then I lowered my eyes from that chessboard and Love said, "Oh not her; conquer the king if you can.""

"There is a dilemma in any High Standard of Living in a profit economy. I am referring to the embarrassing truth that the best things in life are free. ... things like friendly competitive sports, friendly gambling, love-making and sex, solitary study and reading, contemplation of nature and cosmos, art-working, music, religion."

"This I did with all my will and apparently indefatigably (but I will one day drop with weariness)—I invented a different practical world that made no sense and took the heart out of me. Instead of resigning, I reacted, in moments of despair, by thinking up something else, and behaving as if this more pleasing landscape might indeed come to be the case."

"Life gets you coming and going. If you sterilize or police the spontaneity of children, it will return as stupidity, gracelessness, and violent crime."

"It is not hard to envisage a society in the near future in which self-reliant and autonomous people who know nothing will be attendants of a technological apparatus over which they have no control."

"Naturally, grown-up citizens are concerned about the beatniks and delinquents. … The question is why the grownups do not, more soberly, draw the same conclusions as the youth. Or, since no doubt many people are quite clear about the connection that the structure of society that has becoming increasingly dominant in our country is disastrous to the growth of excellence and manliness, why don’t more people speak up and say so?"

"Nothing could be more stupid than for the communications commission to give to people who handle the means of broadcasting the inventing of what to broadcast, and then, disturbed at the poor quality, to worry about censorship."

"We live increasingly in a system in which little direct attention is paid to the object, the function, the program, the task, the need; but immense attention to the role, the procedure, prestige, and profit."

"We do not need to be able to say what “human nature” is in order to be able to say that some training is “against human nature.”"

"Social scientists … have begun to think that “social animal” means “harmoniously belonging.” They do not like to think that fighting and dissenting are proper social functions, nor that rebelling or initiating fundamental change is a social function. Rather, if something does not run smoothly, they say it has been improperly socialized; there has been a failure in communication. … But perhaps there has not been a failure in communication. Perhaps the social message has been communicated clearly to the young men and is unacceptable. … We must ask the question, “Is the harmonious organization to which the young are inadequately socialized perhaps against human nature, or not worthy of human nature, and therefore there is difficulty in growing up?”"

"Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves. … Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. But on the other hand, the young men who conform to the dominant society become for the most part apathetic, disappointed, cynical and wasted."

"It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system does not want men. They are not safe."

"It is hard to grow up in a society in which one’s important problems are treated as nonexistent. It is impossible to belong to it, it is hard to fight to change it."

"The ideal of having a real job that you risk your soul in and make good or be damned, belongs to the heroic age of capitalist enterprise, imbued with self-righteous beliefs about hard work, thrift, and public morals. Such an ideal might still have been mentioned in public fifty years ago; in our era of risk-insured semimonopolies and advertised vices it would be met with a ghastly stillness."

"To want a job that exercises a man’s capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the “sole prerogative” to determine the products."

"Because of their historical theory of the “alienation of labor” (that the worker must become less and less in control of the work of his hands) the Marxist parties never fought for the man-worthy job itself."

"The aim is not to give human beings real goals that warrant belief, and tasks to share in, but to re-establish “belonging,” although this kind of speech and thought is precisely calculated to avoid contact and so makes belonging impossible."

"A boy of ten or eleven has a few great sexual experiences—he thinks they’re great—but then he has the bad luck to get caught and get in trouble. They try to persuade him by punishment and other explanations that some different behavior is much better, but he knows by the evidence of his senses that nothing could be better. … The basic trouble here is that they do not really believe he has had the sexual experience. That objective factor is inconvenient for them; therefore it cannot exist. … The sensible course would be to accept it as a valuable part of further growth. But if this were done, they fear that the approved little hero would be a rotten apple to his peers, who now would suddenly all become precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and prone to delinquency. The sexual plight of these children is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dreiser, did not succeed this far. … The question here is not whether the sexuality should be discouraged or encouraged. That is an important issue, but far more important is that it is hard to grow up when existing facts are treated as though they do not exist. For then there is no dialog, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society."

"Where there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loud-speakers."

"During childhood, they played games with fierce intensity, giving themselves as sacrifice to the game, for play was the chief business of growth, finding and making themselves in the world. Now when they are too old merely to play, to what shall they give themselves with fierce intensity? They cannot play for recreation, since they have not been used up. … Since each activity is not interesting to begin with, its value does not deepen and it does not bear much repetition. … In these circumstances, the inevitable tendency is to raise the ante of the compulsive useless activity."

"As Frederic Thrasher says in The Gang, “Other things being equal, the imaginative boy has an excellent chance to become the leader of the gang. He has the power to make things interesting for them.” … After a disastrous week when there were several juvenile murders, the Governor of New York made the following statement (New York Times, September 2, 1959): “We have to constantly devise new ways to bring about a challenge to these young folks and to provide an outlet for their energies and give them a sense of belonging.” … The gist of it is that the Governor of New York is to play the role that Thrasher assigns to the teen-age gang leader. He is to think up new “challenges.” … But it is the word “constantly” that is the clue. A challenge can hardly be worth while, meaningful, or therapeutic if another must constantly and obsessively be devised to siphon off a new threat of “energy.” … Solidly meeting real needs does not have this character. My guess is that in playing games the Governor will not have so lively an imagination as the lad he wants to displace as leader; unlike the grownups, the gang will never select him. One of the objective factors that make it hard to grow up is that Governors are likely to be men of mediocre human gifts."

"We define boredom as the pain a person feels when he’s doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won’t, can’t, or doesn’t dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e.g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can’t learn, or be intelligent about, what he’s not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere. (Another large part of stupidity is stubbornness, unconsciously saying, “I won’t. You can’t make me.”)"

"Not to teach the whole curriculum is to give up on the whole man."

"The “brightness” of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions."

"We certainly have at present the dismal situation that the most imaginative men are directed by a group, the top managers, who are among the least."

"Children, if we observe them, seem normally to be abounding in simple faith. They rush headlong and there is ground underfoot. They ask for information and are told. They cry for something and get it or are refused, but they are not disregarded. They go exploring and see something interesting. It is the evil genius of our society to blight, more or less disastrously, this faith of its young as they grow up; for our society does not, for most, continue to provide enough worth-while opportunities and relevant duties, and soon it ceases to take them seriously as existing."

"The irony is that in our decades, the combination of rationalism, asceticism, and individualism (the so-called Protestant Ethic) has produced precisely the system of boondoggling, luxury-consumption, and status."

"The ancient dream of man to fly among the stars and go through the could and look down on the lands and seas has degenerated in its realization to the socialized and apathetic behavior of passengers who hardly look out the windows."

"When the sciences are supreme, average people lose their feeling of causality."

"A well-known magazine asks a man how they should refer to him, as Psychologist X, as Author X? He suggests man of letters, for that is what he is, in the eighteenth-century meaning. But they can’t buy that because the word doesn’t exist in Time-style; he cannot be that, and presumably the old function of letters cannot exist."

"Freud pointed out, in his Problem of Lay Analysis, that it is extremely unlikely that a young man who would throw the best years of his life into the cloistered drudgery of getting an M.D. degree, could possibly make a good psychoanalyst; so he preferred to look for young analysts among the writers, the lawyers, the mothers of families, those who had chosen human contact. But in their economic wisdom, the Psychoanalytic Institute of Vienna (and New York) overruled him."

"One striking characteristic of modern education is the unanimous disapproval of exploiting the powerful feeling of shame. … Yet in ancient education, e.g. in the Socratic dialogs, this very arousal of shame is a chief device; the teacher greets the hot flush as a capital sign that the youth is educable, he has noble aims. Such a youth has dignity in his very shame. The difference seems to be that we cannot offer available opportunities for honor, we do not have them; and therefore we must protect what shreds of dignity the youth has. Since he has no future, if we make him ashamed of his past and present, he is reduced to nothing. In other ages, the community had plenty of chances of honor, and to belong to the community itself was an honor."

"Boys today hardly aspire to immortal honor, the honor of self-fulfilling achievement. It is highly disapproved of in the code of the organized system. Instead, they devote themselves to protecting their “personal honor” against insults; and conversely they dream of the transient notoriety which will prove that they are “somebody,” which they doubt. The personal honor that they protect does not include truthfulness, honesty, public usefulness, integrity, independence, or virtues like that. A reputation for these things does not win respect, it has no publicity value; it’s believed to be phony anyway, and if it’s true, the person is hard to get along with."

"The way in which our society does do honor to its indubitably great men … is a study in immunizing people against their virus. … They are the menagerie of Very Important People who exist only for ceremonial occasions. … The effectually prevents the two practical uses that we could make of them. We neither take seriously the simple, direct, fearless souls that they invariably are, whether humble or arrogant, to model ourselves after them because they make more sense as human beings; nor do we have recourse the them to help us when we have need of exceptional purity, magnanimity, profundity, or imagination."

"Few great men could pass personnel."

"We do not behave as if we believed that the affairs of our world were significant enough for the intervention of great men."

"When we choose a man to beautify our towns, we do not automatically call on the major artists of the world. … We now lavishly praise Frank Lloyd Wright, but we never made any community use of him, though he longed for the chance."

"To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man."

"It is a major defect of our present organized system and the economy of abundance that, without providing great goals, it has taken away some of the important real necessities, leaving people with nothing to do. The void is soon filled. Behavior like going into debt on the installment plan, gives an artificial but then real necessity, something to do, paying up. This is the Rat Race, but I doubt that it would be run if people did not need its justifying necessity, for the commodities themselves are not that attractive."

"Can they solve the problem of the nagging unanswerable question of justification and vocation? Their principle is the traditional one of classical mysticism: by “experiences” (“kicks”) to transcend the nagged and nagging self altogether and get out of one’s skin, to where no questions are asked—nor is there any articulate speech to ask them in."

"In such an environment there operates an unfortunate natural selection. Since not only the rewards but also the means and opportunities of public activity belong to the organized system, a bright boy will try to get ahead in it. He will do well in school, keep out of trouble, and apply for the right jobs. It would follow from this that the organized system is sparked by a good proportion of the bright boys, and so it is. On the other hand, in sheer self-protection, smart boys who are sensitive, have strong animal spirits or great souls, cannot play that game. There are two alternative possibilities: (1) Either the advantages of the organized system cause them to inhibit their powers, and they turn into cynical pushers or obsessional specialists or timid hard workers that make up the middle status of the system. Or (2) their natural virtues and perhaps alternative training are too strong and they become independents; but as such they are hard put, not so much hard put for money as for means to act; and so they are likely to become bitter, eccentric, etc., and so much the less effective in changing the system they disapprove"

"The paucity of its vocabulary and syntax is for the Beats essentially expressive of withdrawal from the standard civilization and its learning. On the other hand this paucity gives, instead of opportunities for thought and problem solving, considerable satisfaction in the act and energy of speaking itself, as is true of any simple adopted language, such as pig Latin. But this can have disadvantages. One learns to one’s frustration that they regard talk as an end in itself, as a means of self-expression, without subject matter. In a Beat group it is bad form to assert or deny a proposition as true or false, probable or improbable, or to want to explore its meaning."

"Let me formulate the artistic disposition as follows: it is reacting with one’s ideal to the flaw in oneself and in the world, and somehow making that reaction formation solid enough in the medium so that it indeed becomes an improved bit of real world for others."

"In a milieu of resignation, where the young men think of society as a closed room in which there are no values but the rejected rat race, … it is extremely hard to aim at objective truth or world culture. One’s own products are likely to be personal or parochial."

"An awkward consequence of heightening experience when one is inexperienced, of self-transcendence when one has not much world to lose, is that afterward one cannot be sure that one was somewhere or had newly experienced anything. If you aren’t much in the world, how do you know you are “out of this world”?"

"Their religion is unfeasible, for one cannot richly meet the glancing present … without long discipleship and secure sustenance."

"In our truly remarkable an unexampled civil peace, where there are rarely fist fights; where no one is born, is gravely ill, or dies; where meat is eaten but no one sees an animal slaughtered; where scores of millions of cars, trains, elevators, and airplanes go their scheduled way and there is rarely a crash; where an immense production proceeds in orderly efficiency and the shelves are duly clears—and nevertheless none of this come to joy or tragic grief or any other final good—it is not surprising if there are explosions."

"Literary critics like Lionel Trilling … demand that our novels illuminate the manners and morals of prevailing society. Professor Trilling is right, because otherwise what use are they for us? But he is wrong-headed, because he does not see that the burden of proof is not on the artist but on our society. If such convenient criticism of prevalent life does not get to be written, it is likely that the prevailing society is not inspiring enough; its humanity is not great enough, it does not have enough future, to be worth the novelist’s trouble."

"Odonanism is roughly identifiable with anarchism. I think it is a fairly identifiable form of the anarchist lineage of Kropotkin, Emma Goldman and, to a large extent, Paul Goodman. It's pacifist anarchism, an identifiable tradition, not Bakhunism. It's just that nobody else had ever used it for fiction-it seemed such a pity."

"I read Goodman and Kropotkin and Emma and the rest, and finally found a politics I liked. But then I had to integrate these political ideas, which I'd formulated over a good year's reading, into a novel, a utopia. The whole process took quite a while, as you might imagine, and there were hundreds of little details that never found their way into the novel."

"("I wonder what you think the writer's role is in terms of addressing politics in the world.") I never really think of that though I'm often asked that question. I always think that the writer's role is to get off her or his ass and to get on the street and do something. But that answer does not satisfy people. But to me that's a very important thing. I think of someone like Paul Goodman who really felt that the thing was action. So then he could write all the love poems he wanted for the rest of his life."

"Sometimes you come to literature that seems related to your own in some ways, but after you've been writing for a while. And then you feel terribly corroborated. Like Paul's [Goodman] stories, the ones I really love the most, I read them much later, but they made me feel very good about certain things I was doing."

"Appalachia. Appalachia ... Good God I lived there, in the northern fringe, on a little sub-marginal farm in western Pennsylvania, for the first eighteen years of my life. Eighteen years. Good God. Finally rescued by Hitler and the war (The war), the draft, the United States Army, God bless them all. Otherwise, who knows, I might still be there driving a coal truck for the strippers, or teaching English to sullen delinquents with TV-shriveled minds in some grimy small-town high school, or even--God, the soul curls to think of it--traipsing the Appalachian Trail from end to end, for fun! for recreation! for re-creation!"

"Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now."

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair."

"We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view."

"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer." Egalite implies liberte. And always will. Let us hope our weapons are never needed — but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government – and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.”"

"Enjoy our great American West -- climb those mountains, run those rivers, hike those canyons, explore those forests, and share in the bounty of wilderness, friendship, love, and the common effort to save what we love. Do this and we will be strong, and bold, and happy, we will outlive our enemies, we will live to piss on their graves."

"My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time."

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you — beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."

"This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome — there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment."

"I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse."

"I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake."

"All living things on earth are kindred."

"I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. (Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!)"

"Love flowers best in openness and freedom."

"Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful."

"A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time."

"Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless."

"Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness."

"We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may not ever need to go there."

"But the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us — if only we were worthy of it."

"When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes — disease and death and the rotting of flesh."

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself."

"I am not an atheist but an earthiest."

"To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed."

"Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism."

"To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori; Civilization is Sartre; culture Cocteau; Civilization is mutual aid and self-defense; culture is the judge, the lawbook and the forces of Law & Ordure (sic); Civilization is uprising, insurrection, revolution; culture is the war of state against state, or of machines against people, as in Hungary and Vietnam; Civilization is tolerance, detachment and humor, or passion, anger, revenge; culture is the entrance examination, the gas chamber, the doctoral dissertation and the electric chair; Civilization is the Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno fighting the Germans, then the Reds, then the Whites, then the Reds again; culture is Stalin and the Fatherland; Civilization is Jesus turning water into wine; culture is Christ walking on the waves; Civilization is a youth with a Molotov cocktail in his hand; culture is the Soviet tank or the L.A. cop that guns him down; Civilization is the wild river; culture, 592,000 tons of cement; Civilization flows; culture thickens and coagulates, like tired, sick, stifled blood."

"“Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.”"

"Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul."

"What's more American than violence?" Hayduke wanted to know. "Violence, it's as American as pizza pie."

"My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving."

"He recalled Dr. Sarvis' favorite apothegm: When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about."

"“What do we know? What do we really know? He licks his dried cracked lips. We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foreknowledge of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement. I challenge that statement. With what? I don't know.”"

"One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork."

"All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires."

"Come on in. The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone — and to no one."

"The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know."

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

"Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly; it's the highway that is ugly."

"As for the "solitary confinement of the mind," my theory is that solipsism, like other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is a product of too much time wasted in library stacks between the covers of a book, in smoke-filled coffeehouses (bad for brains) and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he's a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic."

"One wishes to go on. On this great river one could glide forever — and here we discover the definition of bliss, salvation, Heaven, all the old Mediterranean dreams: a journey from wonder to wonder, drifting through eternity into ever-deeper, always changing grandeur, through beauty continually surpassing itself: the ultimate Homeric voyage."

"The longest journey begins with a single step, not with the turn of an ignition key. That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t much matter whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. Right where you started."

"There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated and anyone can transport himself anywhere, instantly. Big deal, Buckminster. To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me."

"Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human."

"I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain."

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders."

"The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. If man in his newfound power and vanity persists in the attempt to remake the planet in his own image, he will succeed only in destroying himself — not the planet. The earth will survive our most ingenious folly."

"Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second."

"[Concerning river runners:] If we were going into war again I can't think of any I'd rather have on our side. I mean, all of these good men and women. And if they were on the other side I'd join the other side."

"Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death. Loving our mysterious blue planet, we resolve riddles and dissolve all enigmas in contingent bliss."

"I would give ten years off the beginning of my life to see, only once, Tyrannosaurus rex come rearing up from the elms of Central Park, a Morgan police horse screaming in its jaws. We can never have enough of nature."

"Beyond the wall of the unreal city … there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it. And then — May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God's dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night."

"If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world implies contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature."

"I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie."

"There's beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere."

"I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun."

"'There is no situation so bad that the cops can't make it worse.'"

"'Don't let yourself become cynical. Cynicism is a cheap emotion, a craven substitute for thought and action. Cynicism corrodes the will, dulls the conscience, blunts your sense of right and wrong... Stay alert to fine distinctions: become a pessimist like me.'"

"'A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.'"

"As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth."

"When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble."

"Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything."

"One thing more dangerous than getting between a grizzly sow and her cub is getting between a businessman and a dollar bill."

"Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins."

"The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses."

"With the neutron bomb, which destroys life but not property, capitalism has found the weapon of its dreams."

"There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed."

"Nothing could be older than the daily news, nothing deader than yesterday's newspaper."

"Among politicians and businessman, Pragmatism is the current term for "To hell with our children.""

"Business: Busyness."

"The plow has probably done more harm — in the long run — than the sword."

"Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues."

"From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm."

"According to the current doctrines of mysticoscientism, we human animals are really and actually nothing but "organic patterns of nodular energy composed of collocations of infinitesimal points oscillating on the multi-dimensional coordinates of the space-time continuum." I'll have to think about that. Sometime. Meantime, I'm going to gnaw on this sparerib, drink my Blatz beer, and contemplate the a posteriori coordinates of that young blonde over yonder, the one in the tennis skirt, tying her shoelaces."

"Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart."

"Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion."

"The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny."

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets."

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

"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."

"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others."

"In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority."

"The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws."

"Freedom begins between the ears."

"The "Terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years."

"Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and powerful."

"What's the difference between a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money."

"When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about."

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."

"An empty man is full of himself."

"I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving."

"If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness."

"The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative."

"God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore."

"Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers — obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls."

"If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a Juniper tree or the wings of a vulture-that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves."

"My motive for what I am going to do is simply personal revenge. I do not expect to accomplish anything by it.… I certainly don't claim to be an altruist or acting for the "good" (whatever that is) of the human race. I act merely from a desire for revenge. Of course, I would like to get revenge on the whole scientific and bureaucratic establishment, not to mention the communists and others who threaten freedom, but that being impossible, I have to content myself with just a little revenge."

"After I had skipped 6th grade and begun feeling a great deal of hostility toward many of my schoolmates, I developed a habit of trying to find ways of justifying my hatred in terms of my moral system. By and by I got bored with this game. One day when I was 13 years old, I was walking down the street and saw a girl. Something about her appearance antagonized me and, from habit, I began looking for a way to justify hating her, within my logical system. But then I stopped and said to myself, "This is getting ridiculous. I'll just chuck all this silly morality business and hate anybody I please." Since then I have never had any interest in or respect for morality, ethics, or anything of the sort."

"Just then came a major turning point in my life. Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope. I thought I wanted to kill that psychiatrist because the future looked utterly empty to me. I felt I wouldn't care if I died. And so I said to myself why not really kill the psychiatrist and anyone else whom I hate.… I will kill, but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection so that I can kill again."

"This guy is clearly typical member of the technician class. Might even be one of the guys that has flown those fucking jets over my home. This gives great relief to my choking, frustrated anger and sense of impotence against the system. At the same time, must admit I feel badly about having crippled this man’s arm. It has been bothering me a good deal. This is embarrassing because while my feelings are partly from pity, I am sure they come largely from the training, propaganda, brainwashing we all get, conditioning us to be scared by the idea of doing certain things. It is shameful to be under the sway of this brainwashing. But do not get the idea that I regret what I did. Relief of frustrated anger outweighs uncomfortable conscience."

"Recently I camped in a paradise like glacial cirque. At evening, beautiful singing of birds was ruined by the obscene roar of jet planes. Then I laughed at the idea of having any compunction about crippling an airplane pilot."

"But what first motivated me wasn’t anything I read. I just got mad seeing the machines ripping up the woods."

"The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible."

"Many years ago I used to read books like, for example, Ernest Thompson Seton's Lives of Game Animals to learn about animal behavior. But after a certain point, after living in the woods for a while, I developed an aversion to reading any scientific accounts. In some sense reading what the professional biologists said about wildlife ruined or contaminated it for me. What began to matter to me was the knowledge I acquired about wildlife through personal experience."

"No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that's what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit."

"Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost."

"I must tell you that mathematicians are not scientists, they are artists. ... Apart from the most elementary mathematics, like arithmetic or high school algebra, the symbols, formulas and words of mathematics have no meaning at all. The entire structure of pure mathematics is a monstrous swindle, simply a game, a reckless prank. You may well ask: "Are there no renegades to reveal the truth?" Yes, of course. But the facts are so incredible that no one takes them seriously. So the secret is in no danger."

"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."

"The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine."

"If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later."

"The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call feelings of inferiority and oversocialization. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential"

"Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society."

"We are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not."

"Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression."

"In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one's physical needs."

"And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors)."

"Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. But we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today."

"A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society."

"Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren't interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process."

"In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work."

"Also, science and technology constitute a power mass movement, and many scientists gratify their need for power through identification with this mass movement. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research."

"One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness."

"In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people."

"A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do."

"People do not consciously and rationally choose the form of their society. Societies develop through processes of social evolution that are not under rational human control."

"The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior."

"The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system."

"The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress."

"A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on one another. You can’t get rid of the "bad" parts of technology and retain only the "good" parts."

"It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises."

"Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straightforward social problems. How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology?"

"We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be reformed in such a way as to reconcile freedom with technology. The only way out is to dispense with the industrial-technological system altogether. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature of society."

"Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.)"

"To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been."

"The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) don't think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it."

"Smashing up McDonald's or Starbuck's is pointless. Not that I give a damn about McDonald's or Starbuck's. I don't care whether anyone smashes them up or not. But that is not a revolutionary activity. Even if every fast-food chain in the world were wiped out the techno-industrial system would suffer only minimal harm as a result, since it could easily survive without fast-food chains. When you attack McDonald's or Starbuck's, you are not hitting where it hurts."

"The techno-industrial system is exceptionally tough due to its so-called "democratic" structure and its resulting flexibility. Because dictatorial systems tend to be rigid, social tensions and resistance can be built up in them to the point where they damage and weaken the system and may lead to revolution. But in a "democratic" system, when social tension and resistance build up dangerously the system backs off enough, it compromises enough, to bring the tensions down to a safe level."

"There are two kinds of morality—the kind of morality that one imposes on oneself and the kind of morality that one imposes on others. For the first kind of morality, that is, for self-restraint, I have the greatest respect. The second kind of morality I do not respect except when it constitutes self-defense. (For example, when women say that rape and wife-beating are immoral, that is self-defense.) I have noticed that the people who try hardest to impose moral code on others (not in self-defense) are often the least careful to abide by that moral code themselves."

"To judge from the Internet postings that people have sent me, probably most of what you learned [about me] was nonsense."

"A mistake that most people make is to assume that the more followers you can recruit, the better. That's true if you are trying to win an election. A vote is a vote regardless of whether the voter is deeply committed or just barely interested enough to get to the polls. But when you're building a revolutionary movement, the number of people you have is far less important than the quality of your people and the depth of their commitment. Too many lukewarm or otherwise unsuitable people will ruin the movement."

"Rebellion against technology and civilization is real rebellion, a real attack on the values of the existing system. But the green anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (The "GA Movement") have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values."

"Its is important, too, to realize that deadly violence among primitives is not even remotely comparable to modern warfare. When primitives fight, two little bands of men shoot arrows or swing war-clubs at one another because they want to fight; or because they are defending themselves, their families, or their territory. In the modern world soldiers fight because they have been brainwashed into believing in some kook ideology such as that of Nazism, socialism, or what American politicians choose to call "freedom". In any case the modern soldier is merely a pawn, a dupe who dies not for his family or his tribe but for the politicians who exploit him. If he's unlucky, maybe he does not die but comes home horribly crippled in a way that would never result from an arrow- or a spear-wound. Meanwhile, thousands of non-combatants are killed or mutilated. The environment is ravaged, not only in the war zone, but also back home, due to the accelerated consumption of natural resources needed to feed the war machine. In comparison, the violence of primitive man is relatively innocuous."

"There are many people today who see that modern society is heading toward disaster in one form or another, and who moreover recognize technology as the common thread linking the principal dangers that hang over us."

"People ... can think of nothing better to do than to continue attacking particular evils while vaguely hoping that their work will somehow help to solve the overall problem of technology. In reality their work is counterproductive, because it distracts attention from the technological system itself as the underlying source of the evils and leads people to focus instead on problems of limited significance that moreover cannot be permanently solved while the technological system continues to exist."

"The development of a society can never be subject to rational human control."

"In the short term, natural selection favors self-propagating systems that pursue their own short-term advantage with little or no regard for long-term consequences."

"Where (as today) problems of transportation and communication do not constitute effective limitations on the size of the geographical regions over which self-propagating systems operate, natural selection tends to create a world in which power is mostly concentrated in the possession of a relatively small number of global self-propagating systems."

"As technology progresses and globalization grows more pervasive, the world-system becomes ever more complex and more tightly coupled, so that a catastrophic breakdown has to be expected sooner or later."

"Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth's climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. ... We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions."

"It seems amazing that those who advocate energy conservation haven't noticed what happens: As soon as some energy is freed up by conservation, the technological world-system gobbles it up and demands more. No matter how much energy is provided, the system always expands rapidly until it is using all available energy, and then it demands still more."

"The ultimate goal of a revolutionary movement today must be the total collapse of the worldwide technological system."

"An antitechnological movement that focused on the elimination of capitalism would gain little in return for an enormous expenditure of energy. What is worse, by focusing on capitalism the movement would distract its own and other people's attention from the far more important objective of bringing down the technological system itself."

"Once a man is a murderer, I don't give a damn what his opinions are. His opinions are of no interest to me. What I know about him is that he's a murderer, a creator of pain and suffering, and his opinions are disqualified from being of interest to any civilized human being."

"It was a feeling of being trapped – trapped in this brother relationship, trapped in this dilemma in which people's lives were at stake either way. One way, if we did nothing, another bomb might go off and more people might die. The other way, I turned Ted in and he would be executed."

"[The first time Kaczynski's sister-in-law thought he might be the unabomber] I'd thought about the families that were bombed. There was one in which the package arrived to the man's home and his little 2-year-old daughter was there. She was almost in the room when he opened the package. Luckily she left, and his wife left. [...] And then he died. And there were others. And so I spent those days thinking about those people."

"In the 1960s there was a young man who had just graduated from the University of Michigan who was doing brilliant work in mathematics, specifically bounded harmonic functions. Then he went to Berkeley, where he was an assistant professor and showed amazing potential. Then he moved to Montana and blew the competition away."

"I am a witch, by which I mean that I am somebody who believes that the earth is sacred, and that women and women's bodies are one expression of that sacred being. My spirituality has always been linked to my feminism. Feminism is about challenging unequal power structures. So, it also means challenging inequalities in race, class, sexual preference. What we need to be doing is not just changing who holds power, but changing the way we conceive of power. There is the power we're all familiar with — power over. But there is another kind of power — power from within. For a woman, it is the power to be fertile either in terms of having babies or writing books or dancing or baking bread or being a great organizer. It is the kind of power that doesn't depend on depriving someone else."

"Much of what is written on the craft is biased in one way or another, so weed out what is useful to you and ignore the rest. I see the next few years as being crucial in the transformation of our culture away from the patriarchal death cults and toward the love of life, of nature, of the female principle. The craft is only one path among the many opening up for women, and many of us will blaze new trails as we explore the uncharted country of our own interiors. The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts — Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be."

"The witches, the wise women, and the healers were also always the counselors. It's a whole other tradition of knowledge and learning that has been suppressed because it had political implications."

"Each being is sacred — meaning that each has inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being."

"Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do a ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. The inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power. If you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, don't do it."

"...They would probably only get a little while, if that, but even a drop of happiness could color a whole well of misery."

"Spirituality leaps where science cannot yet follow, because science must always test and measure, and much of reality and human experience is immeasurable."

"In the Craft, we do not believe in the Goddess — we connect with her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all."

"The test of a true myth is that each time you return to it, new insights and interpretations arise."

"Witchcraft offers the model of a religion of poetry, not theology. It presents metaphors, not doctrines, and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation of science and religion, of many ways of knowing."

"The mythology and cosmology of Witchcraft are rooted in that “Paleolithic shaman’s insight”: that all things are swirls of energy, vortexes of moving forces, currents in an ever-changing sea. Underlying the appearance of separateness, of fixed objects within a linear stream of time, reality is a field of energies that congeal, temporarily, into forms. In time, all “fixed” things dissolve, only to coalesce again into new forms, new vehicles."

"The primary principle of magic is connection. The universe is a fluid, everchanging energy pattern, not a collection of fixed and separate things. What affects one thing affects, in some way, all things: All is interwoven into the continuous fabric of being."

"Energy flows in spirals. Its motion is always circular, cyclical, wavelike. The spiral motion is revealed in the shape of galaxies, shells, whirlpools, DNA. Sound, light, and radiation travel in waves—which themselves are spirals viewed in a flat plane. The moon waxes and wanes, as do the tides, the economy, and our own vitality. The implications of the spiral model are many. Essentially, it means that no form of energy can be exerted indefinitely in one direction only. Always, it will reach a peak, a point of climax, and then turn."

"The Trickster represents the quality of randomness and chance in the universe, without which there could be no freedom. In the Craft the Goddess is not omnipotent. The cosmos is interesting rather than perfect, and everything is not part of some greater plan, nor is all necessarily under control. Understanding this keeps us humble, able to admit that we cannot know or control or define everything."

"Any creative work that is truly alive is influenced by a thousand chance factors in its generation."

"When power relations of domination are no longer the norm in society, and when men assume truly equal shares of all aspects of childrearing, perhaps we will be able to fully reclaim the nurturing aspects of the God. Until then, let us hope some men will begin this process by the way they lead their lives."

"One of the great disservices a culture of domination has done to all of us is to confuse the erotic with domination and violence. The God is wild, but his is the wildness of connection, not of domination. Wildness is not the same as violence. Gentleness and tenderness do not translate into wimpiness. When men — or women, for that matter — begin to unleash what is untamed in us, we need to remember that the first images and impulses we encounter will often be the stereotyped paths of power we have learned in a culture of domination. To become truly wild, we must not be sidetracked by the dramas of power-over, the seduction of addictions, or the thrill of control. We must go deeper."

"We need to fully feel and express our emotions without worrying that they are likely to cause harm to another. But intensely and obsessively brooding on one's anger or resentment is not a good thing to do."

"The Conqueror, whose core issue is safety splits us into Conqueror and Enemy/Victim, tells us, "Don't trust!" and generates fear, paranoia, distortions of reality, and the need to annihilate enemies. The Conqueror seduces us by making us feel special, sometimes grandiose and self-righteous, sometimes especially weak and victimized."

"The Judge, whose core issue is our sense of worth and value, splits us into Judge and Subject to be Judged. When possessed by the Judge, we live in a world of comparisons, competition, and punishment, constantly rate ourselves and others, feel jealousy and guilt. The Judge seduces us with the false promise that we can gain value if we obey, perform, produce."

"The Orderer, whose core issue is control, splits us into Controller and Out-of-Control selves, tells us "Don't Feel", and generates anxiety, rigidity, and addictions. The Orderer seduces us with the belief that order can be imposed from without, that the answer to chaos is more rigid order."

"The Censor, whose core issue is isolation and connection, splits us into Silencer and Secret-to-be-kept, tells us, "Don't speak of it; don't see it; you're the only one who ever felt that." Possessed by the Censor, we feel shame confusion, and blame, often for the victim, or we live in denial. The Censor deludes us with the belief that the pain we are in will go away if we don't name it or speak of it."

"This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; the center is also the circumference of all. We are awake in the night. We turn the Wheel to bring the light. We call the sun from the womb of night. Blessed Be!"

"The tide has turned! The light will come again! In a new dawn, in a new day, The sun is rising! Io! Evohe! Blessed Be!"

"Magic is another word that makes people uneasy, so I use it deliberately, because words they are comfortable with, the words that sound acceptable, rational, scientific, and intellectually sound, are comfortable precisely because they are the language of estrangement."

"When we practice magic we are always making connections, moving energy, identifying with other forms of being. Magic could be called the applied science that is based on an understanding of how energy makes patterns and patterns direct energy. To put it another way, at its heart is a paradox:"

"To live with integrity in an unjust society we must work for justice. To walk with integrity through a landscape strewn with beer cans, we must stop and pick them up."

"Sexual integrity means honestly recognizing our own impulses and desires and honoring them, whether or not we choose to act on them. If we value integrity, we must also value diversity in sexual expression and orientation, recognizing that there is no one truth, or one way, that fits everyone. Sexuality is sacred because through it we make a connection with another self — but it is misused and perverted when it becomes an arena of power-over, a means of treating another — or oneself — as an object."

"We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free."

""...We believe we can continue to live and thrive only if we care for one another. This is the age of the Reaper, when we inherit five thousand years of postponed results, the fruits of our callousness toward the earth and toward other human beings. But at last we have come to understand that we are part of the earth, part of the air, the fire, and the water, as we are part of one another.” (p17)"

""What I say, what I have always said, is there has got to be an end to it. Now is the time to make an end. There will never be a better time, because there is always a reason to fight and kill and build more guns and weapons..." (p239)"

"The Goddess religion asserts that the earth is alive, and that everything on the earth is part of a living being. We believe that you can celebrate life in many different images and forms, that life moves in cycles of birth and growth and death and rebirth, and that the same spirit moves through nature, through the cycles of the seasons, through the birth and growth and death of plants and animals, and through our lives as human beings. There is a multiplicity of images that you can draw upon for understanding and power, but the reason we focus on the goddess is partly to counterbalance the 5,000 years worth of focus on male holy images, and partly to affirm that bringing life into the world is sacred. Our goal is not to get out of the world or to get out of life, but to integrate it, to celebrate it, to embrace it fully, and to embrace all the different cycles within it"

"I'm going to end with a vision I have for the winter solstice: There are bonfires everywhere strung along the beaches, blazing on twin peaks on all the high places. In the parks and on rooftops small groups gather around cauldrons. There are no mass meetings, only circles."

"The Spiral Dance is a seed planted twenty years ago. Over the last two decades, the goddess movement has grown from many seeds like a garden of long-life flowers and healing herbs. It's a big garden — I've tended only one corner of it."

"The word witch is related to the root of the word "willow," a very flexible tree. Since ancient times witches have been known as those who can bend or shape fate. We twist the energies. The idea of witch became synonymous with wise woman, and with others who were herbalists and healers and keepers of the old traditions after the advent of Christianity. We were the ones who really knew the land and knew what grew there, and how to use it."

"The god is Eros, but he is also Logos, the power of the mind. In witchcraft there is no opposition between the two. The bodily desire for union and the emotional desire for connection are transmuted into the intellectual desire for knowledge, which is also a form of union. Knowledge can be both analytic and synthetic; it can take these apart and look at differences, or form a pattern from unintegrated parts and see the whole."

"We join together to earth the power of the season and to slip between the worlds, the voices saying to every one of us, "Wake up, you are it, you are a part of the circle of the wise. There is no mystery that has not already been revealed to you. There is no power you do not already have. You share in all the love there is. The goddess awakens in infinite forms and a thousand disguises. She is found where she is least expected, appears out of nowhere and everywhere to illumine the open heart. She is singing, crying, moaning, wailing, shrieking, crooning to us, to be awake, to commit ourselves to life, to be a lover in the world and of the world, to join our voices in the single song of constant change and creation. For her law is to love all beings, and she is the cup of the drink of life. The circle is ever open, ever unbroken."

""Another world is possible!" is the slogan created at the World Social Forum in Brazil in 2001. Another world is also necessary, for this one is unjust, unsustainable, and unsafe. It's up to us to envision, fight for, and create that world, a world of freedom, real justice, balance, and shared abundance, a world woven in a new design. (p8)"

"This is how it works: Someone has a vision that arises from a fierce and passionate love. To make it real, we must love every moment of what we do. Impermanent spirals embed themselves in asphalt, concrete, dust. Slowly, slowly, they eat into the foundations of the structures of power. Deep transformations take time. Regeneration arises from decay. Si, se puede! It can be done. (p26)"

"In a culture where profit has become the true God, self-sacrifice can seem incomprehensible rather than noble. (p215)"

"No sane person with a life really wants to be a political activist. When activism is exciting, it tends to involve the risk of bodily harm or incarceration, and when it's safe, it is often tedious, dry, and boring. Activism tends to put one into contact with extremely unpleasant people, whether they are media interviewers, riot cops, or at times, your fellow activists. Not only that, it generates enormous feelings of frustration and rage, makes your throat sore from shouting, and hurts your feet. Nonetheless, at this moment in history, we are called to act as if we truly believe that the Earth is a living, conscious being that we're part of, that human beings are interconnected and precious, and that liberty and justice for all is a desirable thing."

"When we founded Reclaiming two decades ago, our intention was to bring together the spiritual and the political. Or more accurately, some of us for whom the spiritual and the political were inseparable wanted to create a practice and community that reflected this integration. Now, with the Bush forces pushing into an aggressive war, with horrific environmental and social problems left unaddressed, the need for activism is stronger than ever. The stakes have never been higher, and the sense of urgency is palpable."

"Spirituality and ritual are not something removed from the world, but are deeply embedded in it. Reclaiming is founded on Earth-based spirituality, which rejects the split between spirit and matter, and claims nature and the physical, material world as equally sacred with the spirit."

"We don't ideologically believe in the separation of spirit and matter, but in practice, we still tend to think that things that are too material, too real-life, are somehow not as spiritual. So a trance to Faery is perceived as "spiritual," whereas a trance to a Brazilian favela slum is not. We can argue about the reality of Faery, but the favela is undeniably real. If we truly believe that our spirituality is about deep interconnectedness, maybe it's more important for us to grapple internally with the reality of the favela than to dance with the faeries."

"Much of our magic and our community work is about creating spaces of refuge from a harsh and often hostile world, safe places where people can heal and regenerate, renew our energies and learn new skills. In that work, we try to release guilt, rage, and frustration, and generally turn them into positive emotions. Safety and refuge and healing are important aspects of spiritual community. But they are not the whole of spirituality. Feeling good is not the measure by which we should judge our spiritual work. Ritual is more than self-soothing activity. Spirituality is also about challenge and disturbance, about pushing our edges and giving us the support we need to take great risks. The Goddess is not just a light, happy maiden or a nurturing mother. She is death as well as birth, dark as well as light, rage as well as compassion — and if we shy away from her fiercer embrace we undercut both her own power and our own growth."

"There are times when it is inappropriate to feel wholly good. Now is one of them. As the saying goes, "If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention." This doesn't mean that we need to be in a constant state of rage or irritability or guilt. It means we need to use our magical tools to face the stark and overwhelming realities that confront us, acknowledge our feelings, and transmute them into the energy we need for change."

"Everyone has the right to their own opinion about a ritual, and to their own aesthetics. There's generally at least one invocation in every ritual that I could personally do without."

"The water we hold sacred is not some abstract image or fantasy of Water, but the real stuff that we need to drink and bathe and grow our gardens, that provides the crucial habitat for fish and plants and thousands of other creatures, that is the Earth's literal life blood."

"Another common, unspoken assumption is that spirituality is about calm and peace, and conflict is unspiritual. Which of course makes it hard to integrate the spiritual with the political, which is all about conflict. In New Age circles, a common slogan is that "What you resist, persists." Truly spiritual people are never supposed to be confrontational or adversarial — that would be perpetuating an unevolved, "us-them" dualism. I don't know from what spiritual tradition the "what you resist, persists" slogan originated, but I often want to ask those who blithely repeat it, "What's your evidence?" When it is so patently obvious that what you don't resist persists like hell and spreads all over the place. In fact, good, strong, solid resistance may be the only thing that stands between us and hell. Hitler didn't persist because of the Resistance — he succeeded in taking over Germany and murdering millions because not enough people resisted."

"On some deep cosmic level, we are all one, and within us we each contain the potential for good and for destruction, for compassion and hate, for generosity and greed. But even if I acknowledge the full range of impulses within myself, that doesn't erase the differences between a person acting from compassion and love, and another choosing to act from hate and greed. Moreover, it doesn't erase my responsibility to challenge a system which furthers hate and greed. If I don't resist such a system, I am complicit in what it does. I join the perpetrators in oppressing the victims."

"I am often astonished at well-meaning, spiritual people who advocate beaming light toward world leaders, who scold activists for expressing anger toward authorities or police, who define compassion as loving the enemy — but somehow lose sight of the need to love our friends, our allies, and those who suffer at the hands of the perpetrators. I really don't feel much call to beam love and light at Bush or Cheney or the directors of the International Monetary Fund. Whether or not they suffer from lack of love is beyond me. From my perspective, they suffer from an excess of power, and I feel called to take it away from them. Because I do love the child in Iraq, the woman in the favela, the eighteen-year-old recruit to the Marines who never dreamed he was signing up to bomb civilians. I can't love them, or myself and my community, effectively if I can't articulate the real differences in interests and agendas between "us" and "them" — between those who have too little social power and those who have too much."

"Systems don't change easily. Systems try to maintain themselves, and seek equilibrium. To change a system, you need to shake it up, disrupt the equilibrium. That often requires conflict. To me, conflict is a deeply spiritual place. It's the high-energy place where power meets power, where change and transformation can occur."

"Our magical tools and insights, our awareness of energies and allies on many planes, can deepen and inform our activism. And our activism can deepen our magic, by encouraging us to create ritual that speaks to the real challenges we face in the world, offers the healing and renewal we need to continue working, and a community that understands that spirit and action are one."

"Instead of closing our eyes to meditate, we need to open our eyes and observe. Unless our spiritual practice is grounded in a real connection to the natural world, we run the risk of simply manipulating our own internal imagery and missing the real communication taking place all around us. (p11)"

"I use “Witch” to identify with the heritage outlined above, to place myself firmly in the line of outlaw healers and purveyors of unapproved wisdom. And I use the word “magic” for much the same reason. I could say “sophisticated non-mechanistic psychology,” but that term lacks the same ring. Magic is a discipline of the mind, and it begins with understanding how consciousness is shaped and how our view of reality is constructed. Since the time of the Witch persecutions, knowledge that derives from the worldview of an animate, interconnected, dynamic universe is considered suspect—either outright evil or simply woo-woo. But whenever an area of knowledge is considered suspect, our minds are constricted. The universe is too big, too complex, too ever-changing for us to know it completely, so we choose to view it through a certain frame—one that screens out pieces of information that conflict with the categories in our minds. The narrower that frame, the more we screen out, the less we are capable of understanding or doing. (p26)"

"Because everything is interdependent, there are no simple, single causes and effects. Every action creates not just an equal and opposite reaction, but a web of reverberating consequences. (p33)"

"Systems change in response to forces that disturb their equilibrium. External forces, changes in conditions, new energies, and new challenges can shake up self-regulating cycles. So one way to change a system is to stir it up. That’s the role of protest and direct action, and it’s the reason why stronger forms of action are often necessary to bring change. Sweet reason, gentle persuasion, and dialogue that doesn’t challenge the functioning of the system often end up becoming incorporated in the system’s own efforts to maintain equilibrium. (p37)"

"The essence of nonviolence is choice: acknowledging that we always do have a choice about whether or not to use violence, and posing an expanded range of choices to those in power. (p64)"

"I'm here to change the world, and if I am not, I am probably wasting my time."

"No root, no fruit."

"As I have said so often before, the long memory is the most radical idea in America….""

"We, the American People, are enormously wealthy. You know that? Who owns all of those trees in the national forests? (This is not a rhetorical question.) We do! Who owns all of that off-shore oil you read about in the newspaper, huh? We do! Who owns all of those minerals under the federal lands? We do! It’s public property, you know. But we elect people to go to Washington—who are those assholes?—what have we gotten ourselves into now?—they go to Washington, they lease off what we own, public property, to private companies to sell us back our own stuff for the sake of a greasy buck. That’s dumb."

"You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They're going to strip mine your soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!"

"But they lived those extraordinary lives that can never be lived again. And in the living of them, they gave me a history that is more profound, more beautiful, more powerful, more passionate, and ultimately more useful, than the best damn history book I ever read."

"I coulda got mad. But then I had to stop and think, well, what did he get in school? What did he get in his work experience? What did he get even from his own union, that gave him some tools to understand what he was seeing on that television?"

"Talking to a conservative is like talking to your refrigerator... You know, the light goes on, the light goes off; it's not going to do anything that isn't built into it... And I'm not going to talk to a conservative anymore than I talk to my damn refrigerator."

"I coulda got mad. But then I had to stop and think, well, what did he get in school? What did he get in his work experience? What did he get even from his own union, that gave him some tools to understand what he was seeing?"

"The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses."

""Man's inhumanity to man" is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep."

"It is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation. My prison-house environment is but another manifestation of the Midas-hand, whose cursed touch turns everything to the brutal service of Mammon."

"Liberty is an empty sound as long as you are kept in bondage economically. [...] Freedom means that you have the right to do a certain thing; but if you have no opportunity to do it, that right is sheer mockery. The opportunity lies in your economic condition, whatever the political situation may be. No political rights can be of the least use to the man who is compelled to slave all his life to keep himself and family from starvation."

"If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion. If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice cooperation. The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence."

"Terrorism is tempting with its tremendous possibilities. It offers a mechanical solution, as it were, in hopeless situations. … the principles of terrorism unavoidably rebound to the fatal injury of liberty and revolution. Absolute power corrupts and defeats its partisans no less than its opponents. A people that knows not liberty becomes accustomed to dictatorship: fighting despotism and counter-revolution, terrorism itself becomes their efficient school. Once on the road of terrorism, the State necessarily becomes estranged from the people."

"Neither his experiences in Russia nor the bitterness of his émigré life ever shook his great courage or his boundless devotion to his ideal. Perhaps it was the impossibility of serving as he had wished to, and was fitted to serve, the country which had symbolized his hopes that was the indirect cause of his voluntary and untimely end. His death was as brave as his life had been."

"They were always busy, always thinking of America and their friends there, and longing for wider activity."

"Shortly after my return to Kiev from Odessa I became involved in a situation which was to provide one of the most serious shocks to my Bolshevik illusions-the Pirro incident which Alexander Berkman later described at some length in his book, The Bolshevik Myth."

"My visit with Edward Carpenter lasted the greater part of an afternoon in his modest cottage at Guildford. [...] I attempted to tell him how much his books had meant to me-Towards Democracy, Angel Wings, Walt Whitman. He stopped me, gently putting his hand over mine. Instead I should rather tell him about Alexander Berkman, he said. He had read his Prison Memoirs, "a profound study of man's inhumanity and prison psychology, and of his own martyrdom, portrayed with extraordinary simplicity.""

"Later, she [my mother] met Alexander Berkman, who was a great influence on her life and on my own."

"Emma Goldman, fearless champion of human rights, in Madison Square Garden. Short-sleeved, her fists clenched, she vehemently opposes our entry into the world holocaust, and is threatened with arrest. "I defy the police, when the lives of millions are at stake!"... Alexander Berkman also speaks: "The men of this great land will never let themselves be led by the nose into an imperialist war!""

"it is impossible to know the number of individuals whose political awakening-as with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, long-time revolutionary stalwarts of the next generation came from the Haymarket Affair."

"In the United States Communist-anarchism appealed mostly to working-class immigrants or their children, who felt cheated by false promises of the American dream. Although some declassé intellectuals and American craftworkers joined the communists, the majority of the movement was composed of Eastern European Jews who worked in the sweatshops of New York's garment district, of Italian factory workers, and other immigrants with few skills and little hope of advancement. The two most important figures among them were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Originally followers of Johann Most, they emerged from his shadow in the early nineties to become the foremost advocates of revolutionary anarchism."

"Goldman's chief collaborator in her work as publicist, publisher, and agitator was Alexander Berkman."

"While Goldman took the anarchist message to middle-class audiences, Berkman retained his faith in the revolutionary potential of the working class."

"Berkman and Goldman personified anarchism to Americans who read accounts of their speeches in the press or followed the news of their trials. The police persecution that they faced, the fear that they aroused, the relief with which the nation greeted their deportation-all testify to the sense of power and fierce determination that the two conveyed. And yet, during the first and second decades of the twentieth century, when the anarchists' notoriety was at a peak, their influence among American radicals was actually on the wane. Socialism, not anarchism, had become the dominant radical ideology."

"Alexander Berkman, “Sasha” to his friends, was a rebel from early childhood. He protested against injustice wherever he saw it...After Berkman was released from prison he continued to devote his life to the revolutionary cause, a convinced anarchist. He worked with all his energies and dedication for the movement, for freedom, and wound up a political refugee in the various countries where he was permitted to live. He was one of the finest, most generous people I ever knew. Although he had very few material possessions, he was always ready to give everything away to others and had to be reminded not to deny himself his urgent personal needs. Berkman made every possible effort to understand and help people...He radiated warmth and comfort, like the rays of the sun...I first met Berkman in New York City in the late Fall, 1919, at the home of Stella Ballantine, Emma Goldman’s niece. We discussed the Russian Revolution and the need to expose the atrocities of the Bolsheviks against the anarchists, socialists and all who dared to criticize their new dictatorial regime in Moscow...Sasha argued that the Bolsheviks should be given a chance, that it was too early to start an organized opposition because the revolution was surrounded by enemies...Our second meeting with Sasha and Emma took place in Berlin four years later, November, 1923, where they had been living for two years, since January, 1922. They had left Soviet Russia greatly disillusioned with the Bolshevik regime. Sasha and Emma were each writing about their experiences in Russia. In addition, Sasha was active organizing help for the anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists and other political Opponents held in prison by the Bolsheviks. He appealed for funds, issued a bulletin in English, translated the letters from men and women prisoners in Russia. He assembled and translated all the material that was published in the book, Letters From Russian Prisons."

"Life was difficult for everyone in Germany after World War I and particularly so for the political refugees. Many of us felt that we had to leave Germany. A number of us went to France, including Sasha and Emma."

"“No audience is too small for me to talk to,” Sasha used to say."

"Emma Goldman and Sasha worked together harmoniously. When guests and reporters came to the house, or even friends of friends, Sasha would welcome them in a warm, friendly manner. He filled the house with a joyful spirit and his discussions were marked with authoritative facts and information...Everyone who knew or talked about Emma and Sasha could not speak of one without mentioning the other. Although they lived their own separate lives, they were inseparable emotionally and spiritually. Neither of them ever wrote a major article or a book without consulting the other. They knew and shared every event in their lives; there were no secrets between them. Their friendship and companionship were the finest. Those of us who were privileged to know them will never forget them...A great part of Emma’s life was lost to her with Sasha’s death."

"The acute physical pain of his prostate gland, his economic difficulties, his precarious status as a political refugee, all combined to cause our warm, genial comrade, who had always been so full of life, to end his sufferings and commit suicide."

"His name will live as long as there are and will continue to be rebels who struggle for genuine, true liberty."

"What I'm continuing to do is cutting out the equation that wastes the most amount of time — and that is working within the system."

"I wish I could do it again, only I wish I could take all of the animals out of the environmental fur farm ... I have absolutely no regrets, and I hope the same thing continues to happen at MSU and every other college campus that does animal research."

"You know, those people - I think they should appreciate that we're only targeting their property. Because frankly I think it's time to start targeting them."

"I’m a member of the Pascua Yaqui Nation and as an indigenous person, the fur trade represents so much more to me than just animal abuse. It represents cultural genocide. They were the foot soldiers of an invasion and conquest in the “new world.” They were the ones who introduced disease. They were the ones who introduced alcoholism. They were the ones who introduced gunpowder and many, many things that led to our decimation."

"You're damn right when you say I've shown people how to make a firebomb, I've done my time for my crimes, and I should be able to talk about them."

"Don't ask me how to burn down a building. As me how to grow watermelons or how to explain nature to a child. that is what I want to grow old doing. Please afford me this."

"In my years past I have argued that economic sabotage was an appropriate tactic for our time. Like all strategists I have also been forced to recognize that times have changed and it is now my belief that the movements to protect earth and animals have achieved enough with this strategy to now consider an approach that does not compromise objectives, but increases the likelihood of real social change. Let our opposition who believe in violence carry the burden for its justification, but let those who believe in peace and love practice a way of life that our society sorely needs now more than ever."

"Years! Years, ye shall mix with me! Ye shall grow a part Of the laughing Sea; Of the moaning heart Of the glittered wave Of the sun-gleam's dart In the ocean-grave. Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own! For that I love Thy heart of stone! From the heights above To the depths below, Where dread things move, There is naught can show A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown! Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!"

"Progress has to do with all mankind, not alone with the calm, the wise, and the patient. There is youth in the world, and youth is generally neither calm nor patient; it does not like to sit in the rear rows and listen to mature considerations rendered in the tone of a stock-market quotation concerning questions that are burning up its heart, itself silent; if it did, it might learn to be wise and calm,—and also ashy and inert. There is feeling in the world, and a very great quantity of it; and those who do the suffering and the sympathizing may be expected to say and to do many things not within the limits of logic."

"Written in red their protest stands, For the Gods of the World to see; On the dooming wall their bodiless hands have blazoned "Upharsin," and flaring brands Illumine the message: "Seize the lands! Open the prisons and make men free!" Flame out the living words of the dead Written-in-red."

"Gods of the World! Their mouths are dumb! Your guns have spoken and they are dust. But the shrouded Living, whose hearts were numb, have felt the beat of a wakening drum Within them sounding — the Dead men’s tongue — Calling: "Smite off the ancient rust!" Have beheld "Resurrexit," the word of the Dead, Written-in-red."

"Bear it aloft, O roaring flame! Skyward aloft, where all may see. Slaves of the World! Our cause is the same; One is the immemorial shame; One is the struggle, and in One name — Manhood— we battle to set men free. "Uncurse us the Land!" burn the words of the Dead, Written-in-red."

"The moonlight rolls down like a river, The silence streams out like a sea; And far where the eastern winds quiver, My farewell goes floating to thee."

"And sometimes when I am weary, When the path is thorny and Wild, I'll look back to the Eyes in the twilight, Back to the eyes that smiled.And pray that a wreath like a rainbow May slip from the beautiful past, And Crown me again with the sweet, strong love And keep me, and hold me fast."

"For the way is not strown with petal soft, It is covered with hearts that weep, And the wounds I tread touch a deeper source Than you think it mine to keep. Down the years I shall move without you, Yet ever must feel the blow That caused me a deeper pain to give Than you will ever know."

"But the world moves on, and the piteous Earth Still groans in the monster pain; And the star that leads me points onward yet, Though the red drops fall like rain!"

"Ah, not to a blaze of light I go, Nor shouts of a triumph train; I go down to kiss the dregs of woe, And drink up the Cup of Pain. And whether a scaffold or crucifix waits 'Neath the light of my silver star, I know and I care not: I only know I shall pause not though it be far."

"Though a crucified life or an agonized death, Though long, or quick and sharp, I am firmly wrought in the endless thread Of Destiny's woof and warp. And I do not shrink, though a wave of pain Sobs over me now and then, As I think of those "saddest of all sad words," The pitiful "might have been.""

"Ay, gather your petals and take them back To the dead heart under the dew; And crown it again with the red love bloom, For the dead are always true. But go not "back to the sediment" In the slime of the moaning sea, For a better world belongs to you, And a better friend to me."

"The paramount question of the day is not political, is not religious, but is economic. The crying-out demand of today is for a circle of principles that shall forever make it impossible for one man to control another by controlling the means of his existence."

"First, then, God, being all-just, wishes to do justice; being all-wise, knows what justice is; being all-powerful, can do justice. Why then injustice? Either your God can do justice and won't or doesn't know what justice is, or he cannot do it. The immediate reply is: "What appears to be injustice in our eyes, in the sight of omniscience may be justice. God's ways are not our ways." Oh, but if he is the all-wise pattern, they should be; what is good enough for God ought to be good enough for man; but what is too mean for man won't do in a God."

"Note the difference between a right and a privilege. A right, in the abstract, is a fact; it is not a thing to be given, established, or conferred; it is. Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never. Privilege, in the abstract, does not exist; there is no such thing. Rights recognized, privilege is destroyed. But, in the practical, the moment you admit a supreme authority, you have denied rights. Practically the supremacy has all the rights, and no matter what the human race possesses, it does so merely at the caprice of that authority."

"Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before."

"An agent is usually held accountable to his principals. If you do not know the individuals who voted for you, then you do not know for whom you are acting, nor to whom you are accountable. If any body of persons has delegated to you any authority, the disposal of any right or part of a right (supposing a right to be transferable), you must have received it from the individuals composing that body; and you must have some means of learning who those individuals are, or you cannot know for whom you act, and you are utterly irresponsible as an agent."

"A man won't steal, ordinarily, unless that which he steals is something he cannot as easily get without stealing; in liberty the cost of stealing would involve greater difficulties than producing, and consequently he would not be apt to steal. But suppose a man steals. Today you go to a representative of that power which has robbed you of the earth, of the right of free contract of the means of exchange, taxes you for everything you eat or wear (the meanest form of robbery), — you go to him for redress from a thief!"

"I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one. On that basis it would not, as a matter of policy merely, be an economical institution."

"This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, Are the blacks good enough to be free? but, Have they the right? So today the question is not, Will outrages result from freeing humanity? but, Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness? In the transition epoch, surely crimes will come. Did the seed of tyranny ever bear good fruit? And can you expect Liberty to undo in a moment what Oppression has been doing for ages? Criminals are the crop of despots, as much a necessary expression of the evil in society as an ulcer is of disease in the blood; and so long as the taint of the poison remains, so long there will be crimes."

""For it must needs that offences come, but woe to him through whom the offence cometh." The crimes of the future are the harvests sown of the ruling classes of the present. Woe to the tyrant who shall cause the offense! Sometimes I dream of this social change. I get a streak of faith in Evolution, and the good in man. I paint a gradual slipping out of the now, to that beautiful then, where there are neither kings, presidents, landlords, national bankers, stockbrokers, railroad magnates, patentright monopolists, or tax and title collectors; where there are no over-stocked markets or hungry children, idle counters and naked creatures, splendor and misery, waste and need. I am told this is farfetched idealism, to paint this happy, povertyless, crimeless, diseaseless world; I have been told I "ought to be behind the bars" for it. Remarks of that kind rather destroy the white streak of faith. I lose confidence in the slipping process, and am forced to believe that the rulers of the earth are sowing a fearful wind, to reap a most terrible whirlwind. When I look at this poor, bleeding, wounded World, this world that has suffered so long, struggled so much, been scourged so fiercely, thorn-pierced so deeply, crucified so cruelly, I can only shake my head and remember:"

"Why, when murder now is stalking in your streets, when dens of infamy are so thick within your city that competition has forced down the price of prostitution to the level of the wages of your starving shirt makers; when robbers sit in State and national Senate and House, when the boasted "bulwark of our liberties," the elective franchise, has become a U. S. dice-box, wherewith great gamblers play away your liberties; when debauchees of the worst type hold all your public offices and dine off the food of fools who support them, why, then, sits Moses Harman there within his prison cell? If he is so great a criminal, why is he not with the rest of the spawn of crime, dining at Delmonico's or enjoying a trip to Europe? If he is so bad a man, why in the name of wonder did he ever get in the penitentiary? … He looked, this obscenist looked with clear eyes into this ill-got thing you call morality, sealed with the seal of marriage, and saw in it the consummation of immorality, impurity, and injustice. He beheld every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passion; who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at his dictation, not at her desire; who can control no property, not even her own body, without his consent, and from whose straining arms the children she bears may be torn at his pleasure, or willed away while they are yet unborn. It is said the English language has a sweeter word than any other, — home. But Moses Harman looked beneath the word and saw the fact, — a prison more horrible than that where he is sitting now, whose corridors radiate over all the earth, and with so many cells, that none may count them."

"That is adultery where woman submits herself sexually to man, without desire on her part, for the sake of "keeping him virtuous," "keeping him at home," the women say. (Well, if a man did not love me and respect himself enough to be "virtuous" without prostituting me, — he might go, and welcome. He has no virtue to keep.) And that is rape, where a man forces himself sexually upon a woman whether he is licensed by the marriage law to do it or not. And that is the vilest of all tyranny where a man compels the woman he says he loves, to endure the agony of bearing children that she does not want, and for whom, as is the rule rather than the exception, they cannot properly provide. It is worse than any other human oppression; it is fairly God-like! To the sexual tyrant there is no parallel upon earth; one must go to the skies to find a fiend who thrusts life upon his children only to starve and curse and outcast and damn them!"

"O height and depth of purity, which fears so much that the children will not know who their fathers are, because, forsooth, they must rely upon their mother's word instead of the hired certification of some priest of the Church, or the Law! I wonder if the children would be improved to know what their fathers have done. I would rather, much rather, not know who my father was than know he had been a tyrant to my mother. I would rather, much rather, be illegitimate according to the statutes of men, than illegitimate according to the unchanging law of Nature."

"He cried out through the letter of Dr. Markland, that a young mother lacerated by unskillful surgery in the birth of her babe, but recovering from a subsequent successful operation, had been stabbed, remorselessly, cruelly, brutally stabbed, not with a knife, but with the procreative organ of her husband, stabbed to the doors of death, and yet there was no redress! And because he called a spade a spade, because he named that organ by its own name, so given in Webster's dictionary and in every medical journal in the country, because of this Moses Harman walks to and fro in his cell tonight. He gave a concrete example of the effect of sex slavery, and for it he is imprisoned. It remains for us now to carry on the battle, and lift the standard where they struck him down, to scatter broadcast the knowledge of this crime of society against a man and the reason for it; to inquire into this vast system of licensed crime, its cause and its effect, broadly upon the race."

"From the birth of the Church, out of the womb of Fear and the fatherhood of Ignorance, it has taught the inferiority of woman. In one form or another through the various mythical legends of the various mythical creeds, runs the undercurrent of the behef in the fall of man through the persuasion of woman, her subjective condition as punishment, her natural vileness, total depravity, etc.; and from the days of Adam until now the Christian Church, with which we live specially to deal, has made Woman the excuse, the scapegoat for the evil deeds of man."

"If there is one thing more than another in this whole accursed tissue of false society, which makes me angry, it is the asinine stupidity which with the true phlegm of impenetrable dullness says, "Why don't the women leave!" Will you tell me where they will go and what they shall do? When the State, the legislators, has given to itself, the politicians, the utter and absolute control of the opportunity to live; when, through this precious monopoly, already the market of labor is so overstocked that workmen and workwomen are cutting each others' throats for the dear privilege of serving their lords; when girls are shipped from Boston to the south and north, shipped in carloads, like cattle, to fill the dives of New Orleans or the lumber-camp hells of my own state..."

"When America passed the fugitive slave law compelling men to catch their fellows more brutally than runaway dogs, Canada, aristocratic, unrepublican Canada, still stretched her arms to those who might reach her. But there is no refuge upon earth for the enslaved sex. Right where we are, there we must dig our trenches, and win or die."

"This, then, is the tyranny of the State; it denies, to both woman and man, the right to earn a living, and grants it as a privilege to a favored few who for that favor must pay ninety per cent toll to the granters of it. These two things, the mind domination of the Church, and the body domination of the State are the causes of sex slavery."

"Who thinks a dog is impure or obscene because its body is not covered with suffocating and annoying clothes? What would you think of the meanness of a man who would put a skirt upon his, horse and compel it to walk or run with such a thing impeding its limbs? Why, the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" would arrest him, take the beast from him, and he would be sent to a lunatic asylum for treatment on the score of an impure mind. And yet, gentlemen, you expect your wives, the creatures you say you respect and love, to wear the longest skirts and the highest necked clothing, in order to conceal the obscene human body. There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women."

"We are permitted to ride, providing we sit in a position ruinous to the horse; providing we wear a riding-habit long enough to hide the obscene human foot, weighed down by ten pounds of gravel to cheat the wind in its free blowing, so running the risk of disabling ourselves completely should accident throw us from the saddle. Think how we swim! We must even wear clothing in the water, and run the gauntlet of derision, if we dare battle in the surf minus stockings!"

"In the name of Purity what lies are told! What queer morality it has engendered. For fear of it you dare not tell your own children the truth about their birth; the most sacred of all functions, the creation of a human being, is a subject for the most miserable falsehood. When they come to you with a simple, straightforward question, which they have a right to ask, you say, "Don't ask such questions," or tell some silly hollowlog story; or you explain the incomprehensibility by another — God! You say "God made you." You know you are lying when you say it. You know, or you ought to know, that the source of inquiry will not be dammed up so. You know that what you Could explain purely, reverently, rightly (if you have any purity in you), will be learned through many blind gropings, and that around it will be cast the shadowthought of wrong, embryo'd by your denial and nurtured by this social opinion everywhere prevalent. If you do not know this, then you are blind to facts and deaf to Experience."

"Look how your children grow up. Taught from their earliest infancy to curb their love natures — restrained at every turn! Your blasting lies would even blacken a child's kiss. Little girls must not be tomboyish, must not go barefoot, must not climb trees, must not learn to swim, must not do anything they desire to do which Madame Grundy has decreed "improper." Little boys are laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys if they want to make patchwork or play with a doll. Then when they grow up, "Oh! Men dont care for home or children as women do!" Why should they, when the deliberate effort of your life has been to crush that nature out of them. "Women can't rough it like men." Train any animal, or any plant, as you train your girls, and it wont be able to rough it either."

"Now for the remedy. It is in one word, the only word that ever brought equity anywhere — LIBERTY! Centuries upon centuries of liberty is the only thing that will cause the disintegration and decay of these pestiferous ideas. Liberty was all that calmed the bloodwaves of religious persecution! You cannot cure serfhood by any other substitution. Not for you to say "in this way shall the race love." Let the race alone. Will there not be atrocious crimes? Certainly. He is a fool who says there will not be. But you can't stop them by committing the arch-crime and setting a block between the spokes of Progress-wheels. You will never get right until you start right. As for the final outcome, it matters not one iota. I have my ideal, and it is very pure, and very sacred to me. But yours, equally sacred, may be different and we may both be wrong. But certain am I that with free contract, that form of sexual association will survive which is best adapted to time and place, thus producing the highest evolution of the type. Whether that shall be monogamy, variety, or promiscuity matters naught to us; it is the business of the future, to which we dare not dictate."

"No one can hate petitions worse than I, and no one has less faith in them than I. But for my champion I am willing to try any means that invades no other's right, even though I have little hope in it."

"Humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal. And unless there is equality (and by equality I mean equal chances for every one to make the most of himself) unless, I say, these equal chances exist, freedom, either of thought, speech, or action, is equally a mockery."

"As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no," the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed. When they conceive the possibility of a complete international federation of labor, whose constituent groups shall take possession of land, mines, factories, all the instruments of production, issue their own certificates of exchange, and, in short, conduct their own industry without regulative interference from law-makers or employers, then we may hope for the only help which counts for aught — Self-Help; the only condition which can guarantee free speech (and no paper guarantee needed)."

"Miss Goldman is a communist; I am an individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should. But whether she or I be right, or both of us be wrong, of one thing I am sure; the spirit which animates Emma Goldman is the only one which will emancipate the slave from his slavery, the tyrant from his tyranny — the spirit which is willing to dare and suffer."

"Among the fundamental likeness between the Revolutionary Republicans and the Anarchists is the recognition that the little must precede the great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate; that the spirit of the latter is carried into the councils of the former, and a local tyranny may thus become an instrument for general enslavement. Convinced of the supreme importance of ridding the municipalities of the institutions of tyranny, the most strenuous advocates of independence, instead of spending their efforts mainly in the general Congress, devoted themselves to their home localities, endeavoring to work out of the minds of their neighbors and fellow-colonists the institutions of entailed property, of a State-Church, of a class-divided people, even the institution of African slavery itself. Though largely unsuccessful, it is to the measure of success they did achieve that we are indebted for such liberties as we do retain, and not to the general government."

"Private enterprise manages better all that to which it is equal. Anarchism declares that private enterprise, whether individual or cooperative, is equal to all the undertakings of society."

"We arrive at the point where we, looking over the hundred and twenty five years of independence, can see that the simple government conceived by the revolutionary republicans was a foredoomed failure. It was so because of: 1) the essence of government itself; 2) the essence of human nature; 3) the essence of Commerce and Manufacture."

"As to the essence of human nature, what our national experience has made plain is this, that to remain in a continually exalted moral condition is not human nature. That has happened which was prophesied: we have gone down hill from the Revolution until now; we are absorbed in "mere money-getting.""

"The love of material ease has been, in the mass of men and permanently speaking, always greater than the love of liberty. Nine hundred and ninety nine women out of a thousand are more interested in the cut of a dress than in the independence of their sex; nine hundred and ninety nine men out of a thousand are more interested in drinking a glass of beer than in questioning the tax that is laid on it; how many children are not willing to trade the liberty to play for the promise of a new cap or a new dress? That it is which begets the complicated mechanism of society; that it is which, by multiplying the concerns of government, multiplies the strength of government and the corresponding weakness of the people; this it is which begets indifference to public concern, thus making the corruption of government easy. As to the essence of Commerce and Manufacture, it is this: to establish bonds between every corner of the earths surface and every other corner, to multiply the needs of mankind, and the desire for material possession and enjoyment."

"There is not upon the face of the earth today a government so utterly and shamelessly corrupt as that of the United States of America. There are others more cruel, more tyrannical, more devastating; there is none so utterly venal."

"The Constitution was made chiefly because of the demands of Commerce. Thus it was at the outset a merchant's machine, which the other interests of the country, the land and labor interests, even then foreboded would destroy their liberties. In vain their jealousy of its central power made enact the first twelve amendments. In vain they endeavored to set bounds over which the federal power dare not trench. In vain they enacted into general law the freedom of speech, of the press, of assemblage and petition. All of these things we see ridden roughshod upon every day, and have so seen with more or less intermission since the beginning of the nineteenth century. At this day, every police lieutenant considers himself, and rightly so, as more powerful than the General Law of the Union."

"It is an American tradition that a standing army is a standing menace to liberty; in Jefferson's presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It is American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations. It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it we have a standing army of 83,251 men."

"What has Anarchism to say to all this, this bankruptcy of republicanism, this modern empire that has grown up on the ruins of our early freedom? We say this, that the sin our fathers sinned was that they did not trust liberty wholly. They thought it possible to compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be "a necessary evil," and the moment the compromise was made, the whole misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the free are struck. Anarchism says, Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license"; and they will define and define freedom out of existence. Let the guarantee of free speech be in every man's determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper declarations. On the other hand, so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."

"As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself. It demands no jealous barrier of isolation; it knows that such isolation is undesirable and impossible; but it teaches that by all men's strictly minding their own business, a fluid society, freely adapting itself to mutual needs, wherein all the world shall belong to all men, as much as each has need or desire, will result. And when Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world — if it ever shall be, as I hope it will — then may we hope to see a resurrection of that proud spirit of our fathers which put the simple dignity of Man above the gauds of wealth and class, and held that to be an American was greater than to be a king. In that day there shall be neither kings nor Americans — only Men; over the whole earth, MEN."

"In everything that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea — an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern immobile cast of the non-living. Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, also, living souls dominating dying bodies — living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent or of shifting Will is visible in the grass-blade rooted in its clod of earth, as in the gossamer web of being that floats and swims far over our heads in the free world of air. Regnant ideas, everywhere! Did you ever see a dead vine bloom? I have seen it."

"If the doctrine of free-will has raised up fanatics and persecutors, who, assuming that men may be good under all conditions if they merely wish to be so, have sought to persuade other men's wills with threats, fines, imprisonments, torture, the spike, the wheel, the axe, the fagot, in order to make them good and save them against their obdurate wills; if the doctrine of Spiritualism, the soul supreme, has done this, the doctrine of Materialistic Determinism has produced shifting, self-excusing, worthless, parasitical characters, who are this now and that at some other time, and anything and nothing upon principle. "My conditions have made me so," they cry, and there is no more to be said; poor mirror-ghosts! how could they help it!"

"It is not to be supposed that any one will attain to the full realization of what he purposes, even when those purposes do not involve united action with others; he will fall short; he will in some measure be overcome by contending or inert opposition. But something he will attain, if he continues to aim high. What, then, would I have? you ask. I would have men invest themselves with the dignity of an aim higher than the chase for wealth; choose a thing to do in life outside of the making of things, and keep it in mind, — not for a day, nor a year, but for a life-time. And then keep faith with themselves! Not be a light-o'-love, to-day professing this and to-morrow that, and easily reading oneself out of both whenever it becomes convenient; not advocating a thing to-day and to-morrow kissing its enemies' sleeve, with that weak, coward cry in the mouth, "Circumstances make me." Take a good look into yourself, and if you love Things and the power and the plenitude of Things better than you love your own dignity, human dignity, Oh, say so, say so! Say it to yourself, and abide by it. But do not blow hot and cold in one breath. Do not try to be a social reformer and a respected possessor of Things at the same time. Do not preach the straight and narrow way while going joyously upon the wide one. Preach the wide one, or do not preach at all; but do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it."

"If you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul, and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to make manifest then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps the strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter the last possibility of freedom will become easy."

"Let us have Men, Men who will say a word to their souls and keep it — keep it not when it is easy, but keep it when it is hard — keep it when the storm roars and there is a white-streaked sky and blue thunder before, and one's eyes are blinded and one's ears deafened with the war of opposing things; and keep it under the long leaden sky and the gray dreariness that never lifts. Hold unto the last: that is what it means to have a Dominant Idea, which Circumstance cannot break. And such men make and unmake Circumstance."

"At last we see a genuine awakening of a people, not to political demands alone, but to economic ones,—fundamentally economic ones. And in the brief period of a few months, some millions of human beings have sprung to a full consciousness of a system of wrong, beginning where all slaveries begin, in the sources of life. They have struck for Land And Liberty. And even if their revolt shall be crushed by the mailed hand of the United States Government (for I do not believe the present nondescript thing calling itself a government, in Mexico, has craft or power to pacify or crush all the seething elements of rebellion), yet it has set a foremost mark upon the record of human demand, from which hereafter there will be no retreat. From now on, when an oppressed people revolt, they will not demand less."

"In the storm-wind of popular revolt, rising, no prophet could have foretold when, nor gazer at the aftermath just why it was the chosen hour, in that strong clean-sweeping of the psychic atmosphere, millions of unlettered and otherwise ignorant people saw, as with lightning sharpness cutting a black night, the foundation of all their wrong, and heard the slogan “Land and Liberty” to which their ears were so long deaf,—heard it, raised it, acted on it, are acting on it. With that clear and direct perception of the needful thing to do which lettered men, men of complex lives, nearly always lack, being befogged by too many lights, they move straight upon their purpose, hew down the landmarks, burn the records of the title-deeds."

"Once a great human demand is so made, it is never let go again. Future revolts will go on from there; they will never fall behind it."

"As the peoples always move,—as Life, which is greater than the peoples, always moves. And the business of the revolutionist, the Seeker for the Changes of Old Forms, the dreamer of Liberty and Plenty, is to be with them in their struggle, in their victory, in their defeat, whenever, wherever, the people rise."

"Hail to the Mexican Revolution, victorious or defeated. And hail to the next that rises!"

"Every person who ever thought he had a right to assert, and went boldly and asserted it, himself, or jointly with others that shared his convictions, was a direct actionist. Some thirty years ago I recall that the Salvation Army was vigorously practising direct action in the maintenance of the freedom of its members to speak, assemble, and pray. Over and over they were arrested, fined, and imprisoned; but they kept right on singing, praying, and marching, till they finally compelled their persecutors to let them alone."

"Those who, by the essence of their belief, are committed to Direct Action only are — just who? Why, the non-resistants; precisely those who do not believe in violence at all! Now do not make the mistake of inferring that I say direct action means non-resistance; not by any means. Direct action may be the extreme of violence, or it may be as peaceful as the waters of the Brook of Siloa that go softly. What I say is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only, never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through."

"The Puritans had accused the Quakers of "troubling the world by preaching peace to it." They refused to pay church taxes; they refused to bear arms; they refused to swear allegiance to any government. (In so doing they were direct actionists, what we may call negative direct actionists.) So the Puritans, being political actionists, passed laws to keep them out, to deport, to fine, to imprison, to mutilate, and finally, to hang them. And the Quakers just kept on coming (which was positive direct action); and history records that after the hanging of four Quakers, and the flogging of Margaret Brewster at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston, "the Puritans gave up trying to silence the new missionaries"; that "Quaker persistence and Quaker non-resistance had won the day.""

"Workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe, or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear, and to be housed withal — to say nothing of their share of the other social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish, such as education and artistic gratification."

"There is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth, the money, and the machines."

"The most that a working-class party could do, even if its politicians remained honest, would be to form a strong faction in the legislatures which might, by combining its vote with one side or another, win certain political or economic palliatives. But what the working-class can do, when once they grow into a solidified organization, is to show the possessing class, through a sudden cessation of all work, that the whole social structure rests on them; that the possessions of the others are absolutely worthless to them without the workers' activity; that such protests, such strikes, are inherent in the system of property and will continually recur until the whole thing is abolished — and having shown that effectively, proceed to expropriate."

"I found her a fascinating person. I read her poetry and stories and found a sadness in her."

"Nature has the habit of and then producing a type of human being far in advance of the times; an ideal for us to emulate; a being devoid of sham, uncompromising, and to whom the truth is sacred; a being whose selfishness is so large that it takes in the whole human race and treats self only as one of the great mass; a being keen to sense all forms of wrong, and powerful in denunciation of it; one who can reach into the future and draw it nearer. Such a being was VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE."

"The first time I met her — this most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced — was in Philadelphia, in August 1893. I had come to that city to address the unemployed during the great crisis of that year, and I was eager to visit Voltairine of whose exceptional ability as a lecturer I had heard while in New York. I found her ill in bed, her head packed in ice, her face drawn with pain. I learned that this experience repeated itself with Voltairine after her every public appearance: she would be bed-ridden for days, in constant agony from some disease of the nervous system which she had developed in early childhood and which continued to grow worse with the years. I did not remain long on this first visit, owing to the evident suffering of my hostess, though she was bravely trying to hide her pain from me. But fate plays strange pranks. In the evening of the same day, Voltairine de Cleyre was called upon to drag her frail, suffering body to a densely packed, stuffy hall, to speak in my stead. At the request of the New York authorities, the protectors of law and disorder in Philadelphia captured me as I was about to enter the Hall and led me off to the Police Station of the City of Brotherly Love. The next time I saw Voltairine was at Blackwell's Island Penitentiary. She had come to New York to deliver her masterly address, In Defense of Emma Goldman and Free Speech, and she visited me in prison. From that time until her end our lives and work were frequently thrown together, often meeting harmoniously and sometimes drifting apart, but always with Voltairine standing out in my eyes as a forceful personality, a brilliant mind, a fervent idealist, an unflinching fighter, a devoted and loyal comrade. But her strongest characteristic was her extraordinary capacity to conquer physical disability — a trait which won for her the respect even of her enemies and the love and admiration of her friends."

"While Luisa Capetillo theorized about women and anarchism in Puerto Rico, her contemporaries did the same in many other countries, among them Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Spain and the United States. Juana Belén Gutiérrez (1875-1942) in México, Maria Collazo (n.d.) in Uruguay, Juana Rouco Buela (1889-1969) in Argentina, Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1914) in the United States, and Teresa Clamunt (1862-1981) in Spain, preached the emancipation of women and free love and fought for workers' rights while living lives consonant with their ideals."

"De Cleyre exemplified the anarchist fascination with spontaneous emotion, with feeling, with intuitive insight. She urged her hearers to eschew a purely intellectual commitment to the cause, to feel rather than think their way into anarchism: “Turn cloudward, . let the dreams rush over one-no longer awed by outside powers.-recognizing nothing superior to oneself,... letting oneself go free, go free beyond the bounds of what fear and custom call the "possible"-This, . . . Anarchism may mean to you, if you dare apply it so." The reward for this emotional conversion was immediate psychological liberation from conventional society; the individual became free, even if political, economic, and social systems remained unchanged. Although de Cleyre suggested that the restructuring of institutions ultimately would develop from this initial emotional rebirth, it was never clear how such changes would come about."

"In neither of her two most important theoretical essays, "Anarchism" and "Anarchism and American Traditions," did de Cleyre try to bring her anarchist and feminist concerns together."

"De Cleyre possessed one of the best minds among the American anarchists, and her essays, particularly in the early twentieth century, were sophisticated and subtle. On the other hand, the other anarchist-feminists who attempted to explain anarchist ideas tended to approach every problem as a separate issue without reconciling, or in some cases even noticing, disharmonies and contradictions."

"News from Nowhere by William Morris was one of Voltairine de Cleyre's favorite books"

"In the twentieth century de Cleyre and Goldman elaborated Lizzie May Holmes's ideas. Their views provided the theoretical foundation for the Modern School, the first full-scale anarchist educational experiment in the United States…Although de Cleyre's years as a teacher helped to form her educational ideas, both she and Goldman became associated with the Modern School movement as a result of their involvement in the cause of Francisco Ferrer"

"De Cleyre had argued in 1910 that: “The really ideal school, which would not be a compromise, would be a boarding school built in the country, having a farm attached, and workshops where useful crafts might be learned, in daily connection with intellectual training. . . . In free contact with nature, the children would learn to use their limbs as nature meant, feel their intimate relationship with the growing life of other sorts, form a profound respect for work and an estimate of the value of it; wish to become real doers in the world, and not mere gatherers of other men's products."

"Both de Cleyre and Goldman looked forward to a society in which gender did not form the basis for differences of personality, temperament, or intellectual interests."

"No single figure better represents the complexities and contradictions, the strengths and weaknesses, or the ambiguities of anarchist-feminism than Voltairine de Cleyre. Yet until recently we knew very little about the second most important woman in the American anarchist movement, in part because Emma Goldman-who had served as this country's symbol of anarchist womanhood during her and de Cleyre's lifetimes-eclipsed de Cleyre after their deaths as well...de Cleyre's career was marked by less notoriety and by a quieter, though nonetheless genuine, defiance of American norms of femininity. To a degree, de Cleyre chose a comparatively less aggressive role than Goldman. Although during her early years as an anarchist propagandist she had participated in a wide variety of reform and radical activities, from the late nineties until her death she worked largely among anarchists."

"A year after de Cleyre's death, the Syndicalist called her a radical of "the type that always hews to the line, that is never lured from the straight direct road to freedom." Jay Fox, editor of the Demonstrator, eulogized her in these words: “Nature has the habit now and then of producing a type of human being far in advance of the times; an ideal for us to emulate; a being devoid of sham, uncompromising, and to whom the truth is sacred; a being whose selfishness is so large that it takes in the whole human race and treats self only as one of the great mass; a being keen to sense all forms of wrong, and powerful in denunciation of it; one who can reach into the future and draw it nearer. Such a being was Voltairine de Cleyre.” De Cleyre's friend Harry Kelly saw her life as one of "austerity that has hardly a parallel even in revolutionary ranks." Only Leonard Abbott seemed willing to allow her humanness, saying that "she fought without illusions, but she fought to the end." But the anarchists, in decline and disarray, were unable to face de Cleyre without illusions, so they canonized her."

"Carl Nold touched on the essential distinction between the two women. "Emma Goldman tried to attract her hearers with a bass-drum. Voltairine de Cleyre has done it with a violin.""

"In the final analysis, neither woman was successful in her most cherished goal: to bring about a revolution that would crush capitalism, topple male supremacy, and usher in new freedoms for men, women, and children. In another sense, however, both were great successes. Goldman felt that despite her defeats, her life was indeed worth living. De Cleyre, a more introspective and questioning person, sometimes felt doubt about her choices. Yet she lived her life as a free and independent woman, and participated in a work that she believed had the potential to liberate humankind economically, politically, socially, and sexually. Because of de Cleyre, and the other anarchist-feminists, we can understand far better what it meant to choose to live in contradiction to the larger society, and to be aware of the costs and consequences of such a choice."

"Education is a slow process, and may not come too quickly. Anarchists who endeavor to hasten it by joining in the propaganda of State Socialism or revolution make a sad mistake indeed. They help to so force the march of events that the people will not have time to find out, by the study of their experience, that their troubles have been due to the rejection of competition. If this lesson shall not be learned in a season, the past will be repeated in the future, in which case we shall have to turn for consolation to the doctrine of Nietzsche that this is bound to happen anyhow, or to the reflection of Renan that, from the point of view of Sirius, all these matters are of little moment."

"LIBERTY enters the field of journalism to speak for herself because she finds no one willing to speak for her. She hears no voice that always champions her; she knows no pen that always writes in her defence; she sees no hand that is always lifted to avenge her wrongs or vindicate her rights. Many claim to speak in her name, but few really understand her. Still fewer have the courage and the opportunity to consistently fight for her. Her battle, then, is her own, to wage and win. She — accepts it fearlessly and with a determined spirit. Her foe, Authority, takes many shapes, but, broadly speaking, her enemies divide themselves into three classes: first, those who abhor her both as a means and as an end of progress, opposing her openly, avowedly, sincerely, consistently, universally; second, those who profess to believe in her as a means of progress, but who accept her only so far as they think she will subserve their own selfish interests, denying her and her blessings to the rest of the world; third, those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her. These three phases of opposition to Liberty are met in almost every sphere of thought and human activity."

"Monopoly and privilege must be destroyed, opportunity afforded, and competition encouraged. This is Liberty's work, and "Down with Authority" her war-cry."

"Probably no agitation has ever attained the magnitude, either in the number of its recruits or the area of its influence, which has been attained by Modern Socialism, and at the same time been so little understood and so misunderstood, not only by the hostile and the indifferent, but by the friendly, and even by the great mass of its adherents themselves. This unfortunate and highly dangerous state of things is due partly to the fact that the human relationships which this movement — if anything so chaotic can be called a movement — aims to transform, involve no special class or classes, but literally all mankind; partly to the fact that these relationships are infinitely more varied and complex in their nature than those with which any special reform has ever been called upon to deal; and partly to the fact that the great moulding forces of society, the channels of information and enlightenment, are well-nigh exclusively under the control of those whose immediate pecuniary interests are antagonistic to the bottom claim of Socialism that labor should be put in possession of its own."

"Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves. It is a subject of which it has lately become quite the fashion for preacher, professor, and penny-a-liner to treat, and, for the most part, woeful work they have made with it, exciting the derision and pity of those competent to judge. That those prominent in the intermediate Socialistic divisions do not fully understand what they are about is evident from the positions they occupy."

"The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism. Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism."

"The economic principles of Modern Socialism are a logical deduction from the principle laid down by Adam Smith in the early chapters of his “Wealth of Nations,” — namely, that labor is the true measure of price. But Adam Smith, after stating this principle most clearly and concisely, immediately abandoned all further consideration of it to devote himself to showing what actually does measure price, and how, therefore, wealth is at present distributed. Since his day nearly all the political economists have followed his example by confining their function to the description of society as it is, in its industrial and commercial phases. Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be."

"It was at this point — the necessity of striking down monopoly — that came the parting of their ways. Here the road forked. They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left, — follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism."

"First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition. Land, tools, and all instruments of production must be wrested from individual hands, and made the property of the collectivity. To the individual can belong only the products to be consumed, not the means of producing them. A man may own his clothes and his food, but not the sewing-machine which makes his shirts or the spade which digs his potatoes. Product and capital are essentially different things; the former belongs to individuals, the latter to society. Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must. Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle, though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc. The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official. Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves. Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself. Every man will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage-payer. He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison. All freedom of trade must disappear. Competition must be utterly wiped out. All industrial and commercial activity must be centered in one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly. The remedy for monopolies is monopoly. Such is the economic programme of State Socialism as adopted from Karl Marx."

"What other applications this principle of Authority, once adopted in the economic sphere, will develop is very evident. It means the absolute control by the majority of all individual conduct. The right of such control is already admitted by the State Socialists, though they maintain that, as a matter of fact, the individual would be allowed a much larger liberty than he now enjoys. But he would only be allowed it; he could not claim it as his own. There would be no foundation of society upon a guaranteed equality of the largest possible liberty. Such liberty as might exist would exist by sufferance and could be taken away at any moment. Constitutional guarantees would be of no avail. There would be but one article in the constitution of a State Socialistic country: “The right of the majority is absolute.”"

"The claim of the State Socialists, however, that this right would not be exercised in matters pertaining to the individual in the more intimate and private relations of his life is not borne out by the history of governments. It has ever been the tendency of power to add to itself, to enlarge its sphere, to encroach beyond the limits set for it; and where the habit of resisting such encroachment is not fostered, and the individual is not taught to be jealous of his rights, individuality gradually disappears and the government or State becomes the all-in-all. Control naturally accompanies responsibility. Under the system of State Socialism, therefore, which holds the community responsible for the health, wealth, and wisdom of the individual, it is evident that the community, through its majority expression, will insist more and more in prescribing the conditions of health, wealth, and wisdom, thus impairing and finally destroying individual independence and with it all sense of individual responsibility."

"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."

"Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital."

"Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike."

"If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State."

"In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails. The nurse and the teacher, like the doctor and the preacher, must be selected voluntarily, and their services must be paid for by those who patronize them. Parental rights must not be taken away, and parental responsibilities must not be foisted upon others."

"I will simply call attention to the fact that it is an ideal utterly inconsistent with that of those Communists who falsely call themselves Anarchists while at the same time advocating a regime of Archism fully as despotic as that of the State Socialists themselves."

"Anarchism, in dealing with this subject, has found it necessary, first of all, to define its terms. Popular conceptions of the terminology of politics are incompatible with the rigorous exactness required in scientific investigation. To be sure, a departure from the popular use of language is accompanied by the risk of misconception by the multitude, who persistently ignore the new definitions; but, on the other hand, conformity thereto is attended by the still more deplorable alternative of confusion in the eyes of the competent, who would be justified in attributing inexactness of thought where there is inexactness of expression. Take the term "State," for instance, with which we are especially concerned today. It is a word that is on every lip. But how many of those who use it have any idea of what they mean by it? And, of the few who have, how various are their conceptions! We designate by the term "State" institutions that embody absolutism in its extreme form and institutions that temper it with more or less liberality. We apply the word alike to institutions that do nothing but aggress and to institutions that, besides aggressing, to some extent protect and defend. But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care. Some champions of the State evidently consider aggression its principle, although they disguise it alike from themselves and from the people under the term "administration," which they wish to extend in every possible direction. Others, on the contrary, consider defence its principle, and wish to limit it accordingly to the performance of police duties. Still others seem to think that it exists for both aggression and defence, combined in varying proportions according to the momentary interests, or maybe only whims, of those happening to control it."

"Anarchists, whose mission in the world is the abolition of aggression and all the evils that result therefrom, perceived that, to be understood, they must attach some definite and avowed significance to the terms which they are obliged to employ, and especially to the words "State" and "government." Seeking, then, the elements common to all the institutions to which the name "State" has been applied, they have found them two in number: first, aggression; second, the assumption of sole authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries."

"Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy."

"This distinction between invasion and resistance, between government and defence, is vital. Without it there can be no valid philosophy of politics. Upon this distinction and the other considerations just outlined, the Anarchists frame the desired definitions. This, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will. And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area."

"Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction. Its growth in importance is but an evidence of the tendency of progress toward the abolition of the State."

"Taking this view of the matter, the Anarchists contend that defence is not an essential of the State, but that aggression is."

"What relations should exist between the State and the Individual? The general method of determining these is to apply some theory of ethics involving a basis of moral obligation. In this method the Anarchists have no confidence. The idea of moral obligation, of inherent rights and duties, they totally discard. They look upon all obligations, not as moral, but as social, and even then not really as obligations except as these have been consciously and voluntarily assumed. If a man makes an agreement with men, the latter may combine to hold him to his agreement; but, in the absence of such agreement, no man, so far as the Anarchists are aware, has made any agreement with God or with any other power of any order whatsoever. The Anarchists are not only utilitarians, but egoists in the farthest and fullest sense. So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure."

"The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction."

""But," it will be asked of the Anarchists at this point in the argument, "what shall be done with those individuals who undoubtedly will persist in violating the social law by invading their neighbors?" The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary."

"Why, the very first act of the State, the compulsory assessment and collection of taxes, is itself an aggression, a violation of equal liberty, and, as such, initiates every subsequent act, even those acts which would be purely defensive if paid out of a treasury filled by voluntary contributions. How is it possible to sanction, under the law of equal liberty, the confiscation of a man's earnings to pay for protection which he has not sought and does not desire? And, if this is an outrage, what name shall we give to such confiscation when the victim is given, instead of bread, a stone, instead of protection, oppression? To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury. But that is exactly what the State is doing."

"From Smith's principle that labor is the true measure of price—or, as Warren phrased it, that cost is the proper limit of price—these three men [i.e., Josiah Warren, Pierre Proudhon, and Karl Marx] made the following deductions: that the natural wage of labor is its product; that this wage, or product, is the only just source of income (leaving out, of course, gift, inheritance, etc.); that all who derive income from any other source abstract it directly or indirectly from the natural and just wage of labor; that this abstracting process generally takes one of three forms,—interest, rent, and profit; that these three constitute the trinity of usury, and are simply different methods of levying tribute for the use of capital; that, capital being simply stored-up labor which has already received its pay in full, its use ought to be gratuitous, on the principle that labor is the only basis of price; that the lender of capital is entitled to its return intact, and nothing more; that the only reason why the banker, the stockholder, the landlord, the manufacturer, and the merchant are able to exact usury from labor lies in the fact that they are backed by legal privilege."

"Voluntary taxation, far from impairing the "State's" credit, would strengthen it. In the first place, the simplification of its functions would greatly reduce, and perhaps entirely abolish, its need to borrow, and the power to borrow is generally inversely proportional to the steadiness of the need. It is usually the inveterate borrower who lacks credit. In the second place, the power of the State to repudiate, and still continue its business, is dependent upon its power of compulsory taxation. It knows that, when it can no longer borrow, it can at least tax its citizens up to the limit of revolution. In the third place, the State is trusted, not because it is over and above individuals, but because the lender presumes that it desires to maintain its credit and will therefore pay its debts. This desire for credit will be stronger in a "State" supported by voluntary taxation than in the State which enforces taxation."

"The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority."

"Where crime exists, force must exist to repress it. Who denies it? Certainly not Liberty; certainly not the Anarchists. Anarchism is not a revival of non-resistance, though there may be non-resistants in its ranks. The direction of Mr. Ball's attack implies that we would let robbery, rape, and murder make havoc in the community without lifting a finger to stay their brutal, bloody work. On the contrary, we are the sternest enemies of invasion of person and property, and, although chiefly busy in destroying the causes thereof, have no scruples against such heroic treatment of its immediate manifestations as circumstances and wisdom may dictate. It is true that we look forward to the ultimate disappearance of the necessity of force even for the purpose of repressing crime, but this, though involved in it as a necessary result, is by no means a necessary condition of the abolition of the State."

"Can you not see that it is the State that creates the conditions which give birth to thieves and murderers, and that to justify its existence on the ground of the prevalence of theft and murder is a logical process every whit as absurd as those used to defeat your efforts to abolish slavery and the Church? Once for all, then, we are not opposed to the punishment of thieves and murderers; we are opposed to their manufacture."

"As a general rule, the better people are, the more Anarchists and Socialists will be found among them."

"If the defenders of privilege desire to exclude from this country the opponents of privilege, they should see to it that Congress omits the taking of the eleventh census. For the eleventh census, if taken, will undoubtedly emphasize these two lessons of the tenth: first, that foreign immigration does not increase dishonesty and violence among us, but does increase the love of liberty; second, that the population of the world is gradually dividing into two classes, Anarchists and criminals."

"The Anarchists believe in the family; they only insist that free competition and experiment shall always be allowed in order that it may be determined what form of family best secures this object."

"The Anarchists believe in civil society; only they insist that the freedom of civil society shall be complete instead of partial."

"The Anarchists believe in the State; only they insist that the greater part, if not all, of the necessity for its existence is the result of an artificial limitation of the freedom of civil society, and that the completion of industrial freedom may one day so harmonize individuals that it will no longer be necessary to provide a guarantee of political freedom."

"The Anarchists most certainly believe in the Church; only they insist that all its work shall be purely voluntary, and that its discoveries and achievements, however beneficial, shall not be imposed upon the individual by authority."

"I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified."

"But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder. Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act. And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act,—at least in theory."

"I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can."

"It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth. But if you can compel the enemy to waste his ammunition by drawing his fire on some thoroughly protected spot; if you can, by annoying and goading and harassing him in all possible ways, drive him to the last resort of stripping bare his tyrannous and invasive purposes and put him in the attitude of a designing villain assailing honest men for purposes of plunder; there is no better strategy."

""Passive resistance," said Ferdinand Lassalle, with an obtuseness thoroughly German, "is the resistance which does not resist." Never was there a greater mistake. It is the only resistance which in these days of military discipline resists with any result. There is not a tyrant in the civilized world today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights. Neither the ballot nor the bayonet is to play any great part in the coming struggle; passive resistance is the instrument by which the revolutionary force is destined to secure in the last great conflict the people's rights forever."

"The idea that Anarchy can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve Anarchy; neither can it bring it. In fact, one of the inevitable influences of the use of force is to postpone Anarchy. The only thing that force can ever do for us is to save us from extinction, to give us a longer lease of life in which to try to secure Anarchy by the only methods that can ever bring it. But this advantage is always purchased at immense cost, and its attainment is always attended by frightful risk. The attempt should be made only when the risk of any other course is greater."

"When a physician sees that his patient's strength is being exhausted so rapidly by the intensity of his agony that he will die of exhaustion before the medical processes inaugurated have a chance to do their curative work, he administers an opiate. But a good physician is always loath to do so, knowing that one of the influences of the opiate is to interfere with and defeat the medical processes themselves. He never does it except as a choice of evils. It is the same with the use of force, whether of the mob or of the State, upon diseased society; and not only those who prescribe its indiscriminate use as a sovereign remedy and a permanent tonic, but all who ever propose it as a cure, and even all who would lightly and unnecessarily resort to it, not as a cure, but as an expedient, are social quacks."

"Passive resistance and boycotting are now prominent features of every great national movement."

"From the 1880s through the first decade of the twentieth century, Benjamin F. Tucker led the Individualists. Born into a prosperous Massachusetts family and educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tucker never quite managed to subdue his elitism. He began his anarchist career while in his teens, and in 1875, when he was twenty-one, became associate editor of The Word, Ezra Heywood's anarchist-feminist journal. In 1881 he founded Liberty, which quickly became the most important Individualist journal. Tucker derived his economic and political ideas principally from two sources: Josiah Warren and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon, the French printer whom all anarchists considered their intellectual father, developed an economic and social system that abolished government while it emphasized economic equality. Proudhon believed that such equality could be achieved only if individuals were left free to work out with each other the kinds of social and economic relationships most compatible with the autonomy of each. Josiah Warren was an American inventor who independently developed similar ideas. Warren spent most of his life devising social experiments in which his ideas could be tested, in the hope of proving that individuals could live together harmoniously without interference from the state...it was Tucker who brought their ideas together in Liberty and whose efforts attracted a solid core of followers and sympathizers."

"In nearly every respect the sinister Johann Most seemed the antithesis of the handsome, well-bred Tucker, yet in some ways they were alike; both possessed compelling personalities that brought them numerous followers, and both were men with such imperious attitudes and intransigent opinions that they ended up by alienating those who had once been devoted admirers. Naturally two men, at once so different and so alike, were bound to clash."

"Nonfeminist anarchists like Victor Yarros and Benjamin Tucker castigated their comrades who supported woman suffrage, however lukewarmly, as reactionaries bent on preventing the development of anarchy...Georgia Replogle, by trade a compositor, coedited a small anarchist periodical, Egoism, in which she argued that equal work deserved equal pay. Nonsense, retorted Benjamin Tucker in Liberty: "Apart from the special inferiority of woman woman as printer...there exists the general inferiority of woman as worker." Even skilled women, he insisted, demonstrated "a lack of ambition, of self-reliance, of a sense of responsibility. ""

"Tucker opposed violent revolution and believed in the achievement of his goals by education: When all are rational egoists, none will submit to exploitation, and by passive resistance they will starve out the state and the monopolists."

"Ultimately I am an employee of a corporation, and that’s weird, and does contradict some of the things I believe in. But at the same time, I have to make a living."

"Music would probably go. A lot of art would. That’s what I’m saying – I’m really into comics and movies and video games, and I don’t want to give that stuff up. At the same time, I think it’s filling the void for the stuff we’re missing."

"My whole thing is I’m not into civilization as a whole. The only actual solution is the eventual collapse and demise of civilization . . .I think it needs to happen, but no one, not even me, really wants it to happen."

"I just like not having a dependency on other forms of life. I like having a compassionate way of life. I am into a lot of human rights stuff and whatever I think, it is important for me to follow through with my diet and the way I live."

"I think that in the confines of civilization being vegan is a really positive thing to do because it has less of an impact on the earth. But, ultimately, it’s not going to solve anything because it’s still dependent on the system of agriculture, which I think the problem is inherently."

"Go vegan because you want to change something in yourself or in the world and then do more. Eating a certain way isn’t enough; we have to do something about the world we live in. Anyone who wants to be vegan or cares about the earth or the life on earth should read a book called Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization"

"I'm in Good Charlotte. I have tattoos so I was cool for them."

"I think my basic viewpoint is that everything the left and right say about each other is true. And the reason it's true is because they have so much in common."

"I look for the sources of domination and misery that are so deep down that they apply to the system and the apply to its supposed opposition also. … Basically, revolutionaries never go far enough, and if they're not going to go far enough, they should stop upsetting people. Or killing them, for that matter."

"I was never a member of For Ourselves, the San Francisco Bay Area pro-situationist group which wrote and self-published The Right to Be Greedy in 1974. The principal author was Bruce Gardner, who has long since dropped out of sight."

"I was coming from the New Left of the 60’s, but I was increasingly disgruntled with the left of the 70’s. It retained or exaggerated all the faults of the 60’s left (such as current-events myopia, theoretical incoherence, historical amnesia and — especially — the cult of the victim) while denying or diminishing its merits, among them a sense of revolution against the totality, a sense of verve and vitality, and a sense of humor. The left demanded more sacrifice and promised less satisfaction, as if there was not already too much sacrifice and too little satisfaction. I began to wonder whether the failure of the left to root itself in a substantial social base, or even to hold on to much of what base it once had (mostly on campus, and among the intelligentsia, and in the counter-culture), might not in part derive from its own deficiencies, and not only from government repression and manipulation. Maybe the leftists were not so smart or the masses so stupid after all. Guilt-tripping might not go over very well with ordinary people who know they are too powerless to be too guilty of anything. Demands for sacrifice lack appeal for those who have already sacrificed, and been sacrificed, too much and for too long. The future promised by the left looked to be — at worst, even worse — and at best, not noticeably better than the status quo. Why rush to the barricades or, for that matter, why even bother to vote?"

"Most libertarians think of themselves as in some sense egoists. If they believe in rights, they believe these rights belong to them as individuals. If not, they nonetheless look to themselves and others as so many individuals possessed of power to be reckoned with. Either way, they assume that the opposite of egoism is altruism. The altruists, Christian or Maoist, agree. A cozy accomodation; and, I submit, a suspicious one. What if this antagonistic intedependence, this reciprocal reliance reflects and conceals an accord? Could egoism be altruism’s loyal opposition?"

"The individualists have only worshipped their whims. The point, however, is to live them. Is this a put-on, a piece of parlor preciosity? There is more than a touch of that here. Or a mushminded exercise in incongruous eclecticism? The individualist egoist is bound to be skeptical, but he should not be too quick to deprive himself of the insights (and the entertainment!) of this unique challenge to his certitudes. The contradictions are obvious, but whether they derive from the authors’ irrationality or from their fidelity to the real quality of lived experience is not so easy to say. If "Marxism-Stirnerism" is conceivable, every orthodoxy prating of freedom or liberation is called into question, anarchism included. The only reason to read this book, as its authors would be the first to agree, is for what you can get out of it."

"Egoism in its narrowest sense is a tautology, not a tactic. Adolescents of all ages who triumphantly trumpet that "everyone is selfish," as if they’d made a factual discovery about the world, only show that they literally don’t know what they’re talking about. Practical egoism must be something more, it must tell the egoist something useful about himself and other selves which will make a difference in his life (and, as it happens, theirs). My want, needs, desires, whims — call them what you will — extend the ego, which is my-self purposively acting, out where the other selves await me. If I deal with them, as the economists say, "at arm’s length," I can’t get as close as I need to for so much of what I want. At any rate, no "spook," no ideology is going to get in my way. Do you have ideas, or do ideas have you?"

"A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs."

"There are libertarians who try to retrieve libertarianism from the Libertarian Party just as there are Christians who try to reclaim Christianity from Christendom and communists (I’ve tried to myself) who try to save communism from the Communist parties and states. They (and I) meant well but we lost."

"My target is what most libertarians have in common — with each other, and with their ostensible enemies. Libertarians serve the state all the better because they declaim against it. At bottom, they want what it wants. But you can’t want what the state wants without wanting the state, for what the state wants is the conditions in which it flourishes."

"My (unfriendly) approach to modern society is to regard it as an integrated totality. Silly doctrinaire theories which regard the state as a parasitic excrescence on society cannot explain its centuries-long persistence, its ongoing encroachment upon what was previously market terrain, or its acceptance by the overwhelming majority of people including its demonstrable victims."

"To demonize state authoritarianism while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst."

"If your language lacks poetry and paradox, it’s unequal to the task of accounting for actuality. Otherwise anything radically new is literally unspeakable."

"You might object that what I’ve said may apply to the minarchist majority of libertarians, but not to the self-styled anarchists among them. Not so. To my mind a right-wing anarchist is just a minarchist who’d abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else. But this incestuous family squabble is no affair of mine. Both camps call for partial or complete privatization of state functions but neither questions the functions themselves. They don’t denounce what the state does, they just object to who’s doing it. This is why the people most victimized by the state display the least interest in libertarianism. Those on the receiving end of coercion don’t quibble over their coercers’ credentials. If you can’t pay or don’t want to, you don’t much care if your deprivation is called larceny or taxation or restitution or rent. If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment from enslavement only in degree and duration."

"Without even entering into the question of the world economy’s ultimate dictation within narrow limits of everybody’s productive activity, it’s apparent that the source of the greatest direct duress experienced by the ordinary adult is not the state but rather the business that employs him. Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade."

"Some people giving orders and others obeying them: this is the essence of servitude. Of course, as Hospers smugly observes, “one can at least change jobs,” but you can’t avoid having a job — just as under statism one can at least change nationalities but you can’t avoid subjection to one nation-state or another. But freedom means more than the right to change masters."

"Most work serves the predatory purposes of commerce and coercion and can be abolished outright. The rest can be automated away and/or transformed — by the experts, the workers who do it — into creative, playlike pastimes whose variety and conviviality will make extrinsic inducements like the capitalist carrot and the Communist stick equally obsolete. In the hopefully impending meta-industrial revolution, libertarian communists revolting against work will settle accounts with “libertarians” and “Communists” working against revolt. And then we can go for the gusto!"

"Murray Rothbard thinks egalitarianism is a revolt against nature, but his day is 24 hours long, just like everybody else’s. If you spend most of your waking life taking orders or kissing ass, if you get habituated to hierarchy, you will become passive-aggressive, sado-masochistic, servile and stupefied, and you will carry that load into every aspect of the balance of your life. Incapable of living a life of liberty, you’ll settle for one of its ideological representations, like libertarianism. You can’t treat values like workers, hiring and firing them at will and assigning each a place in an imposed division of labor. The taste for freedom and pleasure can’t be compartmentalized."

"Libertarians complain that the state is parasitic, an excrescence on society. They think it’s like a tumor you could cut out, leaving the patient just as he was, only healthier. They’ve been mystified by their own metaphors. Like the market, the state is an activity, not an entity. The only way to abolish the state is to change the way of life it forms a part of. That way of life, if you call that living, revolves around work and takes in bureaucracy, moralism, schooling, money, and more. Libertarians are conservatives because they avowedly want to maintain most of this mess and so unwittingly perpetuate the rest of the racket. But they’re bad conservatives because they’ve forgotten the reality of institutional and ideological interconnection which was the original insight of the historical conservatives. Entirely out of touch with the real currents of contemporary resistance, they denounce practical opposition to the system as “nihilism,” “Luddism,” and other big words they don’t understand. A glance at the world confirms that their utopian capitalism just can’t compete with the state. With enemies like libertarians, the state doesn’t need friends."

"No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost all the evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By "play" I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive."

"These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working. You may be wondering if I'm joking or serious. I'm joking and serious. To be ludic is not to be ludicrous. Play doesn't have to be frivolous, although frivolity isn't triviality: very often we ought to take frivolity seriously. I'd like life to be a game — but a game with high stakes. I want to play for keeps."

"I am not playing definitional games with anybody. When I say I want to abolish work, I mean just what I say, but I want to say what I mean by defining my terms in non-idiosyncratic ways. My minimum definition of work is forced labor, that is, compulsory production. Both elements are essential. Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick. (The carrot is just the stick by other means.) But not all creation is work. Work is never done for its own sake, it's done on account of some product or output that the worker (or, more often, somebody else) gets out of it. This is what work necessarily is. To define it is to despise it. But work is usually even worse than its definition decrees. The dynamic of domination intrinsic to work tends over time toward elaboration. In advanced work-riddled societies, including all industrial societies whether capitalist or "communist," work invariably acquires other attributes which accentuate its obnoxiousness. Usually—and this is even more true in "communist" than capitalist countries, where the state is almost the only employer and everyone is an employee — work is employment, i.e., wage-labor, which means selling yourself on the installment plan. Thus 95% of Americans who work, work for somebody (or something) else. In the USSR or Cuba or Yugoslavia or Nicaragua or any other alternative model which might be adduced, the corresponding figure approaches 100%. Only the embattled Third World peasant bastions — Mexico, India, Brazil, Turkey — temporarily shelter significant concentrations of agriculturists who perpetuate the traditional arrangement of most laborers in the last several millennia, the payment of taxes (ransom) to the state or rent to parasitic landlords in return for being otherwise left alone. Even this raw deal is beginning to look good. All industrial (and office) workers are employees and under the sort of surveillance which ensures servility."

"Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it's forced. This is axiomatic."

"Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to the higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing. And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors; he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation."

"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. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or — better still — industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are "free" is lying or stupid. You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. People who are regimented all their lives, handed off to work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the nursing home at the end, are habituated to hierarchy and psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded phobias. Their obedience training at work carries over into the families they start, thus reproducing the system in more ways than one, and into politics, culture and everything else. Once you drain the vitality from people at work, they'll likely submit to hierarchy and expertise in everything. They're used to it."

"We are so close to the world of work that we can't see what it does to us. We have to rely on outside observers from other times or other cultures to appreciate the extremity and the pathology of our present position."

"Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship. He was right. Because of work, no matter what we do we keep looking at our watches. The only thing "free" about so-called free time is that it doesn't cost the boss anything. Free time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and recovering from work. Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor as a factor of production not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair. Coal and steel don't do that. Lathes and typewriters don't do that. But workers do."

"What I really want to see is work turned into play. A first step is to discard the notions of a "job" and an "occupation." Even activities that already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced to jobs which certain people, and only those people, are forced to do to the exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the fields while their airconditioned masters go home every weekend and putter about in their gardens? Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them."

"No one can say what would result from unleashing the creative power stultified by work. Anything can happen. The tiresome debater's problem of freedom vs. necessity, with its theological overtones, resolves itself practically once the production of use-values is co-extensive with the consumption of delightful play activity. Life will become a game, or rather many games, but not—as it is now — a zero/sum game. An optimal sexual encounter is the paradigm of productive play. The participants potentiate each other's pleasures, nobody keeps score, and everybody wins. The more you give, the more you get. In the ludic life, the best of sex will diffuse into the better part of daily life. Generalized play leads to the libidinization of life. Sex, in turn, can become less urgent and desperate, more playful. If we play our cards right, we can all get more out of life than we put into it; but only if we play for keeps. No one should ever work. Workers of the world. . . relax!"

"There is no need at present to produce new definitions of anarchism — it would be hard to improve on those long since devised by various eminent dead foreigners. Nor need we linger over the familiar hyphenated anarchisms, communist- and individualist- and so forth; the textbooks cover all that. More to the point is why we are no closer to anarchy today than were Godwin and Proudhon and Kropotkin and Goldman in their times."

"My considered judgment, after years of scrutiny of, and sometimes harrowing activity in the anarchist milieu, is that anarchists are a main reason — I suspect, a sufficient reason — why anarchy remains an epithet without a prayer of a chance to be realized. Most anarchists are, frankly, incapable of living in an autonomous cooperative manner. A lot of them aren't very bright. They tend to peruse their own classics and insider literature to the exclusion of broader knowledge of the world we live in. Essentially timid, they associate with others like themselves with the tacit understanding that nobody will measure anybody else's opinions and actions against any standard of practical critical intelligence; that no one by his or her individual achievements will rise too far above the prevalent level; and, above all, that nobody challenges the shibboleths of anarchist ideology."

"The history of anarchism is a history of unparalleled defeat and martyrdom, yet anarchists venerate their victimized forebears with a morbid devotion which occasions suspicion that the anarchists, like everybody else, think that the only good anarchist is a dead one. Revolution — defeated revolution — is glorious, but it belongs in books and pamphlets. In this century — Spain in 1936 and France in 1968 are especially clear cases — the revolutionary upsurge caught the official, organized anarchists flat-footed and initially non-supportive or worse. The reason is not far to seek. It's not that all these ideologues were hypocrites (some were). Rather, they had worked out a daily routine of anarchist militancy, one they unconsciously counted on to endure indefinitely since revolution isn't really imaginable in the here-and-now, and they reacted with fear and defensiveness when events outdistanced their rhetoric. In other words, given a choice between anarchism and anarchy, most anarchists would go for the anarchism ideology and subculture rather than take a dangerous leap into the unknown, into a world of stateless liberty."

"In truth the anarchists who assume the name have done nothing to challenge the state, not with windy unread jargon-filled writings, but with the contagious example of another way to relate to other people. Anarchists as they conduct the anarchism business are the best refutation of anarchist pretensions."

"Every organization has more in common with every other organization than it does with any of the unorganized. The anarchist critique of the state, if only the anarchists understood it, is but a special case of the critique of organization. And, at some level, even anarchist organizations sense this. Anti-anarchists may well conclude that if there is to be hierarchy and coercion, let it be out in the open, clearly labeled as such. Unlike these pundits (the right-wing "libertarians", the minarchists, for instance) I stubbornly persist in my opposition to the state. But not because, as anarchists so often thoughtlessly declaim, the state is not "necessary". Ordinary people dismiss this anarchist assertion as ludicrous, and so they should. Obviously, in an industrialized class society like ours, the state is necessary. The point is that the state has created the conditions in which it is indeed necessary, by stripping individuals and face-to-face voluntary associations of their powers. More fundamentally, the state's underpinnings (work, moralism, industrial technology, hierarchic organizations) are not necessary but rather antithetical to the satisfactions of real needs and desires. Unfortunately, most brands of anarchism endorse all these premises yet balk at their logical conclusion: the state. If there were no anarchists, the state would have had to invent them. We know that on several occasions it has done just that. We need anarchists unencumbered by anarchism. Then, and only then, we can begin to get serious about fomenting anarchy."

"Please allow me to introduce myself … I am Black the Knife, I am secretly famous, I have designer genes. I’m on a macropsychotic diet, I’m anarchorexic, I underwent paleolithium treatment, I’m the 6-Pac-Man! I not only know Who Wrote the Book of Love, I edited out the mushy parts!"

"I tell everyone not to do what I say! I’m behind the odd-ball, my ancestor was Putdown Man! Judge Crater freed me on my own recognizance, I ask: “What would Harpo say?” For me, know ain’t nothing but no misspelled, and all cretins are liars. I go-for-baroque, I’m a lowlife hierarch, I picked the Locke and entered the Avant-Garden of Eden. I got Spartacus to take the rap for me! I’m the heavyweight Light-Bringer, I'm the out-of-court jester who won't settle, I up the vigilante, I'm a law unto myself but break it anyway! I made a forced landing on the Moebius Strip and now I want to know, which side are you on?"

"Cleansed of its leftist residues, anarchy — anarchism minus Marxism — will be free to get better at being what it is."

"As for "decadence," that is an eminently bourgeois swear-word for people perceived to be having more fun than you are."

"Although it is by definition a union-oriented ideology, there is no perceptible syndicalist presence in any union. A syndicalist is more likely to be a professor than a proletarian, more likely to be a folk singer than a factory worker. Organizers on principle, syndicalists are disunited and factionalized. Remarkably, this dullest of all anarchisms attracts some of the most irrational and hysterical adherents. Only a rather small minority of North American anarchists are syndicalists. Syndicalism will persist, if at all, as a campus-based cult in increasing isolation from the main currents of anarchism."

"There is life after the left. And there is anarchy after anarchism. Post-leftist anarchists are striking off in many directions. Some may find the way — better yet, the ways — to a free future."

"Robert C. Black has gone on to celebrate Anarchy After Leftism, in a book whose smokescreen of insult and vitriol hides a basic lack of ideas about what "anarchy after leftism" really represents, apart perhaps from the supremacy of self-interest. In these writings anarchism's longstanding socialist dimension is jettisoned in favor of individual escapades. Black's personal conduct has mirrored his amoral views. In 1996, he acted as a police narcotics informant against Seattle author Jim Hogshire, resulting in a police raid on Hogshire's home. … one of the most disquieting observations that Bufe makes is that some anarchists have reacted to incidents of immorality and even violence with indifference: "Sure Bob Black is a destructive nut,"he quotes one as saying, "but he hasn't attacked us." Similarly, a comrade in the Netherlands —where Black's writings have, astonishingly, gained some popularity—has told me that when he tells Black's local fans of his violent and unethical activities, they respond with equal indifference. Currently in the U.S., despite Black's narcing on Jim Hogshire — a widely known betrayal of anarchist principles (contact Loompanics for details) — at least a few vocal "anarchists" continue to support Black and his brand of amoral egoism. Such unconcern is a far cry from the left-libertarian ethos that once proclaimed, "An injury to one is an injury to all!" Apathy in the face of immoral and unjust behavior toward one's fellow anarchists, let alone toward one's fellow human beings, reflects a grave breach of the ethical standards with which anarchists have long identified themselves, in contrast to many marxists and, especially, leninists. Ethics lies at the heart of a truly libertarian movement that offers a vision of a cooperative and humane society. An anarchism that dismisses even gross violations of basic ethical standards with an anemic shrug has not only lost its moral high ground as the libertarian alternative to authoritarian or state socialism; it has undermined its claim to represent a movement for basic change, individual as well as social. Instead it has become a pseudo-rebellious conceit, a self-serving gloss, a passing stage of late childhood development, or as Bufe puts it very well, a fashion trend."

"Bob Black is the high priest of nihilarity. His confessional has Duchamp’s urinal bolted to its door. His ten commandments are a string of one liners. His faith is baldly heretical. It begins where the dictionary ends, not with the ZZZ of a snore but with the chaotic rumbling of a chortle that quickens the senses like an earthquake that sways a petrified forest. By virtue of his faults, Black derides the wheel without spokes, the mandala of zero, and demoralizes the mind forged hi-techtonics whose poison prescribes that one seismograph counterfeits all. By virtue of genuine delight his texts are both alive and enlivening. He is the extraordinary magician who pulls the perpetually unexpected, the silk purse, from out of the squealing sow’s ear. Within these pages nothing is not as it seems, and the winged horse Pegasus flies forth from the neck of the beheaded Medusa."

"For more than six hundred years—that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge, what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws."

"Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it."

"If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them."

"Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally — perhaps more than equally, because more boldly — rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power. There is no more reason, then, why a man should either sustain, or submit to, the rule of the majority, than of a minority."

"A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government."

"Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice. And all talk about them, in matters of government, is mere absurdity."

"The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that—however bloody—can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave."

"It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay any tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected.But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call themselves "the government," are directly the opposite of these of the single highwayman.In the first place, they do not, like him, make themselves individually known; or, consequently, take upon themselves personally the responsibility of their acts. On the contrary, they secretly (by secret ballot) designate some one of their number to commit the robbery in their behalf, while they keep themselves practically concealed."

"For this reason, whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.:"

"#That every man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will."

"#That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future."

"#That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take a man's money without his consent, for any such object as they profess to take it for, viz., that of protecting him; for why should they wish to protect him, if he does not wish them to do so? To suppose that they would do so, is just as absurd as it would be to suppose that they would take his money without his consent, for the purpose of buying food or clothing for him, when he did not want it."

"#If a man wants "protection," he is competent to make his own bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to rob him, in order to "protect" him against his will."

"#That the only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets, until they have assurances, perfectly satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used as they wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not for their injury."

"#That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support."

"A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible. The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property, and the right of property is the right of absolute, irresponsible dominion. The two are identical; the one necessarily implying the other. Neither can exist without the other. If, therefore, Congress have that absolute and irresponsible lawmaking power, which the Constitution — according to their interpretation of it — gives them, it can only be because they own us as property. If they own us as property, they are our masters, and their will is our law. If they do not own us as property, they are not our masters, and their will, as such, is of no authority over us. But these men who claim and exercise this absolute and irresponsible dominion over us, dare not be consistent, and claim either to be our masters, or to own us as property. They say they are only our servants, agents, attorneys, and representatives. But this declaration involves an absurdity, a contradiction. No man can be my servant, agent, attorney, or representative, and be, at the same time, uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me for his acts. It is of no importance that I appointed him, and put all power in his hands. If I made him uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me, he is no longer my servant, agent, attorney, or representative. If I gave him absolute, irresponsible power over my property, I gave him the property. If I gave him absolute, irresponsible power over myself, I made him my master, and gave myself to him as a slave. And it is of no importance whether I called him master or servant, agent or owner. The only question is, what power did I put into his hands? Was it an absolute and irresponsible one? or a limited and responsible one?"

"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist."

"The science of mine and thine—the science of justice—is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

"These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other."

"Through all time, so far as history informs us, wherever mankind have attempted to live in peace with each other, both the natural instincts, and the collective wisdom of the human race, have acknowledged and prescribed, as an indispensable condition, obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz., that each should live honestly towards every other. The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: " To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due." This entire maxim is really expressed in the single words, to live honestly; since to live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due."

"Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenceless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will, perform them. But of his legal duty—that is, of his duty to live honestly towards his fellow men—his fellow men not only may judge, but, for their own protection, must judge. And, if need be, they may rightfully compel him to perform it. They may do this, acting singly, or in concert. They may do it on the instant, as the necessity arises, or deliberately and systematically, if they prefer to do so, and the exigency will admit of it."

"Certainly no man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire."

"No objection can be made to these voluntary associations upon the ground that they would lack that knowledge of justice, as a science, which would be necessary to enable them to maintain justice, and themselves avoid doing injustice. Honesty, justice, natural law, is usually a very plain and simple matter, easily understood by common minds. Those who desire to know what it is, in any particular case, seldom have to go far to find it."

"Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not understand the nature of the thing itself. To make them understand the meanings of the words justice and injustice before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them."

"If justice be not a natural principle, it is no principle at all. If it be not a natural principle, there is no such thing as justice. If it be not a natural principle, all that men have ever said or written about it, from time immemorial, has been said and written about that which had no existence. If it be not a natural principle, all the appeals for justice that have ever been heard, and all the struggles for justice that have ever been witnessed, have been appeals and struggles for a mere fantasy, a vagary of the imagination, and not for a reality.If justice be not a natural principle, then there is no such thing as injustice; and all the crimes of which the world has been the scene, have been no crimes at all; but only simple events, like the falling of the rain, or the setting of the sun; events of which the victims had no more reason to complain than they had to complain of the running of the streams, or the growth of vegetation.If justice be not a natural principle, governments (so-called) have no more right or reason to take cognizance of it, or to pretend or profess to take cognizance of it, than they have to take cognizance, or to pretend or profess to take cognizance, of any other nonentity; and all their professions of establishing justice, or of maintaining justice, or of rewarding justice, are simply the mere gibberish of fools, or the frauds of imposters.But if justice be a natural principle, then it is necessarily an immutable one; and can no more be changed—by any power inferior to that which established it—than can the law of gravitation, the laws of light, the principles of mathematics, or any other natural law or principle whatever; and all attempts or assumptions, on the part of any man or body of men—whether calling themselves governments, or by any other name—to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion, in the place of justice, as a rule of conduct for any human being, are as much an absurdity, an usurpation, and a tyranny, as would be their attempts to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion in the place of any and all the physical, mental, and moral laws of the universe.If there be any such principle as justice, it is, of necessity, a natural principle; and, as such, it is a matter of science, to be learned and applied like any other science. And to talk of either adding to, or taking from, it, by legislation, is just as false, absurd, and ridiculous as it would be to talk of adding to, or taking from, mathematics, chemistry, or any other science, by legislation."

"If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.On the other hand, if there be no such principle as justice, or natural law, then every human being came into the world utterly destitute of rights; and coming into the world destitute of rights, he must necessarily forever remain so. For if no one brings any rights with him into the world, clearly no one can ever have any rights of his own, or give any to another. And the consequence would be that mankind could never have any rights; and for them to talk of any such things as their rights, would be to talk of things that never had, never will have, and never can have any existence."

"[A]ll human legislation is simply and always an assumption of authority and dominion, where no right of authority or dominion exists. It is, therefore, simply and always an intrusion, an absurdity, an usurpation, and a crime."

"[I]f there be no such principle as justice, there can be no such acts as crimes; and all the professions of governments, so called, that they exist, either in whole or in part, for the punishment or prevention of crimes, are professions that they exist for the punishment or prevention of what never existed, nor ever can exist."

"If there be in nature such a principle as justice, it is necessarily the only political principle there ever was, or ever will be. All the other so-called political principles, which men are in the habit of inventing, are not principles at all. They are either the mere conceits of simpletons, who imagine they have discovered something better than truth, and justice, and universal law; or they are mere devices and pretences, to which selfish and knavish men resort as means to get fame, and power, and money."

"If we once — and for so long — lived in balance with nature and each other, we should be able to do so again. The catastrophe that’s overtaking us has deep roots, but our previous state of natural anarchy reaches much further into our shared history."

"Agriculture has been and remains a “catastrophe” at all levels, the one which underpins the entire material and spiritual culture of alienation now destroying us. Liberation is impossible without its dissolution"

"Domestication involved the initiation of production, vastly increased divisions of labor, and the completed foundations of social stratification. This amounted to an epochal mutation both in the character of human existence and its development, clouding the latter with ever more violence and work."

"Logically, humanity itself will also become a domesticate of this order as the world of production processes us as much as it degrades and deforms every other natural system."

"The process of transforming all direct experience into the supreme symbolic expression, language, monopolizes life. Like ideology, language conceals and justifies, compelling us to suspend our doubts about its claim to validity. It is the root of civilization, the dynamic code of civilization's alienated nature. As the paradigm of ideology, language stands behind all of the massive legitimation necessary to hold civilization together. It remains for us to clarify what forms of nascent domination engendered this justification, made language necessary as basic means of repression"

"Everyone can feel the nothingness, the void, just beneath the surface of everyday routines and securities."

"The attack of the Luddites was not occasioned by the introduction of new machinery, however, as is commonly thought, for there is no evidence of such in 1811 and 1812 when Luddism proper began. Rather, the destruction was leveled at the new slip-shod methods which were ordered into effect on the extant machinery. Not an attack against production on economic grounds, it was above all the violent response of the textile workers (soon joined by others) to their attempted degradation in the form of inferior work; shoddy goods — the hastily-assembled "cut-ups," primarily — was the issue at hand."

"To wonder what was so radical about a movement which seemed to demand "only" the cessation of fraudulent work, is to fail to perceive the inner truth of the valid assumption, made on every side, of the connection between frame-breaking and sedition. As if the fight by the producer for the integrity of his work-life can be made without calling the whole of capitalism into question. The demand for the cessation of fraudulent work necessarily becomes a cataclysm, an all-or-nothing battle insofar as it is pursued; it leads directly to the heart of the capitalist relationship and its dynamic."

"When Taylor began his efforts at the Midvale Steel Company in the 1880s, several members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers were likewise interested in labor management. Industrial capitalism was running up against renewed resistance from the growing ranks of labor, still committed to a sense of work integrity and craftsmanship. Task management, or scientific management as it came to be called, began to take shape in the eighties as the way to break the worker's threatening resistance. The heart of this approach is the systematic reduction of work into discrete, routinized tasks, totally separated from any policy decisions about the job. ... For capitalism to be firmly in control, it must monopolize information and techniques as surely as it controls the rest of the means of production. The worker must be permitted only to perform certain specific narrow tasks as planned by management."

"Never before have people been so infantalized, made so dependent on the machine for everything; as the earth rapidly approaches its extinction due to technology, our souls are shrunk and flattened by its pervasive rule. Any sense of wholeness and freedom can only return by the undoing of the massive division of labour at the heart of technological progress. This is the liberatory project in all its depth."

"We can either passively continue on the road to utter domestication and destruction or turn in the direction of joyful upheaval, passionate and feral embrace of wildness and life that aims at dancing on the ruins of clocks, computers and that failure of imagination and will called work. Can we justify our lives by anything less than such a politics of rage and dreams?"

"Stress, loneliness, depression, boredom—the madness of everyday life. Ever-greater levels of sadness, implying a recognition, on the visceral level at least, that things could be different. How much joy is there left in the technological society, this field of alienation and anxiety."

"The mental disorder of going along with things as they are is now treated almost entirely by biochemicals, to reduce the individuals's consciousness of socially induced anguish, tranquilizers are now the world's most widely prescribed drugs, and antidepressants set record sales as well. Temporary relief - despite side effects and addictive properties - is easily obtained, while we are all ground down a little more."

"It is clear that a retreat from the social, based largely on the experience of defeat and consequent resignation, promotes the personal as the only possible terrain of authenticity."

"The most influential specific postmodern approach has been Jacques Derrida's, known since the 60's as deconstruction. Postmodernism is philosophy means above all the writings of Derrida, and this earliest and most extreme outlook has found a resonance well beyond philosophy, in the popular culture and its mores."

"Postmodernism contemporaneity, a morass of deferred solutions on every level, featuring ambiguity, the refusal to ponder either origins or ends, as well as the denial of oppositional approaches, "the new realism." Signifying nothing and going nowhere, pm [postmodernism] is an inverted millenarianism, a gathering fruition of the technological "life"-system of universal capital."

"All of us prefer what is friendly, sincere, pleasant - nice. But in an immiserated world of pervasive and real crisis, which should be causing all of us to radically reassess everything, the nice can be the false."

"Anarchism is the attempt to eradicate domination. This includes not only such obvious forms as the nation-state, with its routine use of violence and the force of law, and the corporation, with its institutionalized irresponsibility, but also such internalized forms as patriarchy, racism, homophobia. Also it is the attempt to expose the ways our philosophy, religion, economics, and other ideological constructions perform their primary function, which is to rationalize or naturalize — make seem natural — the domination that pervades our way of life: the destruction of the natural world or of indigenous peoples, for example, comes not from the result of decisions actively made and actions pursued, but instead, so we convince ourselves, as a manifestation of Darwinian selection, or God's will, or economic exigency. Beyond that, Anarchism is the attempt to look even into those parts of our everyday lives we accept as givens, as part of the universe, to see how they, too, dominate us or facilitate our domination over others. ... Most fundamentally, I would see Anarchism as a synonym for anti-authoritarianism."

"Culture has led us to betray our own aboriginal spirit and wholeness, into an ever-worsening realm of synthetic, isolating, impoverishing estrangement. Which is not to say that there are no more everyday pleasures, without which we would loose our humanness. But as our plight deepens, we glimpse how much must be erased for our redemption."

"Considering that our culture invented napalm and nuclear weapons, I'm not sure we're in a position to judge the smaller scale violence of other cultures. But it's important to note that none of the cannibal or headhunting groups were true hunter-gatherers. They had already begun to use agriculture. It is now generally conceded that agriculture usually leads to a rise in labor, a decrease in sharing, an increase in violence, and a shorter life expectancy. This is not to say that all agricultural societies are violent, but rather that violence is by and large not characteristic of true hunter-gatherers."

"There's been a revolution in the fields of anthropology and archaeology over the past thirty years, and increasingly people are coming to understand that life before agriculture and domestication — of animals and ourselves — was in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, gender equality, and health."

"You hear people say that all the time: "You can't put the genie back in the bottle"; "you're asking people to forget." But that's just another attempt to rationalize craziness by calling it human nature. And it's a variant of the old racist intelligence theory: because the Hopi didn't invent backhoes, they must not be curious. Sure, people are naturally curious but about what? Would you or I aspire to create the neutron bomb? Of course not. But the fact that I don't want to create a neutron bomb doesn't mean I'm not curious. Curiosity is not value-free. Certain types of curiosity arise from certain mindsets, and our culture's curiosity follows the logic of alienation not simple wonder, or the desire to learn."

"Division of labor is central to our way of life. Each person must perform as a tiny cog in a big machine. If, on the other hand, your primary goal is wholeness, egalitarianism, autonomy, and an intact world, then there's quite a lot wrong with it."

"In Genesis, the Bible's first book, woman is born from the body of man. The Fall from Eden represents the demise of hunter-gatherer life, the expulsion into agriculture and hard labor. It is blamed on Eve, of course, who bears the stigma of the Fall. Quite an irony, in that domestication is the fear and refusal of nature and woman, while the Garden myth blames the chief victim of its scenario, in reality."

"Urban reality is primarily about trade and commerce, with a nearly total dependence on support from external areas for continued existence. To guarantee such an artificial subsistence, city fathers turn inevitably to war, that chronic civilizational staple."

"Cities and factories are never at base freely chosen by the people inside them; domination keeps them there. Aristophanes put it well in his 414 BC creation The Birds: "A city must rise, to house all the birds; then you must fence in the air, the sky, the earth, and must surround it by walls, like Babylon.""

"Democratic forms have always cloaked the rule of elites."

"Victor Frankenstein and his creation perish, of course; his “Adam” is as doomed as he is. If this monster cannot be saved by his father/creator, however, today’s cyborg/robot/Artificial Intelligence products do expect to be saved. For those at the forefront of technological innovation today, there will be no return to a previous, monster-free state."

"I must say that I am still passionately pro-life, I just have a much more holistic sense of what it means to be for life, knowing that life does not just begin at conception and end at birth, and that if I am going to discourage abortion, I had better be ready to adopt some babies and care for some mothers. (p. 44)"

"Perhaps the devil is just as likely to wear a three-piece suit as to have horns and a pitchfork. And perhaps the angels look more like the bums in the alley than like feathered white babies. (p. 50)"

"I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me. (p. 51)"

"I guess God can use the mafia, but I would like God to use the church. (p. 63)"

"We were not interested in a Christianity that offered these families only mansions and streets of golds in heaven when all they wanted was a bed for their kids now. And many Christians had an extra one. (p. 64)"

"I remember hearing about an old comic strip back in the days of St. Ed's. Two guys are talking to each other, and one of them says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world. And his friend says, "Well, why don't you ask?" The fellow shakes his head and says he's scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters, "I'm scared God will ask me the same question." (p. 65)"

"Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, "You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet." (p. 65)"

"We shall do even greater things because the love that lived in the radical Christ now lives within millions of ordinary radicals all over the planet. (p. 85)"

"I heard one of the teaching pastors at Willow Creek speak on the rich young ruler text that Rich (Mullins) had talked about in Wheaton's chapel. The teaching pastor had said, "now this doesn't mean you have to go sell your rollerblades and golf clubs," and he went on to "contextualize" the teaching to show that we just need to be careful not to make idols of our things. I wasn't so sure about that. Jesus doesn't tell the man to be a better steward, or to treat his workers fairly, or not to make money an idol. He tells this highly educated and devoutly religious young man that he lacks one thing: giving up everything he owns to give the poor. (p. 103)"

"And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about."

"Mother Theresa always said, "Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta.”"

"We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy, too. But I guess that's why God invented highlighers, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest."

"There are some things to die for but none to kill for."

"“I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor."

"Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God's blessing on the poor rather than on the rich and would insist that it's not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said."

"For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death."

"The more I get to know Jesus, the more trouble he seems to get me into"

"And that’s when things get messy. When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get in trouble. Once we are actually friends with the folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity. One of my friends has a shirt marked with the words of late Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara: “When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist.” Charity wins awards and applause but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for living out of love that disrupts the social order that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them."

"Rocking the vote may mean going to the booths and writing in our Candidate, because he doesn't seem to be on the ballot. (p. 335)"

"Prove to me that you have the right to exist!"

"All acts, and only those acts, that coercively harm others are evil."

"There is no moral authority for government other than to enforce the Universal Ethic."

"Don’t ask from whom the economy hides; it hides from you!"

"I did not spittel a drop of blood, or steal a cent in all my life."

"If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph."

"I wish to say to you that I am innocent. I have never done a crime, some sins, but never any crime. I thank you for everything you have done for me. I am innocent of all crime, not only this one, but of all, all. I am an innocent man. I now wish to forgive some people for what they are doing to me."

"Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent."

"Two souls and bodies seem as one, supported and floating on some divine stream in Paradise.… This is the real ideal and end of Karezza. You will finally enter into such unity that in your fullest embrace you can hardly tell yourselves apart and can read each other’s thoughts. You will feel a physical unity as if her blood flowed in your veins, her flesh were yours. For this is the Soul-Blending Embrace."

"When the full magnetic rapport of Karezza has been realized, in which the two souls and bodies seem as one, supported and floating on some divine stream in Paradise, all sense of restraint and difficulty gone, and succeeded by a heavenly ease, power, exaltation, pure and perfect bliss, diffused throughout the entire being, it is then that the eyes and faces shine as though transfigured, every tone becomes music, every emotion poetry."

"I pay taxes, of course. I believe in these things no more than Emerson or Thoreau, but resistance to them is folly, except on the mental plane."

"He paused a moment and then pointed to the brook. "You see that the water divides there and flows on each side of a great rock. Now, if we imagine the brook endowed with consciousness, no doubt the stream on the right of the rock will feel itself separate from the stream on the left, but to us they are plainly continuous and the same. So I suppose every life in the world flows from the same infinite source and finally returns to it and while feeling itself separate, because limited and partial, is really continuous and the same."

"This explains the instant satisfaction and growing reward which comes to every man who aspires to a higher life, who covets wisdom, who pursues beauty, who idealizes and worships his ideals."

"Can any one feel any respect for a government that accords rights only to the privileged classes, and none to the workers?"

"Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism, or Socialism, means the re-organization of society upon scientific principles and the abolition of causes which produce vice and crime."

"We did not want bloodshed, for we are not bandits. We would not be socialists, if we were bandits. /.../ When the preacher of the truth meets the death penalty, well - proud and defiant, I will pay the price."

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

"I say, if death is the penalty for proclaiming truth, then I will proudly and defiantly pay the costly price! Truth crucified in Socrates, in Christ, in Giordano Bruno, in Huss, Galileo still lives -- they and others whose number is legion have preceded us on this path. We are ready to follow!"

"Capitalists and their predecessors—slaveowners, moneylenders, merchant-investors—owe their very existence to the State. In early times, concentration of political and spiritual power precedes economic stratification in society."

"We believe that tactics should be chosen to fit the particular situation, not drawn from a preconceived moral code."

"An anarchist is not someone who favors chaos but someone who favors the total liberation of the world through the abolition of capitalism, government, and all other forms of oppressive authority, to be replaced by any number of other social arrangements, proven or utopian."

"If a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system based on centralized coercion and violence, and if that movement does not realize and exercise the power that makes it a threat, it cannot destroy such a system."

"In the world today, governments and corporations hold a near-total monopoly on power, a major aspect of which is violence. Unless we change the power relationships (and, preferably, destroy the infrastructure and culture of centralized power to make impossible the subjugation of the many to the few), those who currently benefit from the ubiquitous structural violence, who control the militaries, banks, bureaucracies, and corporations, will continue to call the shots. The elite cannot be persuaded by appeals to their conscience. Individuals who do change their minds and find a better morality will be fired, impeached, replaced, recalled, assassinated."

"Time and again, people struggling not for some token reform but for complete liberation — the reclamation of control over our own lives and the power to negotiate our own relationships with the people and world around us — will find that nonviolence does not work, that we face a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative."

"Nonviolence is an inherently privileged position in the modern context. Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence. Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, many of whom are people of color, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement’s demands or the pacifists achieve that legendary “critical mass.”"

"Nonviolence refuses to recognize that it can only work for privileged people, who have a status protected by violence, as the perpetrators and beneficiaries of a violent hierarchy."

"The people most affected by a system of oppression should be at the forefront of the struggle against that particular oppression."

"The imperative of nonviolence overrides the basic respect of trusting people to liberate themselves."

"A stock argument common among pacifists is that revolutionaries should not use violence because the state will then use this to “justify” violent repression. Well, to whom is this violent repression justified, and why aren’t those who claim to be against violence trying to un-justify it? Why do nonviolent activists seek to change society’s morality in how it views oppression or war, but accept the morality of repression as natural and untouchable?"

"By preaching nonviolence, and abandoning to state repression those who do not listen obediently, white activists who think they are concerned about racism are actually enacting a paternalistic relationship and fulfilling the useful role of pacifying the oppressed."

"Nonviolence in the hands of white people has been and continues to be a colonial enterprise. White elites instruct the natives in how to run their economies and governments, while white dissidents instruct the natives in how to run their resistance."

"Most white people have enough privilege and latitude that we may mistake these generously long, velvet-padded chains for freedom, so we comfortably agitate within the parameters of democratic society (the borders of which are composed of violently enforced racial, economic, sexual, and governmental structures). Some of us are further mistaken in assuming that all people face these same circumstances, and expect people of color to exercise privileges they don’t actually have."

"When we understand that privileged people derive material benefits from the exploitation of oppressed people, and that this means we benefit from the violence used to keep them down, we cannot sincerely condemn them for violently rebelling against the structural violence that privileges us."

"The contradiction in ostensibly revolutionary pacifism is that revolution is never safe, but to the vast majority of its practitioners and advocates, pacifism is about staying safe, not getting hurt, not alienating anyone, not giving anyone a bitter pill to swallow."

"At first, nonviolence seems like a clear moral position that has little to do with race. This view is based on the simplistic assumption that violence is first and foremost something that we choose. But which people in this world have the privilege to choose violence, and which people live in violent circumstances whether they want to or not? Generally, nonviolence is a privileged practice, one that comes out of the experiences of white people, and it does not always make sense for people without white privilege or for white people attempting to destroy the system of privilege and oppression."

"Put quite plainly, nonviolence ensures a state monopoly on violence. States survive by assuming the role of the sole legitimate purveyor of violent force within their territory. Any struggle against oppression necessitates a conflict with the state."

"How the state can count on knee-jerk pacifist condemnation of violence and how pacifists effectively do the state’s dirty work by failing to use their cultural influence to make militant resistance to tyranny “respectable.” Instead, pacifists claim that militancy alienates people, and do nothing to attempt to counteract this phenomenon."

"A conquered population is schooled in nonviolence through its relationship with a power structure that has claimed a monopoly on the right to use violence. It is the acceptance, by the disempowered, of the statist belief that the masses must be stripped of their natural abilities for direct action, including the propensities for self-defense and the use of force, or they will descend into chaos, into a cycle of violence, into hurting and oppressing one another. Thus is government safety, and slavery freedom. Only a people trained to accept being ruled by a violent power structure can really question someone’s right and need to forcefully defend herself against oppression."

"In practice, pacifist morality demonstrates that it is more acceptable for radicals to rely on the violence of the government for protection than to defend themselves."

"If pacifists are unable to defend their own gains, what will they do when they don’t have the organized violence of the police?"

"Permitting nonviolent protest improves the image of the state. Whether they mean to or not, nonviolent dissidents play the role of a loyal opposition in a performance that dramatizes dissent and creates the illusion that democratic government is not elitist or authoritarian. Pacifists paint the state as benign by giving authority the chance to tolerate a criticism that does not actually threaten its continued operation."

"Free speech does not empower us, and it does not equal freedom. Free speech is a privilege that can be — and is — taken away by the government when it serves their interests."

"The state is not a passive thing. If it wants to repress a movement or organization, it does not wait for an excuse, it manufactures one."

"Pacifism goes hand in hand with efforts to centralize and control the movement. The concept is inherently authoritarian and incompatible with anarchism because it denies people the right to self-determination in directing their own struggles. The pacifist reliance on centralization and control (with a leadership that can take “vigorous efforts” to “prevent destructive behavior”) preserves the state within the movement, and preserves hierarchical structures to assist state negotiations (and state repression)."

"The tendencies of pacifism toward negotiation and centralization facilitate efforts by the state to manipulate and co-opt rebellious social movements; they also make it easier for the state to repress a movement, if it decides there is a need to do so."

"Modern governments, which have long studied methods of social control, no longer view peace as the default social condition, interrupted only by outside agitators. Now they understand that the natural condition of the world (the world they have created, I should editorialize) is conflict: rebellion to their rule is inevitable and continuous. Statecraft has become the art of managing conflict, permanently. As long as rebels continue to carry olive branches and a naive view of the struggle, the state knows that it is safe."

"It seems that the only form of violence [pacifists] consistently oppose is rebellion against the state."

"Instead of raising a fist, pacifists raise their index and middle fingers to form a V. That V stands for victory and is the symbol of patriots exulting in the peace that follows a triumphant war. In the final analysis, the peace that pacifists defend is that of the vanquishing army, the unopposed state that has conquered all resistance and monopolized violence to such an extent that violence need no longer be visible."

"Nonviolence assumes that instead of defending ourselves against violence, we can suffer violence patiently until enough of society can be mobilized to oppose it peacefully (or that we can expect to “transform” any aggression that threatens us individually). Most proponents of nonviolence will present it as not merely a narrow political practice but a philosophy that deserves to penetrate the very social fabric and root out violence in all its manifestations."

"Pacifism simply does not resonate in people’s everyday realities, unless those people live in some extravagant bubble of tranquility from which all forms of civilization’s pandemic reactive violence have been pushed out by the systemic and less visible violence of police and military forces."

"People must build a culture that allows everyone to self-identify in terms of gender and that supports us as we build healthy relationships and heal from generations of violence and trauma."

"Advocates of nonviolence who make a limited exception for self defense because they recognize how wrong it is to say that oppressed people cannot or should not protect themselves have no viable strategies for dealing with systemic violence. Is it self-defense to fight off an abusive husband, but not to blow up a dioxin-emitting factory that is making your breast milk toxic? What about a more concerted campaign to destroy the corporation that owns the factory and is responsible for releasing the pollutants? Is it self-defense to kill the general who sends out the soldiers who rape women in a war zone? Or must pacifists remain on the defensive, only fighting individual attacks and submitting themselves to the inevitability of such attacks until nonviolent tactics somehow convert the general or close down the factory, at some uncertain point in the future?"

"Oppressive social hierarchies exist and replicate themselves in the behavior of all subjects and must be overcome internally as well as externally."

"The pacifist avoidance of self-criticism is functional, not just typical. When your strategy’s victory comes from “captur[ing] and maintain[ing] the moral high ground,” it is necessary to portray yourself as moral and your enemy as immoral."

"For revolutionary activists, however, victory comes from building power and out-strategizing the state. Such a path requires constant assessment and self-criticism."

"Patriarchy cannot be destroyed overnight, but it can be gradually overcome by groups that work to destroy it. Activists must recognize patriarchy as a primary enemy and open spaces within revolutionary movements for women, queer people, and transgender people to be creative forces in directing, assessing, and reformulating the struggle (while also supporting men’s efforts to understand and counter our own socialization). An honest evaluation shows that no matter our intentions, more work remains to be done to free control of the movement from the hands of men and to find healthy, restorative ways to deal with abusive patterns in relationships, social or romantic, among members of the movement."

"Arguing against nonviolence and in favor of a diversity of tactics should not at all imply a satisfaction with the strategies or cultures of past militant groups."

"In such a society (e.g. ours), pacifism really is passivism because not committing violence really has more to do with avoiding culpability than with taking responsibility."

"After a revolution that destroys all the structures of capitalism - seizes all the factories, redistributes the land, burns all the money - people who are philosophically capitalist need not be purged or intimidated with irrational authority, because lacking a military apparatus to implement capitalism or a police apparatus to protect it, they as people are quite harmless, and will either one day learn to do something creative with their lives or they’ll starve to death without realizing that they can no longer pay someone to slave for them."

"Losing fights can still be better than not fighting at all, because it empowers people, and teaches us that we can fight."

"We can never know whether our analysis and our methods are wrong, except sometimes with hindsight. Our movements are stronger when they employ diverse methods and analyses and these different positions criticize one another."

"“Violence” is whatever the person speaking at the moment decides to describe as violent. Usually, this means things they do not like. As a result, the use of the category “violence” tends towards hypocrisy. If it is done to me, it is violent. If it is done by me or for my benefit, it is justified, acceptable, or even invisible."

"We are all forced to participate in a society that is held together by structural violence, and rewarded for our participation with various privileges, though these privileges are spread unevenly across society. Given that those who use some form of visible, antisocial violence are often the least likely to enjoy the privileges of structural violence, there is no feasible way to determine who is violent and who is not."

"“Violence” was a euphemism for a threat to the ruling order and its illusion of social peace, with which the class struggle, the brutality of patriarchy, and the murderousness of colonialism are hidden. The newspapers did not talk about violence when cops killed strikers, when landlords evicted families, or when poor people died of hunger. They talked about violence when workers went on strike, when tenants stopped paying rent, when street vendors refused to surrender their wares to the cops."

"Freedom as a concept sides with those who are struggling for theirs, whereas nonviolence as a concept sides with the enforcers of normality and the rulers of the status quo."

"The goal of our criticism should be solidarity, not homogeneity."

"Government violence is not the result of violent revolutions, but the product of government itself. Any movement that leaves the State intact will fail in ending the oppressions we are fighting against. A nonviolent movement that replaces one government with another—and this is the greatest victory a nonviolent movement has ever achieved in the history of the world—ends up betraying itself, allowing Power to change its masks without addressing the fundamental problems of society. Nonviolence as an analytical tool has no means of understanding this kind of defeat—the kind that looks like victory."

"Governments are by their nature aggressive and dominating. No society is safe if its neighbor is a state."

"Democracy requires social peace, the illusion that, in a society based on exploitation and domination, everyone can get along and nobody's fundamental well-being is under threat."

"In order to show people that we are serious, that we are committed, that we are fighting for our lives, it is better to express unambiguously that we are the enemies of the established order, that we negate their laws, their offers of dialogue, and their false social peace, it is better to attack (and to come dressed for the occasion) than to dress up as clowns, tote about giant puppets, playing up a theatrical conflict with the police, locking down and expecting them to treat us humanely, or wait for the cameras to give our witty protest signs a close-up. This is not to say that we must be ever grim and serious, nor that our only activity is to smash. Just as we need the full range of tactics, we will express a thousand emotions in our rebellion, from street festivals to funeral marches to riots. But it is our negation of the present system that gives everything else its meaning. Only because we do not frame this as a popularity contest, but as a revolution, as a struggle to destroy the present system and create something wholly new, do all the festive and creative aspects of our struggle break out of the usual cycles of loyal dissent and counterculture that are co-opted from the beginning."

"Democracy is merely another way to organize exploitation, oppression, and social control. Democratic governments have coexisted with slavery, colonialism, warfare, the most patriarchal societies with some of the most unequal concentrations of wealth, the destruction of the environment, starvation, extreme poverty, the pathologization or murder of trans people, labor exploitation, job and housing precarity, homelessness, exclusion from healthcare, genocide, and any other bad thing we can think of."

"Capitalism is based on the endless accumulation of wealth, extracted from the environment and from our labor, and government is based on the accumulation of power and control directly stolen from all the rest of us. A marriage between these two systems, which has defined the social reality for at least five hundred years, means everyone gets fucked."

"Governments can be democratic or not, more or less corrupt, but they will still pursue the same basic goals, and they will still be controlled by an elite. Government by its very nature concentrates power and excludes people from making decisions over their own lives."

"The truth is, revolution is anti-democratic. Revolutions in their beginnings are always opposed by the majority, which is nothing but a virtual herd controlled by the media. A minority of one knows its own interests better than the rest of society, and the rest of society can only be convinced of a truth if people start putting it into action rather than waiting for validation from the majority. The struggle for a world free of domination is the insistence that we are the only ones who can define and meet our needs, and that our needs are more important than the ever-manipulated bylaws, due process, and sacred pieces of paper that democracy holds so dear. The principle of direct action is fundamentally at odds with following the rules and getting permission."

"Public influence is the real government of the world."

"The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states, and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us."

"The circulating medium being issued only by those who labor, they would suddenly become invested with all the wealth and all the power; and those who did not labor, be they ever so rich now, would as suddenly become poor and powerless."

"Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost."

"It has now become a very common sentiment, that there is some deep and radical wrong somewhere, and that legislators have proved themselves incapable of discovering, or of remedying it."

"Anarchism had been connected to communitarianism in the United States since the days of Josiah Warren...Warren's failures were the failures of a generation. Communitarianism as a movement was moribund by the 1860s. An urbanizing, industrializing society that was coming to depend on large-scale organization had little space left, physically or psychologically, within which men and women could secede from the larger community and at the same time believe that they were creating a new social order that would eventually dominate the entire society. Nevertheless, despite the disintegration of communitarianism in practice, the idea of communalism retained a powerful hold on the minds of many Americans. This was particularly true in the last decade and a half of the nineteenth century."

"In a very real sense, every subsidy and privilege ... is a form of slavery. Slavery, simply put, is the use of coercion to live off of someone else's labor. For example, consider the worker who pays $300 a month for a drug under patent, that would cost $30 in a free market. If he is paid $15 an hour, the eighteen hours he works every month to pay the difference are slavery. Every hour worked to pay usury on a credit card or mortgage is slavery. The hours worked to pay unnecessary distribution and marketing costs (comprising half of retail prices), because of subsidies to economic centralization, is slavery. Every additional hour someone works to meet his basic needs, because the state tilts the field in favor of the bosses and forces him to sell his labor for less than it is worth, is slavery. All these forms of slavery together probably amount to half our working hours. If we kept the full value of our labor, we could probably maintain current levels of consumption with a work week of twenty hours. As Bill Haywood said, for every man who gets a dollar he didn't sweat for, someone else sweated to produce a dollar he never received."

"The natural effect of unfettered market competition is socialism. For a short time the innovator receives a large profit, as a reward for being first to the market. Then, as competitors adopt the innovation, competition drives these profits down to zero and the price gravitates toward the new, lower cost of production made possible by this innovation (that price including, of course, the cost of the producer’s maintenance and the amortization of her capital outlays). So in a free market, the cost savings in labor required to produce any given commodity would quickly be socialized in the form of reduced labor cost to purchase it."

"When that happens, and the “World’s Sole Remaining Superpower” loses its early-adopter advantage, drone technology will work to the advantage of the side with the most decentralized, distributed organizational infrastructure, and the most widely dispersed and hardened end-points. And it will disproportionately hurt the side with the most centralized, hierarchical form of organization and the most concentrated target profile. Anyone want to venture a guess as to which respective sides fit those descriptions? Imagine, if you will, a world in which drones are cheap and widely available. Then stop and think about the target profile of the Empire and the corporate interests it serves. Imagine how easy it would be to get targeting information on the homes, churches and country clubs of the senior management and directors of the aerospace companies that make American drones. The Boardrooms and C-Suites themselves. The factories. The whole South Asian chain of command, from CINC CENTCOM down to battalion and flight headquarters. The logistical tail of the drones, including the control centers at every airbase from which drones are staged. Begin to get the picture?"

". The central theme of contemporary autonomist Marxism is a shift from giant organizations and insurrectional seizure to gradualism and Exodus. The rapid transformation of the working class, the blurring of the lines between work and the rest of life, and the shift in meeting a growing share of our needs into the informal and social economy, mean that the Old Left’s workerism (and like Harry Cleaver, I include syndicalism and council communism in the Old Left), its focus on the production process as the center of society, and its treatment of the industrial proletariat as the subject of history, have become obsolete. In this regard, read Toni Negri’s contrast of the Multitude to previous Old Left ideas of the proletariat. Mostly, I call it a heroic fantasy because any model that envisions a post-capitalist transition based on the universal adoption of any monolithic, schematized social model is as ridiculous as Socrates and Glaucon discussing what musical instruments and poetic metres will be permitted in the perfect state. The real world version of the post-capitalist transition — just as with the transition to capitalism five centuries earlier — isn’t a matter of any single cohesive social class, as the subject of history, systematically remaking the world guided by some single, comprehensive ideology, and organized around a uniform institutional model. It’s a matter of a wide variety of prefigurative institutions and technological building blocks that already exist in the present society, continuing to grow and coalesce together until they reach sufficient critical mass for a phase transition — a phase transition whose outlines can only be guessed at in the most general terms. This is the model advocated by Michel Bauwens, by Paul Mason, by John Holloway, by Peter Frase, and by a lot of other people who can hardly be fitted into any American individualist ghetto."

"The key to efficiency, for the New Class, was to remove as much of life as possible from the domain of "politics" (that is, interference by non-professionals) and to place it under the control of competent authorities. "Democracy" was recast as a periodic legitimation ritual, with the individual returning between elections to his proper role of sitting down and shutting up. In virtually every area of life, the average citizen was to be transformed from Jefferson's self-sufficient and resourceful yeoman into a client of some bureaucracy or other. The educational system was designed to render him a passive and easily managed recipient of the "services" of one institution after another."

"Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. ... When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations."

"The great investors are almost entirely clueless as to what their supposed “employees,” the corporation managers are doing. The CEOs are almost entirely clueless as to what the branch and facility managers are doing. And the management of each facility are almost entirely clueless as to what is going on within the black box of the actual production process. In the light of this reality, Mises’ “entrepreneur”—so carefully and closely involved in the minutiae of choosing between technical possibilities of production, a brooding omnipresence guiding the efforts of every employee—is largely a construction of fantasy. It’s quite ironic, in fact, considering that Mises starts out the block quote above with the announcement that the entrepreneur is not omnipresent."

"We have probably already passed a “singularity,” a point of no return, in the use of networked information warfare. It took some time for employers to reach a consensus that the old corporate liberal labor regime no longer served their interests, and to take note of and fully exploit the union-busting potential of Taft-Hartley. But once they began to do so, the implosion of Wagner-style unionism was preordained. Likewise, it will take time for the realization to dawn on workers that things are only getting worse, that there’s no hope in traditional unionism, and that in a networked world they have the power to bring the employer to his knees by their own direct action. But when they do, the outcome is also probably preordained. The twentieth century was the era of the giant organization. By the end of the twenty-first, there probably won’t be enough of them left to bury."

"The shift to the pre‐job pattern of self‐employment in the informal sector promises to eliminate this pathological culture in which one secures his livelihood by winning the approval of an authority figure. In my opinion, therefore, we should take advantage of the opportunity to eliminate this pattern of livelihood, instead of—as Ford proposes—replacing the boss with a bureaucrat as the authority figure on whose whims our livelihood depends. The sooner we destroy the idea of the “job” as a primary source of livelihood, and replace the idea of work as something we’re given with the idea of work as something we do, the better. And then we should sow the ground with salt."

"But the point, as I argued with Caplan, is not that managers are inherently less intelligent or capable as individuals. Rather, it’s that hierarchical organizations are—to borrow that wonderful phrase from Feldman and March—systematically stupid. For all the same Hayekian reasons that make a planned economy unsustainable, no individual is “smart” enough to manage a large, hierarchical organization. Nobody–not Einstein, not John Galt–possesses the qualities to make a bureaucratic hierarchy function rationally. Nobody’s that smart, any more than anybody’s smart enough to run Gosplan efficiently–that’s the whole point. No matter how insightful and resourceful they are, no matter how prudent, as human beings in dealing with actual reality, nevertheless by their very nature hierarchies insulate those at the top from the reality of what’s going on below, and force them to operate in imaginary worlds where all their intelligence becomes useless. No matter how intelligent managers are as individuals, a bureaucratic hierarchy makes their intelligence less usable."

"Localized, small‐scale economies are the rats in the dinosaurs’ nests. The informal and household economy operates more efficiently than the capitalist economy, and can function on the waste byproducts of capitalism. It is resilient and replicates virally. In an environment in which resources for technological development have been almost entirely diverted toward corporate capitalism, it takes technologies that were developed to serve corporate capitalism, adapts them to small‐scale production, and uses them to destroy corporate capitalism. In fact, it’s almost as though the dinosaurs themselves had funded a genetic research lab to breed mammals: “Let’s reconfigure the teeth so they’re better for sucking eggs, and ramp up the metabolism to survive a major catastrophe—like, say, an asteroid collision. Nah, I don’t really know what it would be good for—but what the fuck, the Pangean Ministry of Defense is paying for it!”"

"Capitalism was founded on an act of robbery as massive as feudalism. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege, without which its survival is unimaginable."

"From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called "laissez-faire" was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline."

"The single biggest subsidy to modern corporate capitalism is the subsidy of history, by which capital was originally accumulated in a few hands, and labor was deprived of access to the means of production and forced to sell itself on the buyer's terms. The current system of concentrated capital ownership and large-scale corporate organization is the direct beneficiary of that original structure of power and property ownership, which has perpetuated itself over the centuries."

"Ideological hegemony is the process by which the exploited come to view the world through a conceptual framework provided to them by their exploiters. It acts first of all to conceal class conflict and exploitation behind a smokescreen of "national unity" or "general welfare." Those who point to the role of the state as guarantor of class privilege are denounced, in theatrical tones of moral outrage, for "class warfare.""

"The manufacture of foreign crisis and war hysteria has been used since the beginning of history to suppress threats to class rule."

"War crimes are only committed by defeated powers. (But as the Nazis learned in 1945, unemployed war criminals can usually find work with the new hegemonic power.)"

"Foreign war is a very useful tool for manipulating the popular mind and keeping the domestic population under control. War is the easiest way to shift vast, unaccountable new powers to the State. People are most uncritically obedient at the very time they need to be most vigilant."

"Capitalism could not have survived at any point in its history without state intervention. Coercive state measures at every step have denied workers access to capital, forced them to sell their labor in a buyer's market, and protected the centers of economic power from the dangers of the free market."

"Most of the constantly rising burden of paperwork exists to give an illusion of transparency and control to a bureaucracy that is out of touch with the actual production process. Every new layer of paperwork is added to address the perceived problem that stuff still isn’t getting done the way management wants, despite the proliferation of paperwork saying everything has being done exactly according to orders. In a hierarchy, managers are forced to regulate a process which is necessarily opaque to them because they are not directly engaged in it. They’re forced to carry out the impossible task of developing accurate metrics to evaluate the behavior of subordinates, based on the self-reporting of people with whom they have a fundamental conflict of interest. The paperwork burden that management imposes on workers reflects an attempt to render legible a set of social relationships that by its nature must be opaque and closed to them, because they are outside of it. Each new form is intended to remedy the heretofore imperfect self-reporting of subordinates. The need for new paperwork is predicated on the assumption that compliance must be verified because those being monitored have a fundamental conflict of interest with those making the policy, and hence cannot be trusted; but at the same time, the paperwork itself relies on their self-reporting as the main source of information. Every time new evidence is presented that this or that task isn’t being performed to management’s satisfaction, or this or that policy isn’t being followed, despite the existing reams of paperwork, management’s response is to design yet another—and equally useless—form."

"Thus human culture has been as much a product of the process of natural selection as the human species. We are not merely clockwork oranges, the clockwork itself, the social programming which determines our “repertoires of behavior,” how we respond to the world around us, is itself the product of a blind deterministic process."

"The carrot is mightier than the stick."

"To become aware of a controlling process is to transcend the determinism of that process."

"The saddest day of your life isn't when you decide to sell out. The saddest day of your life is when you decide to sell out and nobody wants to buy."

"Any attempt at willful ignorance would now be futile or worse; the only talisman against excessive knowledge that might have puissance would be more knowledge."

"Even now, I cannot decide whether I was foolish dupe or noble and tragic lover. Or whether the two are one and the same."

"“Genius such as yours is a genetic gift.” “So I have heard from my parents.”"

"The appreciation of the connoisseur is the highest pleasure of the artiste."

"True civilization consists precisely of conventions, rituals, and modes of oblique communication whereby the chaos within and the void without may be expressed and contained within the harmonious consensus of shared social objectivity, thus maintaining our bubble of crafted reality, the necessary illusion."

"Flaming torches arching from hand to hand, the silken rolling of flesh on flesh, tautened wire vibrating to the human word, ideogrammatic gestures of fear, love, and rage, the mathematical grace of bodies moving through space—all seemed revealed as shadows on the void, the pauvre panoply of man’s attempt to transcend the universe of space and time through the transmaterial purity of abstract form. Yet beyond this noble dance of human art, the highest expression of our spirit’s striving to transcend the realm of time and form, lay that which could not be encompassed by the artifice of man. From nothing are we born, to nothing do we go; the universe we know is but the void looped back upon itself, and form is but illusion’s final veil. We touch that which lies beyond only in those fleeting rare moments when the reality of form dissolves—through molecule and charge, the perfection of the meditative trance, orgasmic ego-loss, transcendent peaks of art, mayhap the instant of our death. Vraiment, is not the history of man from pigments smeared on the walls of caves to our present starflung age, our sciences and arts, our religions and our philosophies, our cultures and our noble dreams, our heroics and our darkest deeds, but the dance of spirit round this central void, the striving to transcend, and the deadly fear of same?"

"Here, in the company of the mindless trees, the free-flying birds, the bugs and frogs that passed from stimulus directly to response without the interval of consciousness between, did I hope to lose myself in the living mandala of evolution’s less self-tortured forms."

"Does something truly speak to me from beyond the void, or is it merely my own desire?"

"“In fifteen billion years did spirit out of less than dust evolve,” he said. “In fifteen billion more will not this universe of stars to less than dust return? Whence did it come? What is there when it is gone?”"

"“If the path exists for spirit to transcend this sorry scheme of things entire, vraiment, it must exist for all.” Or for none at all, I thought, but deigned not to voice."

"Beneath all this gaiety and baroque complexity lay the simple and so carefully denied: beyond the thin metal surrounding us was the endless humorless void. Hollow rings the laughter of orphans in the night."

"I could not deny that my spirit was amorally attracted to this ultimate temptation as my conscience was morally repelled by it."

"Was not the arbitrary distinction between illusion and reality the ultimate illusion itself?"

"For truth be told, I was tormented by perceptions and their corollary temptation which from a social definition rendered me unsane, though from a more absolute viewpoint what I might be said to have been suffering from was an excess of insight."

"Social morality requires a shared matrix of communal reality to which to relate thought and deed, and the illusion of an objective ethical esthetic requires at the very least the conviction that objective reality is more than a contradiction in terms."

"What moral obligation do you have to those who willfully refuse to open their eyes and deem you mad for seeing?"

"I want to take you as close as you can get, I want to feel your ecstasy as you feel mine, I want to bridge the final gap between us, I want us to come together in a place where each can know the other does not lie."

"At that moment, I do now truly believe, the deed was done, in the sense that the decision of the will is the true essence of the act."

"How shall I describe Youth, the time of contradictions and anomalies? The fiercest radicalisms, the most dogged conservatisms, irrepressible gayety, bitter melancholy,—all these moods are equally part of that showery spring-time of life."

"In this conflict between youth and its elders, youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition. Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established,—Why? What is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the elders, it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of reason to the institutions, customs, and ideas, and finding them stupid, inane, or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem."

"Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering just the same. Youth is the drastic antiseptic. It will not let the elders cry peace, where there is no peace. By its fierce sarcasms it keeps issues alive in the world until they are settled right. It drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail."

"Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present, pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope which is the lever of progress—one might say, the only lever of progress."

"The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit should never be lost. Out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine precipitate—a sane, strong, aggressive spirit of daring and doing. It must be a flexible, growing spirit, with a hospitality to new ideas, and a keen insight into experience. To keep one's reactions warm and true, is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and perpetual youth is salvation."

"Intellectual radicalism should not mean repeating stale dogmas of Marxism. It should not mean the study of socialism. It had better mean a restless, controversial criticism of current ideas, and a hammering out of some clear-sighted philosophy that shall be this pillar of fire. The young radical today is not asked to be a martyr, but he is asked to be a thinker, an intellectual leader. So far as the official radicals deprecate such an enterprise they make their movement sterile. Yet how often when attempts are made to group radicals on an intellectual basis does not some orthodox elder of the socialist church arise and solemnly denounce such intellectual snobbishness."

"War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties. … [I]n general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Other values such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State, are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them."

"In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock, the quasi-personal symbol of the strength of the herd, and the leader and determinant of your definite action and ideas."

"The sense of insecurity, the desire for protection, sends one’s desire back to the father and mother, with whom is associated the earliest feelings of protection. It is not for nothing that one’s State is still thought of as Father or Motherland, that one’s relation towards it is conceived in terms of family affection... in Uncle Sam we have a symbol of protecting, kindly authority, and in the many Mother-posters of the Red Cross, we see how easily in the more tender functions of war service, the ruling organization is conceived in family terms. A people at war have become in the most literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naive faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them, imposes his mild but necessary rule upon them and in whom they lose their responsibility and anxieties. In this recrudescence of the child, there is great comfort... the strain of being an independent adult weighs heavily..."

"The members of the working-classes... live habitually in an industrial serfdom, by which though nominally free, they are in practice as a class bound to a system of a machine-production, the implements of which they do not own, and in the distribution of whose product they have not the slightest voice... From such serfdom, military conscription is not so great a change. But into the military enterprise they go...with the same apathy with which they enter and continue in the industrial enterprise."

"The State is a jealous God and will brook no rivals. Its sovereignty must pervade everyone and all feeling must be run into the stereotyped forms of romantic patriotic militarism which is the traditional expression of the State herd-feeling."

"It cannot be too firmly realized that war…is the chief function of States. … War cannot exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment cannot exist without a State organization. War has an immemorial tradition and heredity only because the State has a long tradition and heredity. But they are inseparably and functionally joined. We cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State. And we cannot expect, or take measures to ensure, that this war is a war to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end the State in its traditional form. … [W]ith the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated. … No one wlil deny that war is a vast complex of life-destroying and life-crippling forces. If the State's chief function is war, then it is chiefly concerned with coordinating and developing the powers and techniques which make for destruction. And this means not only the actual and potential destruction of the enemy, but of the nation at home as well. For the very existence of a State in a system of States means that the nation lies always under a risk of war and invasion, and the calling away of energy into military pursuits means a crippling of the productive and life-enhancing process of the national life."

"All of which goes to show that the State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of everything most distasteful to the modern free creative spirit, the feeling for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. War is the health of the State. Only when the State is at war does the modern society function with that unity of sentiment, simple uncritical patriotic devotion, cooperation of services, which have always been the ideal of the State lover. … How unregenerate the ancient State may be…is indicated by the laws against sedition, and by the Government's unreformed attitude on foreign policy."

"Indeed, it is not too much to say that the normal relation of States is war."

"The modern State is not the rational and intelligent product of modern men desiring to live harmoniously together with security of life, property, and opinion. It is not an organization which has been devised as pragmatic means to a desired social end. All the idealism with which we have been instructed to endow the State is the fruit of our retrospective imaginations."

"War is the health of the State and it is during war that one best understands the nature of that institution."

"The American Revolution began with certain latent hopes that it might turn into a genuine break with the State ideal. The Declaration of Independence announced doctrines that were utterly incompatible not only with the century-old conception of the Divine Right of Kings, but also with the Divine Right of the State. … If revolution is justifiable a State may even be criminal sometimes in resisting its own extinction."

"Every little school boy is trained to recite the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation. It is taken as axiomatic that under them the new nation was falling into anarchy and was only saved by the wisdom and energy of the Convention. … The nation had to be strong to repel invasion, strong to pay to the last loved copper penny the debts of the propertied and the provident ones, strong to keep the unpropertied and improvident from ever using the government to secure their own prosperity at the expense of moneyed capital. … No one suggests that the anxiety of the leaders of the heretofore unquestioned ruling classes desired the revision of the Articles and labored so weightily over a new instrument not because the nation was failing under the Articles, but because it was succeeding only too well. Without intervention from the leaders, reconstruction threatened in time to turn the new nation into an agrarian and proletarian democracy. … All we know is that at a time when the current of political progress was in the direction of agrarian and proletarian democracy, a force hostile to it gripped the nation and imposed upon it a powerful form against which it was never to succeed in doing more than blindly struggle. The liberating virus of the Revolution was definitely expunged, and henceforth if it worked at all it had to work against the State, in opposition to the armed and respectable power of the nation."

"The President is an elected king, but the fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance in the course of political evolution than the fact that he is pragmatically a king. … Kings have often been selected this way in European history, and the Roman Emperor was regularly chosen by election."

"One can but look forward to the day when the matters discussed here by Bourne, Dos Passos, and Grieg are looked back upon as nothing but the curiosities and horrors of a pre-civilized society."

"This little sparrowlike man, tiny twisted bit of flesh in black cape, always in pain and ailing, put a pebble in his sling and hit Goliath square in the forehead with it.War, he wrote, is the health of the state."

"Randolph Bourne, horrified at the support of the war by so-called liberals and progressives, had insisted that an unconditionally defeated Germany would become a greater menace to European peace; the war itself, he charged, was the only real enemy of American freedom."

"The Randolph Bourne Institute (RBI) seeks to honor Bourne's memory by promoting a noninterventionist foreign policy for the United States as the best way of fostering a peaceful, more prosperous world."

"Those who are not in some sense of the younger generation will hardly realize what poignancy there is for us in the news of the death of Randolph Bourne. … Randolph Bourne belonged to us, and stood for us, in a way which he perhaps did not fully know, but which we now very keenly feel."

"It is one of the more subtly tragic aspects of his death, a misfortune not only to a fecund mind that needed free utterance, but to a country which is nearly starved for thought, that he should in these last years have been doomed to silence. He who should have spoken for them—and who might still have spoken for them—went down to the grave voiceless."

"Bourne would have none of it. Instead, he scrutinized the ideas he had held in common with them, holding each up to the light—or rather, darkness—about him."

"War is the health of the State, wrote Bourne, and in his full realization of what that meant, he recognized the roots of modern totalitarianism years before the psychoanalysis of fascism."

"His byline was particularly familiar to readers of The New Republic—until his radically antiwar views on the eve of the US government's intervention in World War I got him fired."

"Randolph Bourne has not been forgotten, not completely. People are still reading his work. They're still talking about his ideas and about his memorable phrases. The most famous of these has gradually become so widely quoted in our culture that millions of people have heard it, even heard it repeatedly, without ever learning who originally wrote or said it: "War is the health of the State.""

"The work that's being done 24/7 at Antiwar.com not only honors Randolph Bourne's contribution to the libertarian tradition; it also helps to assure that that tradition will continue and grow."

"The other reason [an attack on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial importance to libertarians] is that, apart from the nuclear menace, war, in the words of the libertarian Randolph Bourne, "is the health of the State." War has always been the occasion of a great—and usually permanent—acceleration and intensification of State power over society. War is the great excuse for mobilizing all the energies and resources of the nation, in the name of patriotic rhetoric, under the aegis and dictation of the State apparatus. It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morals—as the libertarian Albert Jay Nock once phrased it—of an "army on the march.""

"We cannot leave our topic without saying at least a word about the domestic tyranny that is the inevitable accompaniment of war. The great Randolph Bourne realized that "war is the health of the State." It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale—as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it—of an "army on the march.""

"Secondly, war has always been the occasion for a huge, catastrophic leap into statism, a leap that occurs during the war and lasts as a permanent legacy afterwards. As the great libertarian Randolph Bourne warned, as we entered the disaster of World War I, "war is the health of the state." Time and again, war and foreign intervention destroyed our ancestors—the classical liberal movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In England, Germany, France, and the United States, this tragedy repeatedly took place. In the United States, the big leaps into statism came with war: the War of 1812, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War."

"Finally, we must allude to the domestic tyranny that is the inevitable accompaniment of inter-State war, a tyranny that usually lingers long after the war is over. Randolph Bourne realized that "war is the health of the State." It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. The root myth that enables the State to wax fat off war is the canard that war is a defense by the State of its subjects. The facts are precisely the reverse. For if war is the health of the State, it is also its greatest danger. A State can only "die" by defeat in war or by revolution. In war, therefore, the State frantically mobilizes the people to fight for it against another State, under the pretext that it is fighting for them. Society becomes militarized and statized, it becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale—as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it—of an "army on the march.""

"And among all the Western Empires, the British and the American have always been the most adept at the use of phony moralizing to spin a web of excuses for their acts of conquest and to sucker the American and British publics into enthusiastic support of "their" Empires. It is the old trick of inducing the citizen to identify with "his" State; but the trick has always been most effective in time of war, real or imagined. That is just one of the reasons that the libertarian Randolph Bourne, during World War I, called war "the health of the State.""

"The Democratic Party has exploited black leadership."

"The entrapment of black voters in the Democratic party has been a disaster, and it’s one of the reasons that progress on has been infinitesimal or at best incremental since the ."

"I think American white conservatives and white liberals are, by and large, both racist. But the liberals believe they’re not racists—in fact, they believe in nothing else with so much commitment. They insist they don't have a racist bone in their bodies; they don't even see race; they were over that a long time ago."

"What white people learned from the Civil Rights era was how not to appear to be racists, even to themselves. They came away from the 1960s knowing that racism was a matter of using the wrong words or expressing the wrong attitudes publicly. They trained their internal monologues to mirror an egalitarian or deracinated public discourse: no slurs, just a continual stream of . That was the essence of white anti-racism: don't say the wrong thing."

"Behind all the Great-Society-style /anti-poverty/education programs lurked all the old stereotypes: blacks as animalistic, criminal, sexual, violent, and above all, as time went on, as . The white s are always diagnosing the dysfunctions and prescribing a cure for the black family: high-rise housing projects, and standardized testing, wars on poverty or drugs, self-esteem seminars. A good portion of the African-American population was simply institutionalized or interned, in public housing complexes, in urban schools, and in one of the biggest prison systems the world has ever known. It all amounts to a sprawling race gulag in which people are both dependent and hedged about with restrictions."

", where we pluck your best, brightest, most ambitious or conformist, and invite them into our elite institutions. This has had some effect on upward mobility, but its primary purpose is to parade as conspicuously as possible the non-racism of the people who run the institutions. It’s primarily another way for white people to mutter to themselves, “I am not a racist.” And it’s had the effect of dividing black communities and families, like mass incarceration in the other direction."

"American progressivism maintains a hyper-consciousness of race, obsessively emphasizing its centrality to human identity and relentlessly breaking down populations by racial categories. If nothing else, aggressive affirmative action requires that everyone be identified racially. When it’s time to measure political opinions, nothing is as salient as race, and the Trump phenomenon gets explained almost exclusively in terms of racial distributions, as white rage or white nationalism."

"The two-party system is breaking down into a race system."

"Since Jesse Jackson ran for president, and perhaps up until the movement, the Democratic Party has dominated and used black leadership."

"The fact that black voters have voted over 90 percent Democratic for decades leaves them almost wholly without power. Democrats—paradigmatically, the Clintons—feint in their direction during general elections, trying to assure turnout and using them to bash Republicans as bigots and—in the usual fashion—as emblems of their own goodness."

"There's no reason for Republicans to waste any time on black voters; there are no votes there under any conditions. Rand Paul went to Ferguson and Baltimore to talk racial healing: no one cared or even noticed."

"The progressive approach has left American racial inequality intractable: a permanent, institutionalized, chronic, insoluble condition. And the electoral process has left black people without any political leverage."

"If you eat chicken, maybe you're on one level. If you wear a mink coat, maybe you're on another level. But if you wear cosmetics, cosmetics that are tested on animals, then you're just unconscious. Really, my message is simple. It's a message of compassion. In this world that is spinning madly out of control, we have to realize that we're all related. We have to try to live harmoniously."

"It's been at least 20 years. I used to eat burgers and steak, and I would just be knocked out afterward; I had to give it up. The first thing was dairy. I was about 24 years old and I had tons of acne and mucus. I met some random girl on a bus who told me to quit dairy and all those symptoms would go away three days later. By God she was right."

"Because superior non-animal methods are used for this exact training by military and civilian programs around the world, animals are clearly not required to meet your objectives. … I'm sure you agree that our military personnel deserve state-of-the-art training and that our country deserves to be respected for its civilized treatment of animals."

"For art, the intervention of capital always signals a further degree of mediation. To say that art is commodified is to say that a mediation, or standing-in-between, has occurred, & that this betweenness amounts to a split, & that this split amounts to "alienation". Improv music played by friends at home is less "alienated" than music played "live" at the Met, or music played through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman). In fact, an argument could be made that music distributed free or at cost on cassette via mail, is less alienated than live music played at some huge We Are The World spectacle or Las Vegas niteclub, even though the latter is live music played to a live audience (or at least so it appears), while the former is recorded music consumed by distant & even anonymous listeners."

"Everything delicate & beautiful, from Surrealism to Breakdancing, ends up as fodder for McDeath's ads; 15 minutes later, all the magic has been sucked out, & the art itself dead as a dried locust."

"There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion."

"Private Capitalism makes a steam engine; State Capitalism makes pyramids.""

"The ultimate of taxation-for-social-purposes is absolutism, not only because the growing fiscal power carries an equal increase in political power, but because the investment of revenue in the individual by the State gives it a pecuniary interest in him. If the State supplies him with all his needs and keeps him in health and a degree of comfort, it must account him a valuable asset, a piece of capital. Any claim to individual rights is liquidated by society's cash investment. The State undertakes to protect society's investment, as to reimbursement and profit, by way of taxation. The motor power lodged in the individual must be put to the best use so that the yield will further social ends, as foreseen by the management. Thus, the fiscal scheme which begins with distribution is forced by the logic of events into control of production. And the concept of natural rights is inconsistent with the social obligation of the individual. He lives for the State which nurtured him. He belongs to the State by right of purchase."

"Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped."

"The purpose of teaching individualism, then, is not to make individualists but to find them. Rather, to help them find themselves. If a student takes readily to such values as the primacy of the individual, the free market place, or the immorality of taxation, he is an individualist; if he swallows hard, he must be counted a recruit for the other side."

"Communism, they will admit, is Socialism gone hog-wild, but they do not seem capable of recognizing this as an inevitable consequence. Their hatred of Communism does not make them individualists. This is not to question the sincerity of those who have hit the sawdust trail. Far from it. The individualist, who accepts as basic the right of every man to make a fool of himself—provided he does not infringe the equal rights of others—is quick to accept the repentance at face value. But, repentance is not conversion; there is reason to believe that conversion is impossible."

"For, it must be kept in mind that individualism is the modern radicalism. In the true sense of the word, individualism is always radical, for it rests its case on root ideas; I delves into the nature of things for basic causes; it rejects the idea that man is best served by a series of expedients."

"No sooner do men settle down to a given set of ideas, a pat-tern of living and of thinking, than fault-finding begins, and fault-finding is the tap-root of revolutions."

"That is the central idea of our current tradition. It is the idealization of the mass and the negation of the individual; its panacea, its method of realization, is political direction; its goal, as always, is the undefined Good Society… The aim of pedagogy today is not to prepare the individual for his own enjoyment of life, but to enable him to better serve the mass machine; the psychologist makes adjustment to mass-thought the measure of healthy thinking and living; jurisprudence puts social responsibility ahead of individual responsibility; the concern of the scientist in the discovery of principles is secondary to his preoccupation with mass production; the economist studies institutions, not people; and philosophy rejects speculation as to the nature of man or the purpose of life as effort that might better be put to the practical problems of society. Ours is the culture of ‘the all,’ rather than ‘the one.’"

"The income tax completely destroys the immunity of property. It flatly declares a prior right of the State to all things produced. What it permits the individual to retain is a concession to expediency, not by any means a right; for the State retains the liberty to set rates and to fix exemptions from year to year, as its convenience dictates. Thus, the sacred right of private property is violated, and the fact that it is done pro forma makes the violation no less real than when it is done arbitrarily by an autocrat."

"The right to own is the mark of a free man. The slave is a slave simply because he is denied that right. And because the free man is secure in the possession and enjoyment of what he produces, and the slave is not, the spur to production is in one and not in the other."

"The most irritating thing about Jehovah was His insistence on principles. He would have no truck with expediency, was constantly bringing up long-run consequences, and scolded unmercifully when a fellow gave way to some momentary inclination of the flesh. He enjoined you to keep your eyes off the neighbor's wife and property, gave you no peace when you indulged your appetite for homicide, perjury or adultery."

"When the privacy of property is denied the privacy of conscience cannot be tolerated. Ideals which do not conform with the prescribed "social good" are obviously a threat to it and must be obliterated."

"A politicalized monopoly, however, is absolute. Every competitive influence is removed by force. Even abstinence on the part of the public is no threat, since every drop in revenue can be offset by a tax levy. The power of taxation removes the necessity of rendering service."

"Income and inheritance taxes imply the denial of private property, and in that are different in principle from all other taxes. The government says to the citizen: "Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide."

"When the individual says he has a valid title to life, he means that all that is he, is his own; his body, his mind, his faculties. Maybe there is something else to life, such as a soul, but without going into that realm, he is willing to settle on what he knows about himself—his consciousness."

"The Constitution did not give Americans freedom; they had been free long before it was written, and when it was put up for ratification they eyed it suspiciously, lest it infringe their freedom. The Federalists, the advocates of ratification, went to great pains to assure the people that under the Constitution they would be just as free as they ever were."

"Income taxation appeals to the governing class because in its everlasting urgency for power it needs money. Income taxation appeals to the mass of people because it gives expression to their envy; it salves their sense of hurt. The only beneficiaries of income taxation are the politicians, for it not only gives them the means by which they can increase their emoluments but it also enables them to improve their importance. The have-nots who support the politicians in the demand for income taxation do so only because they hate the haves; although they delude themselves with the thought that they might get some of the pelt the fact is that the taxing of incomes cannot in any way improve their economic condition. So that, the sum of all the arguments for income taxation comes to political ambition and the sin of covetousness."

"It is interesting to note that in nearly all the economics courses it is taught that the income tax is the proper instrument for the regulation of the country’s economy; that private property is not an inalienable right (in fact, there are no inalienable rights); that the economic ills of the country are traceable to the remnants of free enterprise; that the economy of the nation can be sound only when the government manages prices, controls wages, and regulates operations. This was not taught in the colleges before 1913."

"There is now a strong movement in this country to bring the public school system under federal domination. The movement could not have been thought of before the government had the means for carrying out the idea; that is, before income taxation. The question is, have those who plug for nationalization of the schools come to the idea by independent thought, or have they been influenced by the bureaucrats who see in nationalization a wider opportunity for themselves? We must lean to the latter conclusion, because among the leaders of the movement are many bureaucrats. However, if the movement is successful, if the schools are brought under the watching eye of the federal government, it is a certainty that the curriculum will conform to the ideals of Big Government. The child’s mind will never be exposed to the idea that the individual is the one big thing in the world, that he has rights which come from a higher source than the bureaucracy."

"The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913."

"Men live by production, but the State lives by appropriation. While the haves and the have-nots struggle over the division of existing wealth, it is the business of the State to improve itself at the expense of both; it picks up the marbles while the boys are fighting. That has been the story of men in organized society since the beginning."

"At first it was the incomes of corporations, then of rich citizens, then of well-provided widows and opulent workers, and finally the wealth of housemaids and the tips of waitresses. This is all in line with the ability to pay doctrine. The poor, simply because there are more of them, have more ability to pay than the rich."

"When the individual is relieved of the obligation of self-respect, he acquires the habits of helplessness; he is inclined to retreat to the security of the prenatal state. The more he is taken care of the more he wants care."

"The real reason for withholding taxes is the unwillingness of workers to share their incomes with the government and the consequent difficulties of collection. To overcome this handicap, the government has simply impressed employers into its service as involuntary and unpaid tax collectors. It is a form of conscription. Disregarding the right of privacy, which is an essential of liberty, the government’s agents may, under the law, invade the employer’s office, demand his accounts, and punish him for any infraction which they believe he has committed; they can impound his property and inflict a penalty for not having collected taxes for the government."

"The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact."

"Compulsion means force; there must be a policeman to see that the individual does not follow his own inclinations. But policemen must live. Since they do not produce a thing by which they can live, others must support them. Hence, the planners must have the means of getting at the production of the very people who are to be improved by the policeman. That means taxes, and the more taxes the greater the number of enforcement agents, and therefore the more comprehensive the plan. No plan can be bigger than its bureaucracy. The income tax is the ideal instrument for the planner."

"Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery."

"Economics is not politics. One is a science, concerned with the immutable and constant laws of nature that determine the production and distribution of wealth; the other is the art of ruling."

"Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers."

"Society thrives on trade simply because trade makes specialization possible, and specialization increases output, and increased output reduces the cost in toil for the satisfactions men live by. That being so, the market place is a most humane institution."

"Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse is usually occasioned by a disastrous war, but preceding that event is a history of increasing and discouraging levies on the marketplace, causing a decline in the aspirations, hopes, and self-esteem of its victims."

"The folks who get their rent cheap, at the expense of other taxpayers, acquire the notion that society is obligated to take care of them—good Freudianism and that these rooms are a down payment on that obligation."

"On the other hand, the State is an anti-social organization, originating in conquest and concerned only with the confiscation of property. The State began with the practice of nomadic tribes swooping down on some agricultural community, confiscating the movable wealth and, after slaying the less productive inhabitants, carrying off to slavery a number of others. Slavery is the first institution of the State."

"The State is that group of people who having got hold of the machinery of compulsion, legally or otherwise, use it to better their circumstances; that is, by use of the political means."

"Dependence on the State became a virtue; dependence on oneself was derided as ‘rugged individualism.’"

"The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as 'free education' is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education—just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office—and cannot possibly be separated from political control."

"There is no such thing as free schooling; it must be paid for and, taking the school system as a whole, its cost is defrayed by the toil of those who are under the delusion of ‘free’ education."

"All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates."

"The path of skullduggery is made easier with a coating of morality, which is aptly applied to an established custom, by the lawyer and the professor of economics. And so, the business of taking what does not belong to you has been well obfuscated by a ‘philosophy’ of taxation’."

"[E]very soak-the-rich tax must become in time a soak-the-poor tax."

"Neither thieves nor officials produce a marketable good to offset what they take; they contribute nothing to the purchasing power because they contribute nothing to the general fund of wealth."

"Taxes cannot be compared to dues paid to a voluntary organization for such services as one expects from membership, because the choice of withdrawal does not exist. In refusing to trade one may deny oneself a profit, but the only alternative to paying taxes is jail. The suggestion of equity in taxation is spurious. If we get anything for the taxes we pay it is not because we want it; it is forced on us."

"[When people] say ‘let's do something about it’, they mean ‘let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.’ And that somebody is invariably you."

"Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man — in temperament, character, and capacity — and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so."

"Anything that can tear up the side of a mountain should definitely be effective against a high society party attended by royalty or capitalist exploiters (monopolists)."

""Among the beasts of prey, man is certainly the worst." This expression, very commonly made nowadays, is only relatively true. Not man as such, but man in connection with wealth is a beast of prey. The richer a man, the greater his greed for more. We may call such a monster the "beast of property". It now rules the world, makes mankind miserable, and gains in cruelty and voracity with the progress of our so-called "civilization"."

"Either by direct brute force, by cunning, or by fraud, this horde has from time to time seized the soil with all its wealth. The laws of inheritance and entail, and the changing of hands, have lent a "venerable" color to this robbery, and consequently mystified and erased the true character of such actions. For this reason, the "beast of property" is not yet fully recognized, but is, on the contrary, worshipped with a holy awe."

"In order to labor, there are required not only ability and will, but also room to work, tools, raw materials and means of sustenance. The poor man must, therefore, by force of necessity, apply to those who possess these things in plenty."

"His pretended "saviors" ... place him under the yoke of labor - they force him to the utmost of his mental and physical abilities to produce new treasures, which however he is not entitled to own."

"It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell —"voluntarily" sell—himself every day and hour to the "beast of property"."

"The times when Christian-Germanic robbers stole entire countries, deprived the inhabitants of the soil, and pressed them to feudal service, were indeed terrible enough. But the climax of infamy has been reached by our present "law and order" system, for it has defrauded more than nine-tenths of mankind of their means of existence, reduced them to dependence upon an insignificant minority, and condemned them to self-sacrifice. At the same time it has disguised this relation with all sorts of jugglery that the thralls of today - the wage slaves - but partially recognize their serfdom and outlawed position, they rather incline to ascribe it to the caprices of fortune."

"Though not always united among themselves - one seeking to gain advantage over the other by tricks of trade, cunning in speculation and diverse machinations of competition - yet in opposition to the proletariat they stand in one united hostile phalanx."

"Should the unemployed apply a little of the much vaunted self-help, that is, should he do in a small way, what the rich do daily with impunity on a grand scale, should he, in fact, steal, in order to live - the bourgeoisie will heap burning coals of "moral indignation" upon his head, and, with austere visage, hand him over relentlessly in charge of the State, that in its prisons he may be fleeced the more effectively, i.e., cheaper."

"When the workers combine in order to obtain better wages, shorter hours of labor, or similar advantages, the money-bags immediately decry it as "conspiracy", which must be prevented. ... When the workers organize politically, it is denounced as resistance to the "divine" order of things."

"Should the people finally contemplate rebellion, an unceasing howl of rage raised by the "gold tigers" will be heard throughout the world - their pant for massacres and their thirst for blood is insatiable."

"As the bourgeoisie, by means of its capital, completely monopolizes all new inventions, every new machine, instead of shortening the hours of labor and enhancing the prosperity and happiness of all, causes, on the contrary, dismissal from employment for some, reduction of wages for others and an increased and intensified state of misery for the entire proletariat."

"When increase of production is accompanied by an augmented pauperization of the masses, consumption must simultaneously decrease, stagnation and crises must ensue. A superabundance of actual wealth in the hands of the few must create hunger, typhus, and other epidemics among the many. The injustice - yea the idiocy - of this state of affairs is evident. The money-bags of course merely shrug their shoulders. This they will continue to do until a rope well tied over their shoulders will end all further shrugging."

"This is the lot of the poor from the cradle to the grave. Whether he produces or consumes, whether he exists or merely vegetates, he is always surrounded by ravenous vampires who thirst for his last drop of blood."

"The rich man never stops his work of exploiting, though he may be utterly unable to assign a reason for his greed. He that has $1,000,000 would have $10,000,000; he that has $100,000,000 would have $1,000,000,000."

"Under the present capitalistic system venality is an all-pervading vice."

"It is as a rule a mere matter of price which will buy over those who may be of service either by speech or silence, by pen or by press, by acts of violence or any other means, to the "beast of property" which by its golden dictates is the absolute, almighty divinity."

"In the schools strenuous attempts are made to nullify what little good the training in reading, writing, and ciphering may bring with it. Idiotic maltreatment of "history" excites that blatant prejudice which divides people, and prevents them from recognizing the fact that their oppressors have long ago leagued together against them, and that all politics, past and present, has the only object in view of firmly establishing the power of the rulers, and thereby ensuring exploitation of the poor by the rich."

"Whole squads of bushwackers are specially employed in mystifying the social question. The professors of political economy for instance, play the part of lackeys to the bourgeoisie, extolling the golden calf as the true sun of life, and using falsehood and knavery so "scientifically", that they make the tanning of workingmen's hides appear as a benefaction to mankind."

"While thus bamboozling the masses the capitalistic knights of plunder continue to perfect their mechanism of power. ... They command armies of soldiers, gendarmes, policemen, spies, judges, prison-keepers, toll-keepers, tax collectors, executors, etc."

"The State ... is evidently nothing more nor less than the political organization of a horde of swindlers and spoliators, who without the tyrannizing machinery could not exist for one day before the just wrath and condemnation of the oppressed and plundered people."

"In America the place of the monarchs is filled by the monopolists. ... All the wealth of this great republic, although established but a century, its mines, its coalfields, its oilwells, etc., etc., has been "taken" from the people and is the property of a handful of daring adventurers and cunning schemers."

"The "sovereignty of the people" falls prostrate into the dust before the influence of these money kings, railroad magnates, coal barons and factory lords. These fellows carry the whole United States in their pockets, and that which is vaunted as untrammeled legislation and free ballot is a farce, a delusion and a snare."

"Indeed it seems as though this young American republic had for the present but one historical mission, of demonstrating beyond controversy to the people on this side of the Atlantic as to those on the other by the presentation of bare, tangible facts what an outrageous monster the "beast of property" really is, and that neither the condition of the soil nor the vastness of domain, nor the political forms of society can ever alter the viciousness of this beast of prey."

"The less a necessity naturally exists for individual greed and rapacity, the more dangerous to, and obtrusive upon society it becomes. It is not voracious to satisfy its wants - it devours for the sake of devouring only!"

"Let those who labor to live understand that this monster cannot be tamed, nor be made harmless or useful to man; let them learn to know that there is but one means of safety: unrelenting, pitiless, thorough war of extermination! Gentle overtures are for naught; scorn and derision will be the result, if by petitions, elections, and like silly attempts the proletariat hopes to command the respect of its sworn enemies."

"Education of the people will only then be possible, when the obstructions thereto have been removed. And that will not take place until the entire present system has been destroyed."

"Whoever has recognized the villainy of the present conditions, is in duty bound to raise his voice, in order to expose them, and thereby open the eyes of the people."

"Scientific reflections ... tear the mask of humanity from the "better class" and disclose the hideous countenance of the beast of prey."

"Whoever thus uses speech will be accused of inciting disturbance by the governing rabble; he will be bitterly hated and persecuted. This shows that the only possible and practical enlightenment must be of an inciting nature. Then let us incite!"

"Let us show the people how it is swindled out of its labor force by country and city capitalists; how it is euchered out of its meagre wages by the house, store, and other lords; how priests of pulpit, press, and party seek to destroy its intellect; how a brutal police is ever ready to maltreat and tyrannize it, and with a soldiery to spill its blood. Patience, at last must forsake it! The people will rebel and crush its foes."

"The revolution of the proletariat - the war of the poor against the rich, is the only way from oppression to deliverance."

"What we would achieve is, therefore, plainly and simply,—First, Destruction of the existing class rule, by all means, i.e., by energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and international action.Second, Establishment of a free society based upon co-operative organization of production.Third, Free exchange of equivalent products by and between the productive organizations without commerce and profit-mongery.Fourth, Organization of education on a secular, scientific, and equal basis for both sexes.Fifth, Equal rights for all without distinction to sex or race.Sixth, Regulation of all public affairs by free contracts between the autonomous (independent) communes and associations, resting on a federalistic basis. Whoever agrees with this ideal let him grasp our outstretched brother hands!"

"The most outstanding leader was a German anarchist, Johann Most, who had been expelled from the Socialist ranks and had suffered imprisonment in Germany and England for his anarchist activities. He advocated violence in the overthrow of church and state and "his ideal society was an agglomeration of loosely federated autonomous groups of producers.""

"My first impression of him was one of revulsion. He was of medium height, with a large head crowned with greyish bushy hair; but his face was twisted out of form by an apparent dislocation of the left jaw. Only his eyes were soothing; they were blue and sympathetic. His speech was a scorching denunciation of American conditions, a biting satire on the injustice and brutality of the dominant powers, a passionate tirade against those responsible for the Haymarket tragedy and the execution of the Chicago anarchists in November 1887. He spoke eloquently and picturesquely. As if by magic, his disfigurement disappeared, his lack of physical distinction was forgotten. He seemed transformed into some primitive power, radiating hatred and love, strength and inspiration. The rapid current of his speech, the music of his voice, and his sparkling wit, all combined to produce an effect almost overwhelming. He stirred me to my depths."

"He was a gracious host, an attentive and sympathetic friend. He made me tell him about myself and he grew thoughtful when he learned the motive that had decided me to break with my old life. He warned me to reflect carefully before taking the plunge. "The path of anarchism is steep and painful," he said; "so many have attempted to climb it and have fallen back. The price is exacting. Few men are ready to pay it, most women not at all." [...] I inquired whether the anarchist movement in America had no outstanding woman. "None at all, only stupids," he replied; "most of the girls come to the meetings to snatch up a man; then both vanish, like the silly fishermen at the lure of the Lorelei." There was a roguish twinkle in his eye. He didn't believe much in woman's revolutionary zeal. But I, coming from Russia, might be different and he would help me. If I were really in earnest, I could find much work to do. "There is great need in our ranks of young, willing people-ardent ones, as you seem to be-and I have need of ardent friendship," he added with much feeling. "You?" I questioned; "you have thousands in New York-all over the world. You are loved, you are idolized." "Yes, little girl, idolized by many, but loved by none. One can be very lonely among thousands-did you know that?""

"My own long struggle to find my bearings, the disillusionments and disappointments I had experienced, had made me less dogmatic in my demands on people than I had been. They had helped me to understand the hard and lonely life of the rebel who had fought for an unpopular cause. Whatever bitterness I had felt against my old teacher had given way to deep sympathy long before his death."

"Originally followers of Johann Most, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman emerged from his shadow in the early nineties to become the foremost advocates of revolutionary anarchism."

"From the mid-seventies onward, organized feminism had become increasingly decorous. Matilda Joslyn Gage, after all, was forced to go outside the organized movement to find a platform for her anticlerical views, and the venerable but always irreverent Elizabeth Cady Stanton found herself out-flanked and outvoted by her more conventional sisters. While feminism moved toward respectability, anarchism, at least in the public view, became increasingly radical. Partly because of the fiery rhetoric of Johann Most and his admirers, and partly because of antiforeign sentiment, the anarchist came to be viewed as a symbol of irrational violence. The public image of the anarchist was that of a deranged terrorist."

"Sexual egalitarianism was almost as rare among the communists. Certainly the position of Johann Most tended toward outright misogyny."

"It's a game. A game played on the streets of New York, for as long as anyone can remember. It is called Ringolevio, and the rules are simple. There are two sides, each with the same number of players. There are no time limits, no intermissions, no substitutes and no weapons allowed. There are two jails. There is one objective."

"The great principle underlying the present system is unpaid labor. Those who amass fortunes, build palaces, and live in luxury, are doing that by virtue of unpaid labor. Being directly or indirectly the possessors of land and machinery, they dictate their terms to the workingman. He is compelled to sell his labor cheap, or to starve. The price paid him is always far below the real value. He acts under compulsion, and they call it a free contract. This infernal state of affairs keeps him poor and ignorant; an easy prey for exploitation."

"Anarchy is a state of society in which the only government is reason, a state of society in which all human beings do right for the simple reason that it is right, and hate wrong because it is wrong. In such a society, no laws, no compulsion will be necessary."

"Anarchy means no domination or authority of one man over another, yet you call that "disorder.""

"I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and when you shall have hanged us, then, mark my words, they will do the bomb-throwing! In this hope do I say to you: "I despise you. I despise your order; your laws; your force-propped authority." Hang me for it!"

"It is not generally considered a crime among intellectual people to be a revolutionist, but it may be made a crime if the revolutionist happens to be poor."

"A man is of no use to this world, of no use to society or the neighborhood in which he lives, who has no other object in view than making a fortune for himself and his family, little caring what becomes of those around him."

"The capitalistic system originated in the forcible seizure of natural opportunities and rights by a few, and then converting those things into special privileges which have since become vested rights, formally entrenched behind the bulwarks of statute law and government."

"Formerly the master selected the slave; today the slave selects his master, and he has got to find one or else he is carried down here to my friend, the gaoler."

"Jefferson Davis admitted in his statement that the leather thong dipped in salt brine, for the chattel slave, had been exchanged under the wage slave system for the lash of hunger, an empty stomach and the ragged back of the wage-slave."

"First and foremost it is our opinion, or the opinion of an Anarchist, that government is despotism, government is an organization of oppression, and law, statute law is its agent. Anarchy is anti-government, anti-rulers, anti-dictators, anti-bosses and [slave] drivers. Anarchy is the negation of force; the elimination of all authority in social affairs; it is the denial of the right of domination of one man over another. It is the diffusion of rights, of power, of duties, equally and freely among the people."

"Anarchy is a free society where there is no concentrated or centralized power, no State, no king, no emperor, no ruler, no president, no magistrate, no potentate of any character whatever. Law is the enslaving power of man."

"Anarchy is the natural law, instead of the man-made statute, and gives men leaders in the place of [slave] drivers and bosses."

"This ridiculous nonsense that human laws are sacred and that if they are not respected and continued we cannot prosper, is the stupidest and most criminal nightmare of the age. Statutes are the last and greatest curse of man, and when destroyed the world will be free. The statute book is a book of laws by which one class of people can safely trespass upon another. Without this book one person would never dare to trespass upon the rights of another. Every statute law is always used to oppose some natural law."

"Every great robbery that was ever perpetrated upon a people has been by virtue of and in the name of law. By this tool of thieves the great mass of the people who inhabit our planet have been robbed of their equal right to the use of the soil and of all other natural opportunities."

"Man's legal rights are everywhere in collision with man's natural rights; hence the deep-rooted and wide-spread unrest of modern civilization. The only sacred right of property is the natural right of the working man to the product, which is the creation of his labor. The legal right of the capitalist to rent and interest and profit is the absolute denial of the natural right of labor."

"This capitalistic system that we have to-day would not exist twenty-four hours if it were not held together by the bayonets and the clubs of the militia and police."

""Let the voice of the people be heard!" cried Parsons, as the noose tightened around his neck. It has been, it ever Will be on May Day, brave martyred hero of yesterday! This year the newly organized, victorious strikers of the International Harvester Works in Chicago will hallow your names on May first."

"At this (IWW) convention I was thrilled to meet Mrs. Lucy Parsons, widow of Albert Parsons, who had been executed 20 years before in the yard of the Cook County Jail in the heart of Chicago. While he was hanged she was held a prisoner in the Clark Street Station House, not far from where we were then meeting... I remember Mrs. Parsons speaking warmly to the young people, warning us of the seriousness of the struggles ahead that could lead to jail and death before victory was won. For years she traveled from city to city, knocking on the doors of local unions and telling the story of the Chicago trial. Her husband had said: "Clear our names!" and she made this her lifelong mission."

"Until my imprisonment I had believed that except for Albert Parsons, Dyer D. Lum, Voltairine de Cleyre, and a few others America was barren of idealists. Her men and women cared only for material acquisitions, I had thought. John Swinton's account of the liberty-loving people who had been and still were in every struggle against oppression changed my superficial judgment."

"Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier turned anarchist firebrand"

"I, with my comrades, heartily subscribe to the last words written by Albert R. Parsons, in his letter to me a few hours before his unforgotten death: “Hail to the Social Revolution!”"

"Albert Parsons, who was an important leader of the anarchist and labor movement in Chicago, and who actually had fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. He was a Southerner, but somehow he became radicalized as a labor leader and anarchist."

"If the ruling class thinks that by hanging us, hanging a few anarchists, they can crush out anarchy, they will be badly mistaken, because the anarchist loves his principles more than his life."

"When you have a fundamentalist faith you are certain that you are on the side of the angels."

"What are presented as the best arguments against anarchism are inevitably a description of the status quo."

"Those who need leaders are not qualified to choose them."

"It's really amazing to me how many people [rather than trying to figure out Putin's endgame] are content to say that he's evil and he's crazy. OK. Sure. Well, the Penguin [in Batman] is evil. [...] He wants to get that diamond that is shaped like a bird or that really expensive umbrella. Just because someone is crazy or a bad person doesn't mean that they're not predictable or coherent along with their own internal logic. You know the Zodiac killer wants to kill people. It doesn't mean you have to agree with him or approve of him. OK, let's see if we can figure out who he's last victim is and what it's gonna take to find him."

"Here in 2016, when [Donald] Trump got elected, what happened as a consequence was blue-pilled leftists for a long time were taught that the Trump-world view [...] [was this minority]. 'We have sat you down for a year and told you that voting for Trump is completely unacceptable. That to do so is effectively to decree yourself to be aligned with the Klan and the nazis.' [one of the big newspapers] had a front page of Trump called antichrist when the Pope critizised him for something during when he was just merely a candidate. And yet [in November] Americans went in and flicked the leaver for Hitler-antichrist. And they didn't know what to do because in their mind there is very few of these lunatics and now there's enough to elect the president and because they're passing they didn't know who's the bad guy and the good guy. They thought '100 percent of the people I know', but obviously it's not 100. At best it's [60 percent]. So this was [...] a moment of panic: 'Wait a minute! I don't know who these people are anymore!'"

"[About the Covid lockdowns:] Intentionally or not, some very very bad pepople got some very useful information of how much the populous was willing to put up with. [...] There was clearly a consideration on the parts of the authorities in each country about 'What can we do and what [can we] get away with?'"

"What corporate media does, which is far more nefarious than the state, is simultaneously it will tell the audience 'These are the issues you should be concerned about today, and [even though we just learned about it five seconds ago] here's how you should think about it.' So very quickly it gives the person, who is often marginally intelligent both the concerns of the day, which is just kind of like a fashion issue, but also the answer so that not only do they look sympathetic and empathetic they also simultaneously seem informed. [...] If you go to [public places] and you hear how these people talk, you realize they are parroting [...] almost verbatim, if not verbatim, the people that they saw on their own screen [...] and when you have that epiphany you realize this kind of conservative model that 'We are just going to teach the population to respect people's rights and in a 100 years we are going to be free.' is really not a tenable one."

"I have no interest in reaching the general population. The general population are the people who would have been nazis in the 40s and they would have been jihadis or sympathetic in some of these other countries 20 years ago. So they will always follow the ruling class."

"You have all these choices at the supermarket and then you go to government, which is far more important than what brand of soda you drink, and you're told it's got to be Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn. To hell with that! I want my views and I want to live my life and you setting up this false alternative is completely unacceptable. I'm not playing this game."

"[On talking to political opponents:] Come at that conversation appreciating that what they're spouting now has become their identity and also has become their status. So you're asking them to give up something both that matters to them on an emotional and values level, but also from an evolutionary-psychology level."

"If you're dealing with a journalist who you perceive as being engaged in good faith, and there's plenty of them, when you explain a particular view that you know is outside of their worldview, ask them to explain it back to you to see that they got what you meant. And if you have that on tape and they try to mis-characterize you, so much the better, now you have evidence that this was done maliciously."

"The battle is won when the average American regards a corporate journalist exactly as they regard a tobacco executive. Once you realize that's what you're dealing with, everything falls into place. Okay, this guy wants to sell me cancer, he makes money selling me cancer, he knows he's selling me cancer. I'm not going to get him to say that [cigarettes] are cancer, but now I can proceed accordingly knowing that this is going to be about promoting [cigarettes] or parliaments or whatever it is."

"[About the framing of public figures in the media:] If you read a play, a lot of times at the beginning of the play there will be that cast of characters and it will say like 'Jane, a wealthy widow seeking love', 'Thomas, her young paramour'. When they bring a character onto the scene in a corporate news article, it will say 'Joe Rogan, a podcaster known for his history of transphobic remarks', 'Scott Adams, the disgraced...'. They will immediately tell you from their personal perspective how you should feel about this person before they even finish the sentence. And once you spot that this is the technique, you can't unsee it."

"It is clear that 'social Darwinism' and 'survival of the fittest' were intended by Obama to evoke feelings of fear and disgust. It is highly doubtful that Obama knows anything about the history of these ideas, and it is even more doubtful that he cares. A concern for truth is not the coin of the political realm."

"Government should only protect individual; beyond that it should leave individuals free to cultivate themselves, and thereby generate spontaneous cultural order."

"The academic who lives comfortably in his professional enclave, secure in the belief that his corner of the cognitive world is the entire universe, has little need for philosophy, which he regards as a descent into idle speculation. Philosophy, for this academic, is an irritating enterprise, one that might call into question his most cherished assumptions."

"A theory of necessary conditions will tend to generate a model of the open society, whereas a theory of necessary and sufficient conditions will tend to generate a model of the closed society. These conflicting models result from the inner logic of ideas. To offer a sketch of what is minimally necessary for a good society is to leave considerable room for diversity, variation, and change. But the available space for individuality will progressively decrease as additional details transform what had been a sketch into a veritable blueprint for the good society."

"To enumerate the particular details—the sufficient conditions—of a good society is effectively to prohibit individuality and social change. A planned society, a society in which sufficient conditions are politically determined and coercively imposed, is ‘closed’ to the spontaneous innovations of free association. We see this in the utopian writings of Plato and his many admirers. A utopian society is a perfect society, one that has been carefully designed by a wise and beneficent lawgiver. Any deviation from perfection must necessarily be for the worse, so social change—which in this scheme is but another name for social degeneration—must be arrested at all costs. And this, in turn, requires the suppression of individuality. The individual’s pursuit of happiness—that powerful and unpredictable agent of social change—must be subordinated for the sake of a good society, as specified in the utopian blueprint of sufficient conditions."

"It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself."

"There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life."

"Religion has had the disastrous effect of placing vitally important concepts, such as morality, happiness and love, in a supernatural realm inaccessible to man’s mind and knowledge."

"Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox. To advocate that reason be discarded in some circumstances is to advocate that thinking be discarded—which leaves one in the position of attempting to do a job after throwing away the required instrument."

"The Christian theologian will never find a contradiction between the propositions of faith and reason, because it is his job to interpret them out of existence."

"If acorns start growing into theologians, or if women begin turning into pillars of salt, then we may wish to hypothesize about a supernatural influence. But until such time as nature becomes hopelessly unintelligible and unpredictable, we need look no further than nature itself for explanations."

"Intellectually, every man is an island unto himself; no man can assume the responsibility of thinking for another. The virtue of rationality thus entails intellectual independence and the willingness to assume responsibility for one’s beliefs, choices, and actions."

"Christianity cannot erase man's need for pleasure, nor can it eradicate the various sources of pleasure. What it can do, however, and what it has been extremely effective in accomplishing, is to inculcate guilt in connection with pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure, when accompanied by guilt, becomes a means of perpetuating chronic guilt, and this serves to reinforce one's dependence on God. ** p. 308"

"Through inculcating the notion that sacrifice is a virtue, Christianity has succeeded in convincing many people that misery incurred through sacrifice is a mark of virtue. Pain becomes the insignia of morality—and conversely, pleasure becomes the insignia of immorality. Christianity, therefore, does not say, ‘Go forth and be miserable.’ Rather, it says, ‘Go forth and practice the virtue of self-sacrifice.’ In practical terms, these commands are identical."

"When conformity is required, as it is in Christianity, what are the results? To begin with, the sacrifice of truth inevitably follows. One can be committed to conformity or one can be committed to truth, but not both. The pursuit of truth requires the unrestricted use of one's mind—the moral freedom to question, to examine evidence, to consider opposing viewpoints, to criticize, to accept as true only that which can be demonstrated—regardless whether one's conclusions conform to a particular creed."

"A willingness to engage in the give and take of argument displays a commitment to cognitive egalitarianism—the proposition that all people should be treated as intellectual equals, and that no individual can legitimately claim a privileged immunity from the burden of proof."

"The significant contribution of empiricism was not the eradication of certainty, but the eradication of infallibility as a criterion of certainty. And this shift from infallibilism to fallibilism has profound consequences not only for toleration, but also for the subordination of faith to reason and theology to philosophy."

"The leap of faith is a strategic impasse that confronts every Christian in search of converts; and, as he sees the matter, there is no wrong way to become a Christian. It is the end that is important, not the means; it does not matter why you believe, so long as you believe. For the philosopher, in contrast, the paramount issue is the justification of belief, not the fact of belief itself."

"In the late nineteenth century, liberals in Europe and America discovered that they were victims of a linguistic coup. They found that they were no longer regarded as liberals per se but as old liberals – a qualification that had bed foisted upon them by self-proclaimed new liberals."

"[G]overnment should only concern itself with matters of justice (i.e. the protection of rights) while leaving more tangential matters to the voluntary decisions and actions of individuals."

"Taxes, then, are a necessary means for the maintenance of political power, so the laws, first and foremost, must enforce compulsory taxation."

"Taxes forcibly transfer wealth from producers to legislators, who justify their expropriations under cover of law."

"Those in government are especially susceptible to the corruption of power, because government is institutionalized coercion."

"As Herbert Spencer was to point out in the following century, feudal serfs were required to turn over one-third of their produce to their overlord. This means that any citizen who is required to pay a tax rate greater than one-third is worse off in this respect than the lowly serf."

"The physical capacity to coerce others can never generate a moral obligation to obey the dictates of [government] power."

"According to [Peter L.] Callero, ‘Freedom of choice and self-determination are virtuous principles, but when selfish individual interests threaten to destroy the common good, the limits of individualism are exposed.’ Unfortunately but predictably, Callero is vague when it comes to defining ‘the common good’—a catchphrase with many variations that has been used by murderous dictators throughout history. May we therefore say that the ‘common good,’ when pushed to extremes, results in the likes of Stalin and Hitler?"

"Ironically perhaps, key elements in the Marxian criticism of differs little from a popular conservative complaint (though the same point is typically used for different purposes)."

"Americans feared the Townshend Act for another reason: revenues raised form it were to be used to pay the salaries of colonial governors and judges. This proposal struck at the heart of a revered American tradition. Although the Crown appointed governors in all 11 colonies, their salaries were paid by the colonial legislatures. This ‘power of the purse’ enabled American assemblies to check the power of the governors and judges by withholding their salaries."

"The Boston Tea Party has often been called a pivotal event that led to the American Revolution, but it would be more accurate to say that the British response was the true catalyst."

"This version of social contract theory stipulated that the king could continue to demand allegiance only so long as he fulfills his part of the agreement. If he violates his trust—as Americans believed he had with the Coercive Acts—he ‘unkings’ himself and releases his subjects from their part of the deal. His subjects are thereby cast into a ‘state of nature’—that is, a society without government—and are then free to form a new government of their own choosing."

"According to this approach, legitimate disagreements may occur between subjects and rulers when alienable rights are involved, but no such disputes are justified over the question of inalienable rights. Government cannot claim any jurisdiction over such rights, because inalienable rights, by their very nature, could never have been transferred to government in the first place."

"We can see why Jefferson focused on inalienable rights in his effort to fasten the charge of tyranny on the British government. The violation of inalienable rights was a defining characteristic of a tyrannical government, and only against such a government is revolution justified."

"Author George H. Smith can either be considered a forerunner of the New Atheist writers so popular in the late 2000s, or as someone supplying a summary and capstone to their work. Readers should not let the decades that have passed since the original publication dissuade them from an enlightening read."

"Magic makes for a slippery concept. Like "gender," "race," or any other term that can be picked apart as a social construction—which of course means all of our terms, every attempt at producing order through language and —the word "magic" does not simply express a straightforward, self-evident reality, but rather creative reimagining on the part of everyone who uses it. Magic's meaning is continually shaped and reshaped by changes in our knowledge, values, and prejudices. Scholars writing about magic today, when confronted with the matter of definitions, often chose to simply admit the incoherence and uselessness of the topic and then move forward with their projects."

"Riots are communities defining what counts as police brutality and to set the limits of authority. It is here, not in the courts, that our rights are established."

"We’ve been here before. In the first hours of 2009, police boarded a Bay Area Rapid Transit train, responding to a call about a fight. They detained several young men, most of them Black, among them one named Oscar Grant. As Grant was lying facedown on the platform being handcuffed, one officer, Johannes Mehserle, drew his gun, shot him in the back, and killed him. The entire incident was recorded on video from multiple angles. Several witnesses were filming with their cell phone cameras when Grant was shot; afterward, they hid the cameras from police, and then posted the footage on the internet. Within days, demonstrations were organized in Oakland, and quickly escalated into riots — beginning with an attack on a police car parked in front of the BART headquarters. More than 300 businesses and hundreds of cars were damaged in the unrest. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, an armored personnel carrier and more than a hundred arrests, but demonstrations continued for weeks. A year later, Mehserle was tried and convicted, but of manslaughter rather than murder. Rioting resumed. Damages were estimated at $750,000. While clearly a limited victory, the Mehserle verdict remains remarkable. Looking back over the fifteen previous years, the San Francisco Chronicle could find only six cases in which police were charged for on-duty shootings, and none of the thirteen officers involved were convicted. "If there’s one lesson to take from this," a participant in the unrest was later to conclude, "it’s that the only reason Mehserle was arrested is because people tore up the city. It was the riot — and the threat of future riots.""

"We are encouraged to think of acts of police violence more or less in isolation, to consider them as unique, unrelated occurrences. We ask ourselves always, “What went wrong?” and for answers we look to the seconds, minutes, or hours before the incident. Perhaps this leads us to fault the individual officer, perhaps it leads us to excuse him. Such thinking, derived as it is from legal reasoning, does not take us far beyond the case in question. And thus, such inquiries are rarely very illuminating. The shooting of Oscar Grant, the beating of Rodney King, the arrest of Marquette Frye, the killing of Arthur McDuffie — any of these may be explained in terms of the actions and attitudes of the particular officers at the scene, the events preceding the violence (including the actions of the victims), and the circumstances in which the officers found themselves. Indeed, juries and police administrators have frequently found it possible to excuse police violence with such explanations. The unrest that followed these incidents, however, cannot be explained in such narrow terms. To understand the rioting, one must consider a whole range of related issues, including the conditions of life in the Black community, the role of the police in relation to that community, and the history and pattern of similar abuses. If we are to understand the phenomenon of police brutality, we must get beyond particular cases. We can better understand the actions of individual police officers if we understand the institution of which they are a part. That institution, in turn, can best be examined if we have an understanding of its origins, its social function, and its relation to larger systems like capitalism and white supremacy."

"Violence is an inherent part of policing. The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. When persuasion, indoctrination, moral pressure and incentive measures all fail — there are the police. In the field of social control, police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent. Despite the official insistence to the contrary, it is clear that police organizations, as well as individual officers, hold a large share of the responsibility for the prevalence of police brutality. Police agencies are organizationally complex, and brutality may be promoted or accommodated within any (or all) of its various dimensions. Both formal and informal aspects of an organization can help create a climate in which unnecessary violence is tolerated, or even encouraged. Among the formal aspects contributing to violence are the organization’s official policies, its identified priorities, the training it offers its personnel, its allocation of resources, and its system of promotions, awards, and other incentives. When these aspects of an organization encourage violence — whether or not they do so intentionally, or even consciously — we can speak of brutality being promoted “from above.” This understanding has been well applied to the regimes of certain openly thuggish leaders —Bull Connor, Richard Daley, Frank Rizzo, Daryl Gates, Rudolph Giuliani, Joe Arpaio (to name just a few) — but it need not be so overt to have the same effect. On the other hand, when police culture and occupational norms support the use of unnecessary violence, we can describe brutality as being supported “from below.” Such informal conditions are a bit harder to pin down, but they certainly have their consequences. We may count among their elements insularity, indifference to the problem of brutality, generalized suspicion, and the intense demand for personal respect. One of the first sociologists to study the problem of police violence, William Westley, described these as “basic occupational values,” more important than any other determinant of police behavior."

"Police violence is very frequently over-determined — promoted from above and supported from below. But where it is not actually encouraged, sometimes even where individuals (officers or administrators) disapprove of it, excessive and illegal force are nevertheless nearly always condoned. Among police administrators there is the persistent and well-documented refusal to discipline violent officers; and among the cops themselves, there is the “code of silence.” Police brutality does not just happen; it is allowed to happen. It is tolerated by the police themselves, those on the street and those in command. It is tolerated by prosecutors, who seldom bring charges against violent cops, and by juries, who rarely convict. It is tolerated by the civil authorities, the mayors and the city councils, who do not use their influence to challenge police abuses. But why? The answer is simple: police brutality is tolerated because it is what people with power want. [...] It is merely the normal functioning of the institution; it is just that the apparent conflict between the law and police practices may not be so important as we tend to assume. The two may, at times, be at odds, but this is of little concern so long as the interests they serve are essentially the same. The police may violate the law, as long as they do so in the pursuit of ends that people with power generally endorse, and from which such people profit."

"When the police enforce the law, they do so unevenly, in ways that give disproportionate attention to the activities of poor people, people of color, and others near the bottom of the social pyramid. And when the police violate the law, these same people are their most frequent victims. This is a coincidence too large to overlook. If we put aside, for the moment, all questions of legality, it must become quite clear that the object of police attention, and the target of police violence, is overwhelmingly that portion of the population that lacks real power. And this is precisely the point: police activities, legal or illegal, violent or nonviolent, tend to keep the people who currently stand at the bottom of the social hierarchy in their “place,” where they “belong” — at the bottom. Put differently, we might say that the police act to defend the interests and standing of those with power—those at the top. So long as they serve in this role, they are likely to be given a free hand in pursuing these ends and a great deal of leeway in pursuing other ends that they identify for themselves. The laws may say otherwise, but laws can be ignored."

"In theory, police authority is restricted by state and federal law, as well as by the policies of individual departments. In reality, the police often exceed the bounds of their lawful authority and rarely pay any price for doing so. The rules are only as good as their enforcement, and they are seldom enforced. The real limits to police power are established not by statutes and regulations — since no rule is self-enforcing — but by their leadership and, indirectly, by the balance of power in society. So long as the police defend the status quo, so long as their actions promote the stability of the existing system, their misbehavior is likely to be overlooked. It is when their excesses threaten this stability that they begin to face meaningful restraints. Laws and policies can be ignored and still provide a cover of plausible deniability for those in authority. But when misconduct reaches such a level as to provoke unrest, the battles that ensue do not only concern particular injustices, but also represent deep disputes about the rights of the public and the limits of state power. On the one side, the police and the government try desperately to maintain control, to preserve their authority. And on the other, oppressed people struggle to assert their humanity. Such riots represent, among other things, the attempt of the community to define for itself what will count as police brutality and where the limit of authority falls. It is in these conflicts, not in the courts, that our rights are established."

"The Soviet Union did not collapse because of the failure of communism, although it is difficult to call it communism - it was only the path to it. It collapsed because Gorbachev and other leaders of the country tried to introduce capitalism into the communist system."

"la mujer es apta para todo."

"Estudiemos y preparemos nuestra generación para las luchas futuras, que se avecinan."

"Si la mujer estuviera convenientemente ilustrada, educada y emancipada de formulismos rutinarios, la politica de los pueblos seria distinta"

"No hay duda que la primera y mejor escuela es el hogar. La mejor y superior maestra para el niño, es, la madre instruida."

"I refuse to accept the assertion of any historian who erroneously believes that women have no right to use their freedom without being considered corrupt or immoral, while men have been able to do whatever they want and indulge the most absurd and ridiculous whims, without being judged, repudiated or prevented from going where they choose, with no concern about not being paid attention to, respected or sought after. We are going to put an end to those unequal laws-where the few have a lot and the many have a little-in order to finally secure peace for the just and achieve the truth and justice that our sex deserves."

"Although we are all brothers, some die of hunger and of foodstuffs, clothing and shoes. And with so many naked and bare-while what is useful and necessary rots at the depots and warehouses"

"My great worry is the problem of poverty…Instead of prisons, I would have schools, art and vocational academies, free trade, free love, the abolition of marriage and the substitution of private property for public property."

"Education is the mother of freedom; science is her eldest daughter; and her sisters, tolerance and discretion, with rights and responsibilities."

"In the middle of great abundance, and without having studied the social question, I believed that everybody had the right to be clean and clothed, to wear shoes, and I didn’t understand why it wasn’t so. I thought everyone knew how to read and write and I was astonished when I saw the opposite"

"She’s a woman, not only when she’s powdered and wearing lace and ribbons, just like a man doesn’t stop being a man when he learns to cook, mend, sweep and sew."

"Women, by force of will and energy, are quite capable of doing certain jobs that they previously had been denied. This theory is constantly disputed by those who claim women's inferiority due to sexual difference, which, it is said, seems to be an immutable law of nature. But there is nothing more false than to attempt in this way to uphold the permanent superiority of men."

"As a general rule, women nowadays dedicate all their energy, all their attention to their appearance; they are not concerned with anything except wearing the latest fashion; they squander all their intelligence in trying to become more beautiful, and not even in any practical way, by some beneficial and hygienic method, like practicing gymnastics, exercising in the fresh air, or swimming every morning. But no, it must be done with ribbons and lace, by cutting their breath short from the excessive use of tight-fitting corsets. And this translates to a waste of time, health, and money."

"a true beauty, real and lasting, [is] achieved by a healthy diet, without eating meat or drinking alcoholic beverages, by practicing gymnastics and taking walks in the open air, not a fictitious beauty such as that of adornment, without which, she is no longer herself."

"Could there exist true happiness in a marriage when the man is the only one who can regularly exercise his free will and satisfy his desires, without caring whether or not his wife agrees? Accustomed to the passive obedience of women, he does not bother to find out whether or not she is satisfied with his conduct. And if she is not, he does not attempt to please her, nor to adapt his conduct to a new way of life. How can the holy priestess of the hearth preserve the sacred fire of love in the home when she has to officiate alone? Where is the principal object of her devotion? Look for him outside the home at those times when he should be at the side of his companion. Will a solid foundation for domestic happiness be established by this behavior? No. Men have the right to do or undo, without his companion. He goes to a masked ball or not, to the casino, to gamble, or chases other women.... and meanwhile, poor woman! A sad scenario for domestic bliss! She is subjected to a sad solitude for days and nights on end, orphaned of love, of sweet attentions and joys while the above-mentioned companion gambles, dances... or falls in love."

"For women it is generally admitted that her sexual life is null or subordinate to that of the companion-legal or otherwise-that she has chosen. She should live and feel for him; be passionate if he is, and maintain herself neutral if he is cold. Until now a man has considered sensual desire as something that pertains to him, not recognizing in women a moral and physical self organized like him."

"The only thing we want to put forth is that women must acquire greater freedom and rights. The current system, with all its errors, is sustained by the ignorance and slavery of women."

"Harmony within a marriage greatly influences the education of children, our future citizens. How many times have a mother’s tears, cried in moments of pain and contradiction, powerfully influenced her children!"

"Women must become enlightened or educated, because being enlightened encompasses all the fields of human science: Physiology, Geology, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Engineering, Agriculture, Geometry, History, Music, and Painting...Education is a beautiful and necessary thing."

"If a woman is not instructed and educated will she be able to educate, counsel, and guide her children suitably? No. And this is an important matter that should interest women, the home being the first and most necessary of schools. Whatever the child sees the mother do or say is what the child will observe and learn."

"Education means cultivating patience, tolerance, a sweet disposition, harmony, abnegation, and temperateness. Anyone who cultivates these virtues is truly educated."

"There are many women who think that being a mother means contradicting a child, and later they beat them, and order them about for the sake of giving orders, to see herself obeyed, ordering the child not to run, not to jump, not to yell, in sum, a whole bunch of ignorant things, the truth is, to prohibit a child from doing all this is to prohibit them from being healthy. They act like this with girls precisely because they are girls, as if a girl's organism did not have to develop, so that they can grow up beautiful and strong, and not scrawny and pale, nor become mothers full of pains and ailments. They think that being a mother authorizes them to mistreat and order the children at whim, and oblige them to do things against their will, that is an error."

"How many girls pay for the tantrums, jealousies or vexations of their mothers, who act without any justifying motive, only because they need to blow off steam and they can’t do it in front of their husbands."

"yo entiendo que lo que otros consideran utópico, és en mi concepto realizable."

"¿Qué conceptos tenemos de los que se oponen a todas las ideas de igualdad y libertad humana? La de traidores y judas del Maestro. Todos los que juzgan una idea llevada á la práctica, utópica, son obstáculos, y los obstáculos deben empujarse á un lado. Son los que entorpecen las grandes iniciativas, las obras de bien. Y aun así, se llaman patriotas y padres de la patria. ¿Qué concepto de la patria tendrán? Un concepto egoista, que empieza en ellos y termina en ellos. Ellos lo son todo."

"No hay nada más perjudicial al éxito de una empresa, que la timidez, el apocamiento, la duda. Una especie de cobardía, que creo que solamente la poséen los vagos. No creo nada imposible; ni me asombro de ningún invento ni descubrimiento, por eso no encuentro utópica ninguna idea. Lo esencial es llevarla á la práctica. Empezar! Lo demás, es debilidad, y un concepto errado del poder humano. ¡Querer es poder!"

"El actual sistema social, con todos sus errores, se sostiene, por la ignorancia y la esclavitud de la mujer."

"unas manos útiles son preferibles á unas simplemente bellas."

"No me explico por qu el hombre cr e tener siempre derechos sobre la mujer."

"Todos los que apoyan, y continúan explotando, son los que sostienen el estado de miseria del pueblo y por tanto son los sostenedores de las cárceles, presidios ó mejor dicho los creadores de ladrones. de asesinos, de locos y fanáticos religiosos y políticos. Porque si no fuera por temor á la miseria, no habría fanáticos, políticos y religiosos. El temor á la miseria ó la miseria misma hace cometer torpezas, que degeneran en crímenes, injusticias y locuras, por los cuales tenemos cárceles y manicomios desigualdades é injusticias. La Revolución Social, será la que hará desaparecer tantas iniquidades. Y la revolución surgirá por la propaganda y el estudio é investigación científica. Y la propaganda la hacemos los libertarios y el estudio está al alcance de todos. Estudiemos y preparemos nuestra generación para las luchas futuras, que se avecinan."

"El hombre acostumbrado á ver en la mujer un objeto de placer olvida que está destinada á sor madre y maestra de una nueva generación"

"En un sistema social comunista en que los individuos tengan derecho sobre todo lo que produce la naturaleza y el ingenio de todos, podrá haber más libertad, y el hombre podrá crear una familia sin preocupaciones económicas ni sociales. Pero aún no hemos llegado á esa época, no tardará en ser establecido entre los humanos, ese hermoso procedimiento común."

"Individuos de ambos sexos hemos caído en el error de creer que solamente el hombre tiene derecho á usar su libertad del modo que le plazca."

"Es indispensable que la "Igualdad" deje de ser una vana frase muy usada, que los derechos de ambos sean iguales."

"En vez de ir á oir misa, visitas los pobres y socórrelos, que podrás hacerlo: en vez de confesarte y comulgar, visita los presos, y llévales consuelos, algo que los instruya. No olvides que los abundan en cárceles y presidios son los pobres y los ignorantes, las víctimas de siempre de todas las explotaciones."

"Cuando se reforme esta sociedad indiferente y egoísta por la futura, fraternal y altruista, entonces, cuando no se cometan injusticias, cuando no se castiguen inocentes, cuando los jueces no exijan "la verdad, toda la verdad, y nada más que la verdad", siendo los primeros embusteros. Cuando no haya quien robe un bollo de pon, porque carezca de él, Cuando no exista la propiedad privada, y todos nos miremos como hermanos, entonces, y sólo entonces, desaparecerán las cárceles, presidios y las inútiles y perniciosas iglesias. No habrá miseria, odio ni prostitución. Existirá el libre cambio, pues estarán abolidas las fronteras y la verdadera libertad reinará en este planeta. Procura tú ayudar con la práctica á la realización de estas hermosas ideas humanas para que no perezcan de hambre y de frío, los infelices que no tienen hogar, ni riquezas, en los tristes portales de alguna cochera ó pesebre, ó de algún palacio....iqué irrisión! ¡Qué humanidad! á dos pasos de opípara mesa y de ricos y abundantes abrigos, perecer de hambre y de frío. Cerca de la prodigalidad y el despilfarro, el hambre, el dolor... pobres niños víctimas de la miseria... Parece un sueño, ó cuento y es una realidad, que asombra... ¡Qué horror! !qué falsos son los cimientos de esta llamado sociedad, que está basada en el crímen, el error, y la hipocresía."

"Las instituciones religiosas, han ayudado á fomentar esos privilegios y división de clases. Si los trabajadores en general por medio de la instrucción no logran destruir los privilegios de castas, razas, gerarquías, y miles de majaderías, que nos perjudican como seres humanos. Entonces la revolución lo hará. Muchos le temen á la revolución. Pero no hay como pertenecer á ella, para que el miedo se evapore. Las cosas vistas desde lejos, producen distinto efecto. De cerca, se llegan á palpar, y desaparece lo que se llama efectos de distancia y también de apreciación."

"Debemos explicarlos las cosas materiales como son, sin añadir ni disminuir. La verdad debe ser la base fundamental para la educación de la niñez Y los padres tienen la obligación de no engañar á sus hijos, y enseñarlos á no engañar á los demás."

"Los padres deben dirigir y educar al niño, pero no castigarlo. Es un error creer que es una forma de educar el maltratarlos y atormentarlos."

"Socialista soy, porque aspiro á que todos los adelantos, descubrimientos é invenciones establecidos, pertenezcan á todos, que se establezca su socialización sin privilegios. Algunos lo entienden con el Estado, para que este regule la marcha, yo lo entiendo sin gobierno No quiero decir que me opongo á que el gobierno regule y controle las riquezas, como lo hará, pero yo mantengo mi opinión de sentirme partidaria decidida del no gobierno. Socialismo ácrata. Bien yo aquí afirmo y declaro solemnemente, que para ser socialista es necesario haber analizado y comprendido la Psicología."

"El socialismo está en el luminoso cristianismo que socavó los cimientos del poder de los Césares, por la fraternidad. Y la fraternidad universal sera la implantación del socialismo que es abnegación, dulzura, modestia, templanza, <> Seguros escalones que conducen á la perfección humana, para la libertad y el progreso espiritual indefinido aun por la pluralidad de mundos habitados superiores. Instruyámonos para purificarnos. eduquemos nuestra voluntad para el ejercicio del bien, y dejemos consumir bajo el influjo de la razón, el fuego de la pasiones, en holocausto á la emancipación humana, para la persecución del progreso espiritual."

"One of the most outstanding women leaders in this movement was Luisa Capetillo...She wrote on education and the importance of women working outside the home, on the benefits of a Communist society free from oppression and religion, on love, and on the future of society. In all her writings she insisted on her affiliation with socialism, on her support for women's liberation, and particularly her defense of "free love." She never married, and had three children in open relationships. Capetillo traveled to New York, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Florida, and published the feminist magazine La Mujer. She was arrested in Cuba for wearing slacks. In Puerto Rico she is remembered in a popular song that says: "Doña Luisa Capetillo, intentionally or not, has created a tremendous uproar because of her culottes.""

"The socialist and especially anarchist organizations in Puerto Rico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century launched a number of community education programs, and its leadership made literacy and intellectual activity a priority for the working class. Belpré may have been raised in a milieu similar to the environment that produced Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922), the Puerto Rican feminist anarchist who, though of humble birth, was highly literate, bilingual (Spanish/French), and became an accomplished author and activist as an adult (Iglesias de Pagán 1973; García and Quintero Rivera 1982; Ramos 1992; Sánchez González 2001)."

"A century ago Puerto Rican feminist Luisa Capetillo said, "If you don't want women to sell themselves for bread, give them bread.'"

"In looking at the Puerto Rican movement as a whole and the positive contributions that we made in the seventies and early eighties, first we need to point out that we built on our legacy of struggle. We stood on the shoulders of such Nationalists as Ramón Emeterio Betances, Pedro Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebrón, and such communists as Luisa Capetillo, Jesús Colón, Bernardo Vega, Julia de Burgos, Juana Colón, Evelina Antonetti, Antonio Corretjer, Genoveva Clemente, Gerena Valentín, and many others."

"We identified as revolutionary nationalists' committed to ending exploitation and colonialism. We were inspired by the herstories of women activists in Puerto Rico. We learned about Lola Rodríguez de Tió and Mariana Bracetti, early fighters for the abolition of slavery and the island's independence from Spain; Luisa Capetillo and Juana Colón, working class organizers and women's rights advocates; and Lolita Lebrón and Blanca Canales, Nationalist Party militants imprisoned for their actions to free Puerto Rico. We studied the lives of African American women such as Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women's rights activist, and Harriet Tubman, who freed slaves through the Underground Railroad. Our sisters in the Black Panther Party were diversifying the image of the revolutionary, and we joined the protests to demand the release of Angela Davis from a California prison, and of Afeni Shakur and Joan Bird in New York. The long line of women activists, from contemporary social justice movements, became our role models and mentors."

"She had taken an active role in many strikes over her life, including the highly successful sugarcane strike of 1916 which won 13% pay increases. In addition to her anarchist activism, she caused a scandal by being the first woman to wear trousers in the region: once sensationally being arrested in Cuba and tried for it. Although she successfully defended herself in court arguing there was no law which prohibited her wearing men's clothing."

"Her progressive ideas and her lifestyle inspires amazement, then respect and admiration, because of the enormous personal sacrifices she made in order to live a different life and fight for her vision of a new world."

"I believe that it is essential, especially for women active in the feminist movement in our country, as well as for those who are affirming their cultural identity, to know about the struggle of Puerto Rican female workers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Luisa Capetillo is a symbol and model to emulate because she was not satisfied with merely having principles and believing in them. She actually lived those principles with an indomitable rectitude, in spite of her contradictions."

"Luisa Capetillo, Historia de una mujer proscrita belongs to the contemporary cultural phenomenon of women's biographies. Only now are we becoming familiar with María de las Mercedes Barbudo, who struggled for Puerto Rican independence during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and was jailed in El Morro, the infamous military garrison in old San Juan; with Ana Roqué (often referred to as Ana Roqué de Duprey), pioneer journalist and novelist; Carmela Eulate Sanjurjo, travel writer, translator and poet; Librada Rodríguez, labor and political leader; Julia de Burgos, the poet of love and nationhood; and Ruby Black, the United States feminist and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's friend and confidante, who made a successful career writing as a correspondent for La Democracia, a Puerto Rican daily newspaper."

"She revolutionized the role of women in Puerto Rican society and became a paradigm for the new woman."

"When I initiated my research, motivated by the desire to learn more about the history of Puerto Rican women, I found that everyone who knew Luisa Capetillo when she was alive, or knew about her, remembered her as the first woman in Puerto Rico to wear pants in public. At first I thought these recollections were based on an implied societal intention not to recognize this revolutionary for her important role, but rather to brand her an eccentric, remembered only by what could be considered superficial actions. I was saddened by the fact that even respected intellectuals didn't value her feminist, labor and anarchist work in its true perspective. What I found out was that Luisa Capetillo did not wear pants in public as a whim or to attract attention. She did not preach free love because she was immoral or libertine. She did not become the first feminist in Puerto Rico, both in theory and in action, because she was disappointed in love. The theories developed by Capetillo and her actions in daily life came from the legitimate theoretical political formation that ruled her life, Luisa Capetillo must be situated in her historical moment. The fact that she was a vegetarian and a true believer in Swedish calisthenics and in yoga, as ways to keep the body in optimum health, has to be discussed. To fully understand this woman, it is not enough to know her intellectual and public accomplishments; how she lived also has to be known."

"Along with theories about "spontaneous revolution" and the organization of campesinos and industrial workers into unions and libertarian federations, the anarchists also transmitted a set of ideas about everyday life that included free love and free education, which would result in men and women "free" from conventional ties. The books by Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta (who lived in Latin America for many years), significantly shaped the education of Puerto Rican workers and deeply inspired them. The educational theories of the Catalonian Francisco Ferrer and the French writers Sebastian Fauré and Madeleine Vernet (whom Luisa Capetillo called Magdalena Vernet), became the ideal of Puerto Rican workers."

"The defense of a woman's right to education was the motivating and uniting issue which would eventually culminate in a more liberal complete and progressive education for Puerto Rican women. Tempered by their struggle, women emerged who would lead the feminist movement in the early twentieth century. These women were the liberals Ana Roqué, María Luisa de Angelis, Isabel Andreu de Aguilar, and the workers Luisa Capetillo, Franca de Armiño and Concha Torres. A better and more complete education for women of all social strata remained the unifying cause within the feminist movement throughout the years."

"During her lifetime, Luisa Capetillo was often compared to George Sand."

"Where Luisa Capetillo truly acquired her vast culture was through the independent reading that she did during her lifetime, beginning in childhood. She read the works of the French writers, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, the Russian Romantics, Leo Tolstoy and Turgenev, and the French astronomer, spiritualist and freethinker Camille Flammarion, whose research on astronomy and psychical studies she avidly read. Her own work reflects the ease with which she handled the theories and texts of influential authors such as the French doctor Paul Vigne, of Hugo and Tolstoy, the writings of anarchist educator Madeleine Vernet, and the philosophical-political essays of Peter Kropotkin and John Stuart Mill."

"The play that Luisa Capetillo wrote in 1909, Influencias de las ideas modernas (The Influence of Modern Ideas), published in San Juan in 1916, was inspired by Tolstoy's philosophy and included a main character who resembled him."

"José María Vargas Vila, Colombian journalist and novelist, whose radical political ideas resonated with the workers, was also a favorite of Capetillo and her audience."

"Journalist Santiago Carreras described the historic moment and Capetillo's passion as he recalled, "Luisa Capetillo at the head of the march, along with other leaders, haranguing the workers...her great mission was to read aloud to them, which she did, atop benches of the plaza." Her role in the Arecibo strike determined the direction of her life. There Luisa Capetillo became a union leader, from that moment on dedicating herself, with equal success, to organizing workers and to spreading anarcho-syndical ideas through her writings in pamphlets and newspaper articles, in talks, rallies, lectures and private gatherings."

"In spite of the fact that Capetillo's work is eminently internationalist in content, it is bound to an essential Puerto Ricanness. Whether it be in personal allusions or references to particular social problems, her love for Puerto Rico's needy children and her devotion to its workers are ever present."

"In 1908 Capetillo participated in the Fifth Workers' Congress of the Federación Libre de Trabajadores, where she defended female suffrage with zeal, not only for women who knew how to read and write, but for all women, without exception. In this Congress, she showed herself to be a true suffragist, with more advanced ideas than those of the other women, who later, in their own professional and civic groups, would support the vote only for women who could read and write. Her fellow workers in the labor movement on the Island considered her the "First true suffragist in the country.""

"She was not interested in writing for the few, but rather for the greatest number of Puerto Rican workers. ..Her beliefs in universal fraternity and the eradication of national barriers and borders inspired her to visit other countries, allowing her to share her ideals far beyond the limits of Puerto Rico."

"Her ideas about love and sexuality have been proven over time to be profound and visionary."

"Julio Aybar, editor of the newspaper Unión Obrera, said that her theories did not intimidate him. "We are not threatened by anything that Capetillo says in her book because they have always been our own opinions. Luisa breaks with today's hypocrisy and faces the issues with courage, fearless about what she writes, since it seems to us that she practices what she preaches.""

"With the publication of Mi opinión, Luisa Capetillo became the first Puerto Rican woman to organize her feminist ideas and publish them as a theoretical document."

"Capetillo could easily be a protagonist in the re-emergent feminist struggle of the 1970s, although she lived at least a hundred years earlier."

"While Luisa Capetillo theorized about women and anarchism in Puerto Rico, her contemporaries did the same in many other countries, among them Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Spain and the United States. Juana Belén Gutiérrez (1875-1942) in México, Maria Collazo (n.d.) in Uruguay, Juana Rouco Buela (1889-1969) in Argentina, Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1914) in the United States, and Teresa Clamunt (1862-1981) in Spain, preached the emancipation of women and free love and fought for workers' rights while living lives consonant with their ideals."

"La mujer," one of the articles that she published in 1912 in Cultura obrera, was later included in the anthology, Voces de liberación (Voices of Liberation), published in 1921 by Lux Editorial from Argentina. Printed for the purpose of gathering the libertarian voices of the most progressive women in the world, the book contains short essays by Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and various Latin American women including Margarita Ortega, a Mexican revolutionary, María López from Buenos Aires, and Rosalina Gutiérrez from Montevideo. The editorial note introducing the authors states, "These voices of liberation are a call to women by their own compañeras to think more and act together with men in the struggle for human emancipation."

"About Capetillo, Jaime Vidal wrote, "For me, the author of this book is one of the most independent and free women of the Hispanic-American race, and when discussing free love she is imbued with the fiery and poetic expression of Latin writers and the ease of Anglo-Saxon thinkers. She enriches her theories and criticism with an abundance of arguments that convince even the most skeptical in the matter of free love.""

"Like the majority of the anarchists of her time, Capetillo was deeply impressed by the victory of the revolutionary forces in Russia in 1917."

"She participated in rallies in support of the candidacy of Santiago Iglesias Pantín, whom she admired and considered her comrade."

"The funeral orations were delivered by her companions Alfonso Torres, Florencio Cabello, Esteban Ortiz and José López."

"Luisa Capetillo lived intensely and actively from the moment she became part of the labor struggle to the moment of her hospitalization and death. She fought for proletarian causes, education for the masses, and the emancipation of women. Her life was not easy or pleasant. She had no comforts or luxuries. She inspired hostility in many people who rejected her revolutionary ideas. However, it is also true that until her last moments, she was accompanied and comforted by the workers, her compañeras and compañeros, to whom she offered her life. In her confessional book, Influencias, she bemoans the envy and rancor that those who fight for truth and justice suffer. Yet this Puerto Rican anarchist clearly never regretted her life's direction, aptly describing herself as "a stoic of life...""

"Although in Puerto Rico there was discussion of the liberal ideas of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, and later, of Eugenio María de Hostos, it was Luisa Capetillo who established a new precedent by living according to her revolutionary ideals. By daring to live her own way, she was severely punished by the society she was forced to exist in. Among her peers, her lifestyle was resented by even the most progressive workers. Nevertheless, Capetillo was inspired by and steeped in her parents' readings and their adherence to the Romantic Movement. Embracing the anarchist principles that excited many Romantic European minds, she was able to live a different life with great bravery."

"Her ideal was to achieve a communist society where all human beings would be equal, with every worker equally valued and none being more privileged than others. She envisioned a community devoid of exploiters profiting from the labor of the workers, the major producers in society."

"Fannia Cohn’s service to our organization is only recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such unselfish efforts on the part of one person for the cause of worker’s education. She remains a tragic figure amidst her own fellow workers…Were she a man it would have been entirely different."

"May I state at the out-set, that I always regarded the Hearst press as yellow, violently anti-labor and reactionary? In the course of my organizing activities in several parts of this country, the Hearst press consistently attacked us, blaming the ILG and its organizers for instigating strikes, causing people to lose their jobs, livelihoods, homes, etc. As last as 1936, the Hearst press, writing about the leadership of the CIO in the Roosevelt campaign attacked our ILG and its leadership, including yourself, as Communists. (I was given the distinction of being an Anarchist and a friend of Emma Goldman, an honor I shall never deny.) I recall that in 1927 a similar stunt was performed by Hearst in printing the story of the lives of Sacco-Vanzetti, who were electrocuted, the articles notwithstanding. The Hearst press has already been on the decline for several years because the awakened labor rank and file refused to be bull-dozed any longer. Today, the printing of your story in the classic Hearst sensational style, is simply giving his yellow, reactionary press a new lease on life, to say the least. I followed the articles and must admit that Mr. Joseph Mulvaney, the fellow who induced you to consent to his writing these stories, will be handsomely rewarded by Hearst, for the circulation will surely jump a score of thousands or more. do not know what objectives you aim to reach in consenting to be publicized in such a fashion, save one-to give the writer a chance to earn a living (is he at least a Union man?)"

"I was always considered a "shaigitz" when I was young and as a militant out-spoken trade-unionist during my activities in the labor movement, I am not afraid of telling the truth to you now."

"I, for one, favor a limited tenure of office to get new and dynamic forces to the forefront, to gain a stronger morale for the members."

"Our recent entrance into politics, which in my mind is the bane of the Union, has added more woes. Most of the paid officers and active members became politicians, calously [sic] neglecting the duties for which they were elected. Getting wages weekly by the union, a paid officer can abuse his duties more freely now than heretofore, the excuse-elections campaign."

"A member fears nowadays to express an honest opinion, in some locals, for fear of being hooted down or even losing a job."

"Jennie Matyas is recognized by the outside Labor and Education Movement, because she is a leader in her own rights, while countless others remain obscure through the good graces of the men whom they have helped into office."

"Fannia Cohn's service to our organization is only recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such unselfish efforts on the part of one person, for the cause of worker's education."

"When servility, bootlicking, personal favoritism and above all sensationalism will be wiped off as obstacles to real progress,"

"No pictures of pretty girls, baby kissing, trophy-giving for sports, banquets or the like can give our vast membership more aid and comfort (and goodness knows in these difficult times they need it badly) than the feeling that the elected leadership is honest, efficient and sincerely rendering a service for which they were placed in office."

"While organizing new members we preach to them to be independent, to lose their fears and openly express themselves and demand their rights; so here I am practicing what I am preaching and am openly expressing my views to you, Mr. President."

"The change in character of the workers in Southern California's garment industry struck me forcibly. Mexican women and girls were no longer in the majority, although some of the younger generation were still favored in certain factories. The working force in this region had been vastly augmented since 1936, because of the changing trends, and the manufacturers had taken on a great number of women from newly migrant families, largely American-born whites and Negroes, former tenant farmers who had gravitated to California from burned-out and wind-torn land East of the Rockies. Generally referred to as Dust-Bowlers, and made famous as Ma Joads through John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, they had no conception of the meaning of unionism. Some had long been on county relief and WPA, with meager rations and were glad to work for any wage and to put in any number of hours."

"For centuries the human race searched for some formula, magic or scientific, to extend its life-span, to eliminate disease, to develop strong, enduring men and women. And after long striving yellow fever, tuberculosis, and other scourges were conquered and the average life was materially lengthened. But now all these gains have been set at naught. For scientists with drugged consciences have devised lethal weapons, designed not only to wipe out the manhood of this generation, but to destroy whole cities and whole nations. Robot bombing planes, the latest invention, coming seemingly from nowhere, wreak havoc among defenseless people. Hospitals no longer are spared. For a few years of promised full employment, human skill is lured into making such weapons to annihilate the flower of mankind."

"Unfortunately, only about one fifth of the nation's working population is organized into unions, but millions of non-union wage-earners have benefited from organized labor's insistence upon decent living standards for all. Those millions remain opposed or indifferent to unions through sheer ignorance of their merits."

"organized labor's strongest weapon-the right to strike"

"Other strikes developed over racial issues, for in the North as well as in the South there are still white Americans who refuse to accept their red co-workers as equals. Vehemently condemned by union officials, these strikes appear to have been skilfully directed by outside forces interested in dividing Americans on one issue or another."

"To my mind, too, painfully little space was given in the daily press to recent coal mine disasters in which miners perished through underground fires or explosions."

"The Smith-Connally bill's passage marked the beginning of an organized effort to wreck bona fide unions through legislation."

"Compulsory military training is conducive to waging wars rather than to the maintenance of peace."

"Much has been written and said about labor enjoying excessive pay, but little has appeared in print about low-paid workers, such as those in hotels, restaurants, and laundries, being frozen to their jobs if they were employed in "locally needed activities." And scarcely anything is being said about the munitions makers who are amassing huge profits in this war as in those of the past."

"While we are engaged in a global war nothing is too costly for the armed forces. Billions are poured into the making of implements of destruction."

"Although they have readily spent billions of the people's money for destruction necessary to win the war, they balk at spending for peace-time constructive work at home. By the same token, conservatives who have not been averse to sending the best of American youth to foreign lands to make the world safe for the debaters at home, refuse to grant those boys and girls the privilege of using their constitutional rights in electing their national representatives."

"Rightfully, there have been outspoken demands by labor for a place at the peace table, to insure future amity among the world's nations and security for the working masses."

"there is a call to all peace-loving people-to rebuild our shattered world, set up indestructible barriers against war, and create a society based on equality and mutual aid, moving toward a more humane and abundant life."

"Rose Pesotta, one of America's most effective and devoted women trade union organizers"

"In 1933 Rose Pesotta, a leading organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and herself a Jewish immigrant from Russia, spent months organizing Mexican women garment workers in Los Angeles. Her preconceptions were stereotyped; she assumed that Mexican women would be passive, intimidated by the sexism of Mexican men, and therefore hard to organize. While she did face difficulties, they were not as great as expected, and her campaign had some significant successes. She came to rely on Mexican women as the backbone of her West Coast organizing and took the male leadership down to the local jails so they could hear the spirit with which the mexicanas sang from their cells. The following year she went to Puerto Rico to organize women garment workers there. The meetings were full, although women often fainted from hunger while she spoke. She began bringing baskets of food to meetings and would ask if anyone had not eaten before she spoke. She was deeply moved by the circumstances of Puerto Rican women workers and continued to speak about their living and working conditions for many years. In 1944 she wrote several articles about poverty and working conditions in Puerto Rico for New York newspapers."

"Children taking their place on the picket line occurred throughout modern Chicano labor history, as early as the 1930s. As an example, during the 1933 Los Angeles Dressmakers Strike, ILGWU representative Rose Pesotta organized 300 children in costume for an impromptu Halloween parade in front of the factories where their mothers were picketing."

"Rose Pesotta, who would later become an organizer in America's garment shops, recalled that the evening meetings of the revolutionary reading circles attended by seamstresses, tailors, shoemakers, and itinerant workers provided an "escape from the monotony of everyday existence.""

"Rose Pesotta said she emigrated in part because she wanted to live in a society where ordinary workers commanded respect. In America, Pesotta thought, "a decent middle-class girl can work without disgrace." Had she remained in Russia her only choice, given her upbringing, would be to marry and become a housewife, a future that had little appeal to her."

"Ambitious females usually learned their skills in a more circuitous manner, resorting to what a Bureau of Labor Statistics investigator called "piratical methods." To avoid confinement to dead-end, low-skill positions, they created do-it-yourself apprenticeship systems, jumping from one learner's job to the next and slowly acquiring all the different skills needed to complete a whole garment. "I learned the trade the hard way, changing jobs often, for in those days there were not training classes," recalled Rose Pesotta of her first years in the women's garment industry."

"Not only did week workers have little choice about the time they worked, they were continually subjected to what Rose Pesotta called "the whip of the foreman." Foremen, foreladies, and bosses felt compelled to oversee the demeanor and behavior of week workers in the factory. Too much talking, singing, or visiting the restroom or the drinking fountain cut into production time and thus had to be controlled."

"In these times of ours, when all classes in society, from the Bowery Socialists to the highest professors of science, seem to vie with one another in demanding State interference, State protection, and State regulation, when the ideal State to the workingman is that proposed by the authoritarian Marx, or the scarcely less authoritarian George, and the ideal State to the scientist is the Germany of today, where the scientists are under the government’s special protection, it would seem idle to hope that the voices of those who prize liberty above an things, who would fain call attention to the false direction in which it is desired to make the world move, should be other than “voices crying in the wilderness.” But, nevertheless, it is not by accident that we who hold the ideas that what is necessary to progress is not the increase, but the decrease, of governmental interference have come to be possessed of these ideas. We, too, are “heirs of all the ages,” and it is our duty to that society of which we form a part to give our reasons for the “faith that is in us.”"

"It is always important that the position of devil’s advocate should be well filled."

"Responsibility is the parent of morality"

"As Leslie Stephen has demonstrated, to suppress one truth is to suppress all truth, for truth is a coherent whole."

"Do you think that a country, one of whose most distinguished professors, Virchow, is afraid of giving voice to the doctrine of evolution, because he sees that it inevitably leads to Socialism (and Socialism the government has decided is wrong, and must be crushed out), is in the way of long maintaining its supremacy as a scientific light, when the question which its scientific men are called upon to decide is not what is true, but what the government will allow to be said?"

"It is our duty to truth to cultivate the spirit which questions all things"

"We still have no evidence on record to prove that great men are endowed with more than the ordinary share of common sense, which is so necessary in conducting the ordinary affairs of life. Indeed, if the gossip of history is to be in any way trusted, great men have usually obtained less than the ordinary share of this commodity. Frederick the Great is reported to have said that, if he wished to ruin one of his provinces, he would hand its government over to the philosophers. Is it into the hands of a Bacon, who had no more sense than to expose himself (for the sake of a little experiment which could have been made just as well without the exposure), a Newton who ordered the grate to be removed when the fire became too hot for him, a Clifford, who worked himself to death, that the direction of the affairs of a people is to be given, with the assurance that they will be carried on better than now?"

"Will advance by having no opinion protected from discussion and agitation, by having the greatest possible freedom of thought, of speech, and of the press."

"Dr. Gertrude Kelly, a surgeon of great skill and a supporter of the Irish Republic."

"In basing their demands on a claim of justice-women are human beings; therefore they ought to possess all the rights and privileges of human beings-the anarchist-feminists refused to make any extravagant claims for social and political benefits that would flow from equality. But they thereby lost an opportunity to appeal to men on the grounds most likely to gain their attention, those of self-interest. The early feminists had faced the same problem and their arguments also had failed to win masculine support. As a result, the suffragists at the end of the century often felt it necessary to exploit their womanhood in an attempt to render feminism more palatable to men. Such tactics were unacceptable to the anarchist-feminists, but a few of them did try to persuade their male comrades that women's equality was essential to a radical platform. Gertrude B. Kelly, for example, argued that a successful revolution would depend on a commitment to feminism, contending that unless radical men began to take steps to end the oppression of women, their attempts to remake the world would end in failure. She agreed with her male comrades who said that there was "properly speaking no woman question as apart from the question of human right and human liberty." But men often used such statements to try to persuade women to mute their demands for sexual equality until after the liberation of the "people" had been accomplished, implying that while the concerns of male revolutionaries were by their very nature universal, those of women were at best parochial. Kelly, on the other hand, insisted that without sexual equality no liberation could take place. Men hurt themselves as well as women by their refusal to recognize this: "No wrong can be done to any class in society without part at least of the evil reverting to the wrong-doers."...Gertrude Kelly's earnest attempt to enlist male support through appeals to self-interest was unusual. The anarchist-feminists recognized for the most part that women must seek their own emancipation. They placed (accurately as it turned out) little faith in the enlightenment of radical men. The significance of their approach may be seen most clearly by an examination of the anarchist-feminists proposals for the reorganization of society based on the premise of economic and psychological independence from men."

"Anarchist-feminists found it difficult to persuade their male corevolutionaries to take the Woman Question seriously...Gertrude Kelly berated them because she believed that by ignoring the demands of women radical men were actually retarding the revolution"

"The enthusiasms of the social feminists for example temperance, protective legislation for women and children workers, and social purity usually drew a negative response from the anarchist-feminists, both communists and Individualists. Although like the more conventional feminists they abhorred prostitution, anarchists believed it to be a predictable result of both capitalism and societal repression of sexuality that could only be removed by the overthrow of both. The Individualist Gertrude Kelly argued in 1885 that social purity advocates possessed the evidence to show "that destitution is the chief cause of prostitution" but that they refused to follow the logic of their findings. "When we come to examine the remedies proposed, we find not a word on the subject of... making their wages equal to those of a man for the same work.""

"Voltairine de Cleyre possessed one of the best minds among the American anarchists, and her essays, particularly in the early twentieth century, were sophisticated and subtle. On the other hand, the other anarchist-feminists who attempted to explain anarchist ideas tended to approach every problem as a separate issue without reconciling, or in some cases even noticing, disharmonies and contradictions. They espoused feminism and the standard anarchist remedies for social ills without troubling to look for connections. It almost seems as if they deliberately avoided those questions that would force them to confront anarchist ideology as a whole. Gertrude B. Kelly, for example, concentrated on questions of finance when she was not writing about women. She was enthusiastic about the innovation of checking accounts, which she viewed as the harbinger of the Mutual Bank, an institution that, for Individualists, was at the heart of anarchist economics. Yet she not only found it unnecessary to explain the effect of new bank practices on the overall power structure, but she also failed to connect monetary issues with questions about the redistribution of wealth or the economic role of women.'..Where Gertrude B. Kelly had confined herself to specific details of anarchist thought without attempting an inclusive analysis, Florence Finch Kelly offered sweeping generalities without touching on their application."

"Established order, being an instituted fixity, excludes reform, and whoever advocates change by that very act becomes an enemy to it."

"The wisest government is that which but responds readiest to the demand to which its own establishment had given birth, and for this reason will yield only as forced by fear to give something rather than risk losing all."

"Is not the whole long career of the proletariat but the “Martyrdom of Man” strewn with whitened bones, cemented with scalding tears welling up from broken hearts, and stained with the bleeding feet of countless millions?"

"Events are the true schoolmasters, and smarting under the White terror which yearly sacrifices its millions the Social Revolutionist does not hesitate to invoke the Red terror, knowing that here the words apply that “he who loseth his life shall save it.” But how? By words of rodomontade? By inviting others to do by simply preaching the gospel of discontent? No; but by deeds. The Social Revolutionist is not moved by revenge nor by mere impulse. When Alexander II was killed, when Cavendish and Burke were sent to judgment, when John Brown shot men he had never before met, the world understood the full significance of each act."

"To my mind, the very assumption of “natural rights” is at war with evolution."

"Social intercourse has slowly evolved the Ideal that peace, happiness and security are best attained by equal freedom to each and all; consequently, I can lay no claim in equity to a privilege, for that which all alike may enjoy ceases to be privileged. The important deduction from social evolution is that as militancy has weakened and industrialism widened its boundaries, liberty has ever tended toward such equalization, Privilege finds sanction in equity as right, because it violates the ideal of social progress — equality of opportunities."

"Precisely as water flows to a level when obstructions are removed, just so will social relations flow to equitable conditions when restrictions are swept away. And precisely also as liberty comes in does the assertion of “rights” go out."

"Until my imprisonment I had believed that except for Albert Parsons, Dyer D. Lum, Voltairine de Cleyre, and a few others America was barren of idealists. Her men and women cared only for material acquisitions, I had thought. John Swinton's account of the liberty-loving people who had been and still were in every struggle against oppression changed my superficial judgment."

"Dyer D. Lum proposed the creation of "co-operative homes," and Voltairine de Cleyre later elaborated the idea: "I would destroy the individual 'home' with its waste of forces and have instead magnificent palaces, spacious grounds. . swimming rooms, bathrooms, everything on a large scale," yet with private rooms for every individual whenever he or she desired to be alone."

"You only feel pain and grief over things you love and care about."

"I've never been at home in this world, though. That's why I fight so fiercely for other possible ones. That's why, as both an anarchist and Jew, I've long dreamed of do-it-ourselves, egalitarian forms of social organization ones in which we're all reciprocally and abundantly cared for, not to mention messy-beautifully whole."

"At its core, anarchism is indeed a spirit—one that cries out against all that's wrong with present-day society, and boldly proclaims all that could be right under alternate forms of social organization. It is also precisely the quality of an airy free-spiritedness that gives anarchism its attraction. Anarchism playfully travels across the mists of time and space to borrow from the best of human innovations, to give body to the most lofty of ideals. It can be hauntingly beautiful. But it involves a difficulty as well: pinning down this ghostly figure, this "inhabitant of an unseen world," with any definition or substance, much less getting other people to believe in the utopian apparition called anarchism."

""We're only human," the saying goes, but our humanity is profoundly damaged by the alienated world of control that we inhabit. Anarchism contends that people would be much more humane under nonhierarchical social relations and social arrangements."

"Anarchism serves unflinchingly as a philosophy of freedom, as the nagging conscience that people and their communities can always be better."

"There are many different though often complementary ways of looking at anarchism, but in a nutshell, it can be defined as the striving toward a "free society of free individuals.""

"Anarchism is a synthesis of the best of liberalism and the best of communism, elevated and transformed by the best of libertarian Left traditions that work toward an egalitarian, voluntarily, and nonhierarchical society. The project of liberalism in the broadest sense is to ensure personal liberty. Communism's overarching project is to ensure the communal good. One could, and should, question the word "free" in both cases, particularly in the actual implementations of liberalism and communism, and their shared emphasis on the state and property as ensuring freedom. Nonetheless, respectively, and at their most "democratic," one's aim is an individual who can live an emancipated life, and the other seeks a community structured along collectivist lines. Both are worthy notions. Unfortunately, freedom can never be achieved in this lopsided manner: through the self or society. The two necessarily come into conflict, almost instantly. Anarchism's great leap was to combine self and society in one political vision; at the same time, it jettisoned the state and property as the pillars of support, relying instead on self-organization and mutual aid."

"Anarchism understood that any egalitarian form of social organization, especially one seeking a thoroughgoing eradication of domination, had to be premised on both individual and collective freedom—no one is free unless everyone is free, and everyone can only be free if each person can individuate or actualize themselves in the most expansive of senses. Anarchism also recognized, if only intuitively, that such a task is both a constant balancing act and the stuff of real life. One person's freedom necessarily infringes on another's, or even on the good of all. No common good can meet everyone's needs and desires. This doesn't mean throwing up one's hands and going the route of liberalism or communism, propping up one side of the equation—ultimately artificially—in hopes of resolving this ongoing tension. [...] Anarchism understood that this tension is positive, as a creative and inherent part of human existence. It highlights that people are not all alike, nor do they need, want, or desire the same things. At its best, anarchism's basic aspiration for a free society of free individuals gives transparency to what should be a productive, harmonic dissonance: figuring out ways to coexist and thrive in our differentiation. Anarchists create processes that are humane and substantively participatory. They're honest about the fact that there's always going to be uneasiness between individual and social freedom. They acknowledge that it's going to be an ongoing struggle to find the balance. This struggle is exactly where anarchism takes place. It is where the beauty of life, at its most well-rounded and self-constructed, has the greatest possibility of emerging—and at times, taking hold."

"From the start, anarchism was an open political philosophy, always transforming itself in theory and practice. This, too, might be seen as part of its very definition. Anarchism has to remain dynamic if it truly aims to uncover new forms of domination and replace them with new forms of freedom, precisely because of the ever-present strain between personal and collective freedom. Self-organization necessitates everyone's participation, which requires being always amenable to new concerns and ideas. Yet when people are introduced to anarchism today, that openness, combined with a cultural propensity to forget the past, can make it seem a recent invention—without an elastic tradition, filled with debates, lessons, and experiments, to build on. Even worse, it can seem like a political praxis of "anything goes"—libertine without the libertarian—without regard for how one person's acts impact another person or community. It is critical to understand anarchism's past in order to understand its meaning, but also its problems and shortcomings as well as what we might want to retain and expand on. We study anarchist history to avoid repeating mistakes, but also to know we aren't alone on what has been and will likely be rocky, detour-filled "paths in utopia," to borrow the title of a Martin Buber book. Of course, it's generally helpful to understand historical contexts. Anarchism, for its part, is in large measure filled out and changed by its lived engagement in social struggle and visionary experimentation."

"For centuries, people grew up believing, in essence, that reason was only to be gleaned from the word of a monarch and/or god. Enlightenment philosophy gave voice to the ideas of on-the-ground social struggles and, in percolating through society, gradually shattered such self-abnegation with the increasingly hegemonic understanding that everyone has the ability to think for themselves."

"Like capitalism, the state will not "negotiate" with any other sociopolitical system. It attempts to take up more and more governance space. It is neither neutral nor can it be "checked and balanced." The state has its own logic of command and control, of monopolizing political power. Anarchists held that the state cannot be used to dismantle capitalism, nor as a transitional strategy toward a noncapitalist, nonstatist society."

"Anarchism developed over time, theoretically and through practice. Its dynamism, an essential principle, played a large part in allowing anarchism to serve as its own challenge. Its openness to other social movements and radical ideas contributed to its further unfolding. Like any new political philosophy, it would take many minds and many experiments over many years to develop anarchism into a more full-bodied, nuanced worldview—a process, if one takes anarchism's initial impulse seriously, of always expanding that worldview to account for additional blind spots. Anarchism was, is, and continually sees itself as "only a beginning.""

"From its beginnings, anarchism's core aspiration was to root out and eradicate all coercive, hierarchical social relations, and dream up and establish consensual, egalitarian ones in every instance. In a time of revolutionary possibility, and during a period when older ways of life were so obviously being destroyed by enormous transitions, the early anarchists were frequently extravagant in their visions for a better world. They drew on what was being lost (from small-scale agrarian communities to the commons) and what was being gained (from potentially liberatory technologies to potentially more democratic political structures) to craft a set of uncompromising, reconstructive ethics. These ethics still animate anarchism, supplying what's most compelling about it in praxis. Its values serve as a challenge to continually approach the dazzling horizon of freedom by actually improving the quality of life for all in the present."

"Anarchism always "demands the impossible" even as it tries to also "realize the impossible." Its idealism is thoroughly pragmatic. Hierarchical forms of social organization can never fulfill most peoples' needs or desires, but time and again, nonhierarchical forms have demonstrated their capacity to come closer to that aim. It makes eminent and ethical sense to experiment with utopian notions. No other political philosophy does this as consistently and generously, as doggedly, and with as much overall honesty about the many dead-ends in the journey itself."

"From the outset, anarchism grounded itself in a set of shared values. These revolved around interconnected notions such as liberty and freedom, solidarity and internationalism, voluntary association and federation, education, spontaneity and harmony, and mutual aid. Anarchist principles affirmed humanity's potential to meet everyone's needs and desires, via forms of nonhierarchical cooperative and collective arrangements."

"Classical anarchism's aims were no bulwark against the brutal transformations that swept the globe with the rise of actually existing communism and fascism. Historical forces drove society in a murderous direction. Anarchism did not disappear during this time. Yet its ranks were decimated. Touchstone figures were killed, including Gustav Landauer by protofascists following the Bavarian Revolution in 1919 and by Nazis in the in 1934. Others died in prison, like in 1922, and some committed suicide, such as Alexander Berkman in 1936. Anarchists were increasingly isolated. Kropotkin's death in 1921 marked the last mass gathering of anarchists—for his funeral procession, and then only with Vladimir Lenin's permission—in Russia until 1987. Thousands of anarchists worldwide were incarcerated, exiled, or slaughtered. They were victims of repressions like the in the United States and purges of radical opposition by numerous Communist parties. As a result, anarchism became far less vibrant, a ghost of itself. This made it difficult for people to discover the politics, further reducing the number of anarchists and anarchistic efforts. It was as if the antiauthoritarian Left skipped a generation or two."

"Anarchism is not immune from the increasing fragmentation and immediacy, among other conditions, that characterize much of contemporary capitalist society. It is just as damaged by the phenomena it decries. Even as anarchists advocate a community of communities, they are, like most people today, alienated from any sense of place and hence each other. Nonetheless, there remains a profound sense of recognition between anarchists, based on a shared set of distinct values, which in turn structure their lives and projects."

"First and foremost, anarchism is a revolutionary political philosophy. That is, anarchism is thoroughly radical in the true sense of the word: to get at the root or origin of phenomena, and from there to make dramatic changes in the existing conditions. Anarchism aspires to fundamentally transform society, toward expansive notions of individual and social freedom."

"Despite the difficulties, anarchists never advocate a purely reformist attitude. They try their best never to participate in reform as an end in itself, or to bring about improvements that also make the present social order look attractive. Their efforts to move from "here" to "there" intentionally highlight how current social arrangements cannot, by their own raison d'être, meet everyone's needs and desires."

"Anarchism is not satisfied with remaining on the surface, merely tinkering to make a damaged world a little less damaging. It is a thoroughgoing critique aimed at a thoroughgoing reimagining and restructuring of society. It views this as essential if everyone is to be free, and if humanity is to harmonize itself with the nonhuman world."

"Anarchism from the start focused on what appeared as the two biggest stumbling blocks to a libertarian society: capitalism and the state. This pair, sadly, are still the predominant forms of social immiseration and control. Capitalism and statecraft loom large in terms of naturalizing—and thereby being at the root of—this immiseration and control. Their separate yet often-interrelated internal logics consolidate power monopolies for a few, always at the expense of the many. This demands that each system must both continually expand and mask its dominion. To survive, they have to make it seem normal that most people are materially impoverished and disenfranchised as economic actors, and socially impoverished and disenfranchised as political actors. They have to restructure social relations in their own image—as unthinkingly assumed ways of being and acting. The world that most of humanity produces is, as a result, denied to the vast majority, and a relative handful get to make binding decisions over all of life. Anarchism is therefore staunchly anticapitalist and antistatist, which ensures that it is a revolutionary politics, since battling such primary systems necessarily means getting to the root of them. Moving beyond capitalism and states would entail nothing less than turning the world upside down, breaking up all monopolies, and reconstituting everything in common—from institutions to ethics to everyday life."

"Whereas many in the global and now movements focus on corporations as key, anarchists see these entities as only one piece of capitalism, and a piece that if removed, wouldn't destroy capitalism—bad as corporations may be. One can have capitalism without corporations. Capitalism's essence—ensuring that society is forged around compulsory social relations along with inequities in power and material conditions—would remain in place. And given capitalism's grow-or-die logic, small-scale capitalism would by definition unfold into a larger scale again. Or as contemporary networked and informational capitalistic structures indicate, allegedly localized capitalism can be a way to hide an increasing concentration of social control and injustice. Capitalism itself, in its totality, and because it strives toward totality, is the root problem. Anarchists, then, look to wholly undo the hegemony of capitalist economic structures and values, or the many components that mark capitalism as a system—from corporations, banks, and private property, to profit, bosses, and wage labor, to alienation and commodification."

"The state, though distinct from capitalism in its form and methods, must also become a thing of the past if freedom has any chance of reigning. It's not a matter of trying to make the state kinder, more multicultural, more benign, or to follow the letter of its own law. The state's very logic asserts that a few people are better suited than everyone else to determine, as the U.S. Constitution says, "." It's not just that the state has (or increasingly doesn't) a monopoly on violence but that regardless of how it compels people to give up their power—with guns, ballots, or pacification through forms of already-circumscribed participation—it is always engaged in a variety of social control and social engineering. Statecraft, at its essence, is about a small body of people legislating, administering, and policing social policy. In this way, it also sustains other types of domination, such as institutionalized racism or heteronormativity. Increasingly, "the state" is doing this as part of a networked structure of states collaborating in blocs or global institutions. Thus, fewer and fewer people get to determine policies ranging from warfare to health care to immigration. Even the notion of representative democracy under this global regime is almost anachronistic, given that layers of nonrepresentative statecraft now work hand in hand with equally undemocratic international NGOs and multinational financial bodies."

"The point here is that anarchists agree on the necessity of a world without capital and states, precisely to allow everyone to make good on their lives, liberties, and happiness—to be able to continually define as well as take part in the quality of these categories. In relation to the state specifically, anarchists contend that everyone is thoroughly capable and deserving of self-determining their lives. Anarchists believe that together, people will likely envision, deliberate over, and settle on more creative, multidimensional social organization. Here again, anarchists offer a revolutionary praxis that both improves current conditions and points past them."

"Anarchism is distinguished as a political philosophy by its clear, uncompromising position against both capitalism and states. There are many ways within anarchism to explain specifically what's wrong with capitalism or states, and even more ways to approach ridding the world of them. But anarchists maintain that the pair has to go because they each have power over the vast majority of the human and nonhuman world. At its heart, political philosophy is about power: who has it, what they do with it, and toward what ends. Anarchism, more sweepingly than any other political philosophy, responds that power should be made horizontal, should be held in common."

"Hierarchy and domination serve as the prism through which to see various phenomena as both distinct in their own right and deeply interconnected. They can produce, structure, or sustain each other, or operate relatively independently, yet always serve to restrain a consensual, egalitarian world. Anarchists strive to dismantle forms of social relations and social organization that allow some people to exercise mastery over other people and things. They contrast the use of power for gaining something from others, for money or status, or out of privilege or hatred, with the use of power to collectively achieve individual and social development, mutual respect, and the meeting of everyone's needs. Anarchism's generalized critique of hierarchy and domination, even more than its anticapitalism and antistatism, sets it apart from any other political philosophy. It asserts that every instance of vertical and/or centralized power over others should be reconstituted to enact horizontal and/or decentralized power together. This grand vision serves as a yardstick for attempts to reduce hierarchy and domination while improving the quality of life, materially and otherwise, in the here and now."

"Implementing anarchism as a lived political project can seem a daunting task. It takes seriously the notion that hierarchy and domination in their many manifestations need to be torn apart, and that society needs to be restructured along fundamentally different lines. It means transforming the whole of life. It means overcoming alienation, countering humanity's estrangement from the world and each other with nonalienated relationships and organizations. This must be an ongoing quest, with better (and worse) approximations of freedom appearing in various times and places, only to seemingly disappear or greatly diminish again. Still, with each approximation, the very idea of freedom expands along with the notion of what it means to be human and humane. Remnants of freedom remain, in fact or in memory. Vestiges of experiments linger. People are transformed and pass their sense of potentiality along to others."

"Coming to anarchism, taking up the mantle of imagining a world beyond hierarchy, is like a lightbulb going off inside one's head. It first offers a sense of one's own empowerment and liberation, and then, hopefully, a sense of collective social power and freedom. There is something euphoric in casting off, even if only on the level of personal beliefs initially, the idea that hierarchy is somehow a given, and that one has to abide by its rules. It's a life-altering leap when one truly uproots the belief within oneself that, say, racism or states are normal and necessary. The move toward increasingly nonhierarchical mind-sets, relations, and institutions opens up a whole world of possibility—at least as a start, within oneself. The first act might be critical thought, a less estranged relationship with oneself and others, or the reappropriation of imagination as a step toward a nonalienated society."

"Anarchism doesn't concentrate on just the economic, political, cultural, psychological, or other spheres. Nor does it separate any single issue from its relation to other issues, even if one personally places emphasis on a particular area. It concerns itself with everything that makes people human, including the nonhuman world. The work of anarchism takes place everywhere, every day, from within the body politic to the body itself."

"The anarchist hope to transform life translates into a shared, holistic approach to living life. Embracing anarchism is a process of reevaluating every assumption, everything one thinks about and does, and indeed who one is, and then basically turning one's life upside-down. Upending coercive relations is a journey of remaking oneself, as part of the project of remaking the world. But becoming an anarchist is also a process—without end—of applying an ethical compass to the whole of what one (and everyone) is and could be individually and socially. Anarchists aren't necessarily any better, or worse, than anyone else. They are just as damaged by the intricate web of hierarchies, hatreds, and commodified relationships that malform everybody. Within anarchist circles, though, valiant attempts are at least made to be open and self-reflective about this damage, and from there to develop humane ways of addressing it. Anarchism entails working hard at reshaping oneself as well as one's society."

"Capitalism has indicated that humans might be able to achieve a postscarcity society—a world in which everyone has enough of what they need to sustain life. But despite grocery stores and dumpsters overflowing with food, billions of people go hungry; despite labor-saving technologies, most people work more for less; despite breakthroughs in health care, many die needlessly. Meanwhile, consumption has been transformed into a barometer of one's worth, a never-ending quest for happiness via commodity choices. And it's always premised on what one has to exchange for that abundance, or else it's denied."

"Anarchists design modest experiments with grand goals to allow people to meet their needs and desires, be ecological, craft new social relations, set up spaces and organizations, and make decisions together—all in nonhierarchical ways. These are partial experiments, sometimes short-lived, especially given the force of the current systems of domination. Yet they form a tangible fabric of horizontalist innovation. [...] The idea is that people establish counterinstitutions as well as lifeways that gain enough force—because they capture the hearts, minds, and participation of enough people—to ultimately exist on a level with, or finally in victorious contestation to, centralized power."

"The important thing about moving toward a better world is how people go about doing it. Anarchist practices share distinct elements, even if they're implemented in different ways: the lives and communities that they attempt to establish are premised on a shared ethical compass. This is key, given that most social forces presently deny and try to destroy such alternatives. Reconstructive efforts to restructure everyday life imply that people can work to destroy commodified and coercive relations. They also sustain people for the hard work of doing just that."

"Anarchism serves as a touchstone not simply for anarchists but especially for those who encounter anarchism's challenge: "What's the right thing to do?" The classical anarchists called this simply "the Idea." Anarchism stands as a beacon through its history and practices, and perhaps most especially through its ideals."

"It's never a matter of ethics versus pragmatism; it's a question of which informs the other. Humans have shown themselves capable of almost unlimited imagination and innovation—qualities that could be said to define human beings. People have used this capacity to do both great good and great harm. The point is that when humans set their minds to doing something, it's frequently possible. It makes sense to first ask what people want to do and why, from an ethical standpoint, and then get to the pragmatic how-to questions. The very process of asking what's right is how people fill out ethics in praxis, to meet new demands and dilemmas, new social conditions and contexts. Anarchism, then, brings an egalitarian ethics out into the world, making it transparent, public, and shared. It maintains an ethical orientation, while continually trying to put such notions into practice, as flawed as the effort might be. When other people come into contact with this ethical compass, they will hopefully "get it" and incorporate the same values into their lives, because it works. It offers directionality to political involvement and buttresses people's efforts to remake society. It turns surviving into thriving. That's the crucial difference between a pragmatic versus ethical impulse: people, in cooperative concert, qualitatively transform one another's lives."

"The goal of anarchism isn't to turn everyone into anarchists. It's to encourage people to think and act for themselves, but to do both from a set of emancipatory values. Even the process of evaluating values is an ethical one within anarchism. "Ethics" isn't some fixed entity but rather the continual questioning of what it means to be a good person in a good society. It draws from the classical triad of philosophy's aspirations: the good, the true, and the beautiful. They are the starting points for anarchism's questions as well as its modeling of answers. In a world that feels—that is—increasingly wrong, anarchism's ethical compass acts as an antidote. That alone is an enormous contribution."

"Constantly working to bring both liberation and freedom to the table, within moments of resistance and reconstruction, is part of that same juggling act of approximating an increasingly differentiated yet more harmonious world."

"Anarchism believes in everyone's ability to take part in thinking through and acting on, in compassionate ways, the world they inhabit. It maintains that everyone deserves to shape and share in society."

"The anarchist ethic of the equality of unequals shatters the dehumanizing notion promulgated under capitalism that everything, including each person, is exchangeable—equally a commodity, and thus without inherent worth—replacing it with the rehumanizing concept of the value of each individual. It gives qualitative meaning to justice. Under representative democracies, justice is blind to the uniqueness of each person and the specificity of their circumstances. Particularities aren't weighed, and "justice" is meted out in vastly unjust ways. Within anarchism, being just entails being clear-eyed about the differences between people and their situations, which in turn makes it at least possible to negotiate personal and social relations, including conflicts, in ways that are substantively fair. Everyone and everything has equal value, and should equally be provided sustenance in order to fully blossom."

"The equality of unequals isn't simply about materials needs. It is a sensibility to guide how humans can justly apply equal worth to the rich nonequivalency of differentiation."

"Beyond a fundamental belief in the worth of each person, an anarchist egalitarian ethic also follows the communistic notion of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." But anarchism gives it a crucial twist: "from each according to their abilities and passions, to each according to their needs and desires." In this view, people all contribute in various ways to each other and their communities—and not simply in an economic sense. Indeed, this ethic helps to reembed "the economy" into the wholeness of life. [...] The "from each, to each" sensibility understands that everyone adds to society even when they can't make and distribute tangible goods or services. It asserts that everyone is deserving of the material as well as nonmaterial bases to fully thrive."

"Anyone who has ever been involved in a voluntary collective project knows that people can manage to get things done in ways that account for differences in talents, proclivities, and the common good. They can do this without force, equivalency, unhappiness, or the state. To the contrary, such experiments viscerally point to a sense of personal and social satisfaction that far outstrips systems of "from each according to what they are forced to do, to each according to their financial means, and otherwise people go without.""

"Communities see libraries as something necessary and valuable to everyday life, as something that should be freely available to all. Anyone can use the library as much or as little as they see fit, with no sense of scarcity. People can borrow what they want, with no judgment (in the ideal) about the quantity or quality of their usage. They can enjoy the library space itself, on their own or with the assistance of a librarian. They can use it without offering anything in return, or if desired, freely give back by donating books or volunteering time to reshelf them. Imagine if everything from energy to education was such a "from each, to each" institution. Many of the best anarchist experiments today—albeit still within the limitations of state and capitalism—are about trying to put this notion into practice, from bike and food coops, to skill shares and free clinics."

"Mutual aid is one of the most beautiful of anarchism's ethics. It implies a lavish, boundless sense of generosity, in which people support each other and each other's projects. It expresses an openhanded spirit of abundance, in which kindness is never in short supply. It points to new relations of sharing and helping, mentoring and giving back, as the very basis for social organization. Mutual aid communalizes compassion, thereby translating into greater "social security" for everyone—without need for top-down institutions. It is solidarity in action, writ large, whether on the local or global level."

"When felt and lived out as a daily sensibility, in combination with other anarchist ethics, cooperation creates fundamentally different social relations, which offer humanity the best odds of transforming the values of a hierarchical society. In a hierarchical society, charity is a form of "giving" that no matter how benevolent, ends up forging paternalistic relationships. The giver is in a position of authority; the recipient is always at their mercy, even if the giver needs the recipient to feel good about themselves (or as a tax write-off). This leads to an ethics of self-interest: one shouldn't give unless one receives something equal in return, regardless of whether each person has something equal to give. Mutual aid, in contrast, stresses reciprocal relations, regardless of whether the gift is equal in kind. Humans give back to each other in a variety of ways—the inequality of equals. Individuals and societies flourish because the different contributions are not only equally valued but combine to make for a greater whole."

"The implication of mutual aid is that humans see themselves as part of nonhuman nature (though distinct from it in certain ways), needing to cooperate as much with the nonhuman natural world as with each other to survive and evolve. The ecological crisis is, in fact, a social crisis: humans believe they can dominate nonhuman nature because they believe it's natural to dominate other human beings. But mutual aid holds that humans, other animals, and plants all thrive best under forms of holistic cooperation—ecosystems. It suggests that people would be much more likely to live in harmony with each other and the nonhuman world—to be ecological—in a nonhierarchical society."

"An ecological perspective within anarchism, then, is not only about the relation of humanity to the nonhuman world, or a harmonizing of both. It sees the world holistically, thinking through phenomena in nuanced ways, attempting to follow the developmental logic of potentialities in the present in order to anticipate how they might unfold, in terms of forms of both freedom and domination. An ecological outlook translates into the very openness that characterizes anarchism. By being able to critically explore possibilities in the here and now, anarchism beckons toward a brighter future, yet only if it remains open to what's outside the given."

"Pleasure and love are what motivate people to aspire toward a better world. These and other feelings aren't luxuries separate from people's material needs. They are part and parcel of the need for a full, individuated, and genuinely social life."

"This is the essence of a good society: that people are able to feel goodness in themselves and each other as much as possible; that even when things are difficult or life is painful, people have the support of others; that the ways we get things done are also the ways we carve out spaces to fully see and appreciate each other. And have fun."

"Anarchists vigilantly resist the world that is, while simultaneously engaging in those hopeful behaviors that point toward new social relations. They practice the beauty that human beings are striving to achieve in the world that could be. Anarchist activities emphasize the aesthetic and the joyful."

"Savoring play is just as much part of a revolutionary impulse within anarchism as is struggle—and both are essential to qualitative freedom."

"Anarchists attempt to find harmony in dissonance, like instruments in an orchestra."

"Whether it's contradictions between the local and the global, independence and interdependence, autonomy or direct democracy, anarchists honestly and transparently struggle to find unities that don't deny differences. This ethical commitment is essential to anarchist experiments, since it intimately relates to anarchism's definition. Much of what anarchists do in practice involves crafting relationships, processes, and agreements, personally and within self-organized institutions, that are precisely about finding the balance of a unity in diversity."

"The concept of utopia within anarchism isn't some faraway, never-neverland; nor is it a way to ignore material needs or desires. Rather, it's precisely a means of taking full account of material as well as nonmaterial needs and desires—not simply bread and butter, but bread, butter, and also roses—and imagining ways that everyone can fully satisfy them. Anarchism looks to the past, when people lived out communal and self-governed forms of organization; it sees potentialities in the present; and it sustains the clear-eyed trust that humans can always do better in the future. The utopian sensibility in anarchism is this curious faith that humanity can not only demand the impossible but also realize it. It is a leap of faith, but grounded in and indeed gleaned from actual experiences, large and small, when people gift egalitarian lifeways to each other by creating them collectively."

"Anarchism is not just an ideal; it is not merely a thought experiment. Nor is it a blueprint or rigid plan. Its reconstructive stance dreams up ways to embody its ethics, and then tries to implement them."

"It is in the process of constructing new worlds that transformation happens, in how people set about making their way toward something appreciably better."

"Revolution entails evolution."

"It's when people increasingly take charge, instituting and participating in nonhierarchical organization, that they begin to have the power to reshape society, rather than simply the "power" to react against those forces that ultimately have power over them."

"Anarchism is a compelling political philosophy because it is a way of asking the right questions without seeking a monopoly on the right answers. The point is to destroy monopolies, along with all other singular choke holds on people's collective ability to be free. Self-organization is the key to ensuring the nonexclusive ownership—or rather, the ownership in common—of freedom. As anarchism thoroughly grasps, freedom is only possible when people all share the ability to determine and shape social relations and social organization. The only way to create such far-reaching forms of justice is to ensure that everyone has an equal portion of power, that we not only discuss, debate, and dialogue about what kind of society and everyday life we want but also problem solve, implement, evaluate, and revisit those decisions over the whole of life."

"Anarchism borrows from the seemingly impossible possibilities of the past and present. It then gifts such potentialities to everyone, supplying hope by pointing toward an increasingly liberatory future."

"Anarchism's laboratory is the whole of life."

"Anarchism appears to be the only form of that speaks to the times and people's dreams."

"That is the spirit of anarchism, the ghost that haunts humanity: that our lives and communities really can be appreciably better. And better, and then better still."

"As socialists, anarchists were particularly concerned with capitalism, which during the Industrial Revolution was causing suffering on a hitherto-unimaginable scale. Anarchists primarily pinned their hopes for transforming social relations on workers, utilizing economic categories ranging from class struggle to an end to private property. All those on the revolutionary Left agreed that capitalism couldn't be reformed; it must instead be abolished. But unlike other socialists, anarchists felt that the state was just as complicit in enslaving humanity, and so one couldn't employ statecraft—even in a transitional manner—to move from capitalism to socialism. A classless yet still statist society, anarchists argued, would still constitute a world marked for most by domination."

"Globalization makes anarchism's aspirations increasingly apropos. Far from being anti-globalization per se, anarchists have long dreamed of the world without borders made potentially feasible by the transformations now under way. Indeed, the means utilized by globalization are quite amenable to anarchist values, such as decentralization and interconnectedness, elastic identities and the shattering of binaries, creative borrowings, cooperation, and openness. Most strikingly, globalization is structurally undermining the centrality of states. [...] In this globalizing world, though, "nonstatist" can mean everything from supranational institutions governed by business elites and international nongovernmental organizations to world courts and regional trade zones to networks of free-floating individuals willing to employ terror tactics. Globalization within a capitalistic framework is just as likely to birth new hierarchies and deepen alienation, shaping all in its own image—the state, but also anarchism included. If anything, the changing social landscape and its many new dangers compel anarchists to take themselves and their ideas more seriously, particularly given anarchism's avant-garde role in the anticapitalist movement of movements. [...] The highly participatory practices of today's anarchism have to be continually reimagined both to keep three steps ahead of those that would contain or co-opt it, and to be up to the task of remaking society. This entails understanding the specific forms that contemporary governance is taking, in order to ensure that anarchism is reaching the right mark in its ongoing effort to dismantle the state. Both theory and practice thus need to catch up to the present if an anarchist politics is to become more than a historical footnote about a missed moment."

"The project of the present anticapitalist movement, and anarchism's strong suit in general, is to provide a guiding light, even if we aren't the ones to finally bask in it."

"Still, the grand experiments of the past aimed at a free and self-governing society have not been extinguished—they have reemerged in the anarchistic strains charted here and, most promisingly, the current contest against capitalism fought along antiauthoritarian lines. Not a bad beginning to the twenty-first century."

"These days, words seem to be thrown around like so much loose change. "Democracy" is no exception. We hear demands to democraticize everything from international or supranational organizations to certain countries to technology. Many contend that democracy is the standard for good government. Still others allege that "more," "better," or even "participatory" democracy is the needed antidote to our woes. At the heart of these well-intentioned but misguided sentiments beats a genuine desire: to gain control over our lives. This is certainly understandable given the world in which we live. Anonymous, often-distant events and institutions—nearly impossible to describe, much less confront—determine whether we work, drink clean water, or have a roof over our heads. Most people feel that life isn't what it should be; many go so far as to complain about "the government" or "corporations." But beyond that, the sources of social misery are so masked they may even look friendly: starting with the Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone of "caring" capitalism to today's "green" version, from the "humanitarian" interventions of Western superpowers to a "change we can believe in" presidency. Since the real causes appear untouchable and incomprehensible, people tend to displace blame onto imaginary targets with a face: individuals rather than institutions, people rather than power. The list of scapegoats is long: from Muslims and blacks and Jews, to immigrants and queers, and so on. It's much easier to lash out at those who, like us, have little or no power. Hatred of the visible "other" replaces social struggle against seemingly invisible systems of oppression. A longing for community—a place where we can take hold of our own life, share it with others, and build something together of our own choosing—is being distorted around the globe into nationalisms, fundamentalisms, separatisms, and the resultant hate crimes, suicide bombings, and genocides. Community no longer implies a rich recognition of the self and society; it translates into a battle unto death between one tiny "us" against another small "them," as the wheels of domination roll over us all. The powerless trample the powerless, while the powerful go largely unscathed."

"Even much of the Left can see no other "realistic" choices to control an out-of-control world than those that are presented to us from on high. Given this, the leftist horizon narrows to what's allegedly achievable: nongovernmental organization or global South participation in international decision-making bodies, or for that matter, Left-leaning heads of state in the global South or a Barack Obama in the global North; or the rectification and greening of the wrongs of capitalism. These and other such demands are bare minimums within the current system. Still, they are a far cry from any sort of liberatory response. They work with a circumscribed and neutralized notion of democracy, where democracy is neither of the people, by the people, nor for the people, but rather, only in the supposed name of the people. What gets dubbed democracy, then, is mere representation, and the best that progressives and leftists can advocate for within the confines of this prepackaged definition are improved versions of a fundamentally flawed system."

"Freedom, particularly social freedom, is indeed utterly antithetical to a state, even a representative one. At the most basic level, representation "asks" that we give our freedom away to another; it assumes, in essence, that some should have power and many others shouldn't. Without power, equally distributed to all, we renounce our very capacity to join with everyone else in meaningfully shaping our society. We renounce our ability to self-determine, and thus our liberty. And so, no matter how enlightened leaders may be, they are governing as tyrants nonetheless, since we—"the people"—are servile to their decisions. This is not to say that representative government is comparable with more authoritarian forms of rule. A representative system that fails in its promise of, say, universal human rights is clearly preferable to a government that makes no such pretensions at all. Yet even the kindest of representative systems necessarily entails a loss of liberty. Like capitalism, a grow-or-die imperative is built into the state's very structure. [...] Whatever a state does, then, has to be in its own interests. Sometimes, of course, the state's interests coincide with those of various groups or people; they may even overlap with concepts such as justice or compassion. But these convergences are in no way central or even essential to its smooth functioning. They are merely instrumental stepping-stones as the state continually moves to maintain, solidify, and consolidate its power. Because, like it or not, all states are forced to strive for a monopoly on power. [...] In this quest to monopolize power, there will always have to be dominated subjects. As institutionalized systems of domination, then, neither state nor capital are controllable. Nor can they be mended or made benign."

"Direct democracy, on the other hand, is completely at odds with both the state and capitalism. For as "rule of the people" (the etymological root of democracy), democracy's underlying logic is essentially the unceasing movement of freedom making. And freedom, as we have seen, must be jettisoned in even the best of representative systems. Not coincidentally, direct democracy's opponents have generally been those in power. Whenever the people spoke—as in the majority of those who were disenfranchised, disempowered, or even starved—it usually took a revolution to work through a "dialogue" about democracy's value. As a direct form of governance, therefore, democracy can be nothing but a threat to those small groups who wish to rule over others: whether they be monarchs, aristocrats, dictators, or even federal administrations as in the United States."

"Democracy finds its radical edge in the great revolutions of the past."

"Certainly, liberation is a basic necessity: people need to be free from harm, hunger, and hatred. But liberation falls far short of freedom. If we are ever to fulfill both our needs and desires, if we are ever to take control of our lives, each and every one of us needs the "freedom to" self-develop—individually, socially, and politically."

"The revolutionary question becomes: Where do decisions that affect society as a whole get made? For this is where power resides. It is time that we rediscover the "lost treasure" that arises spontaneously during all revolutions—the council, in all its imaginative varieties—as the basis for constituting places of power for everyone. For only when we all have equal and ongoing access to participate in the space where public policy is made—the political sphere—will freedom have a fighting chance to gain a footing."

"Power needs to be forever linked to freedom; freedom needs to be the limit placed on power."

"If freedom is the social aim, power must be held horizontally. We must all be both rulers and ruled simultaneously, or a system of rulers and subjects is the only alternative. We must all hold power equally in our hands if freedom is to coexist with power. Freedom, in other words, can only be maintained through a sharing of political power, and this sharing happens through political institutions. Rather than being made a monopoly, power should be distributed to us all, thereby allowing all our varied "powers" (of reason, persuasion, decision making, and so on) to blossom. This is the power to create rather than dominate."

"Freedom is never a done deal, nor is it a fixed notion."

"As a practice, direct democracy will have to be learned. As a principle, it will have to undergird all decision making. As an institution, it will have to be fought for. It will not appear magically overnight."

"We must infuse all our political activities with politics. It is time to call for a second "American Revolution," but this time, one that breaks the bonds of nation-states, one that knows no borders or masters, and one that draws the potentiality of libertarian self-governance to its limits, fully enfranchising all with the power to act democratically. This begins with reclaiming the word democracy itself—not as a better version of representation but as a radical process to directly remake our world."

"When first started to emerge in the early nineteenth century, its machinations were relatively visible. Take, for instance, the enclosures. Pasturelands that had been used in common for centuries to provide villages with their very sustenance were systematically fenced off—enclosed—in order to graze sheep, whose wool was needed for the burgeoning textile industry. Communal life was briskly thrust aside in favor of privatization, forcing people into harsh factories and crowded cities. , as it pushes past the fetters of even nation-states in its insatiable quest for growth, encloses life in a much more expansive yet generally invisible way: fences are replaced by consumer culture. We are raised in an almost totally commodified world where nothing comes for free, even futile attempts to remove oneself from the market economy. This commodification seeps into not only what we eat, wear, or do for fun but also into our language, relationships, and even our very biology and minds. We have lost not only our communities and public spaces but control over our own lives; we have lost the ability to define ourselves outside capitalism's grip, and thus genuine meaning itself begins to dissolve."

"We have become so confined, so thoroughly damaged, by capitalism as well as state control that crumbs appear to make a nourishing meal."

"Temporarily closing off the streets during direct actions does provide momentary spaces in which to practice democratic process, and even offers a sense of empowerment, but such events leave power for power's sake, like the very pavement beneath our feet, unchanged. Only when the serial protest mode is escalated into a struggle for popular or horizontal power can we create cracks in the figurative concrete, thereby opening up ways to challenge capitalism, nation-states, and other systems of domination."

"We're not putting off the good society until some distant future but attempting to carve out room for it in the here and now, however tentative and contorted under the given social order. In turn, this consistency of means and ends implies an ethical approach to politics. How we act now is how we want others to begin to act, too. We try to model a notion of goodness even as we fight for it."

"The beauty of the direct action movement, it could be said, is that it strives to take its own ideals to heart."

"What gets forgotten in relation to direct action mobilizations is the promise implicit in their own structure: that power not only needs to be contested; it must also be constituted anew in liberatory and egalitarian forms. This entails taking directly democratic processes seriously—not simply as a tactic to organize protests but as the very way we organize society, specifically the political realm."

"Accountable, democratic structures of our own making, in short, provide the foundation for trust, since the power to decide is both transparent and ever-amenable to scrutiny."

"Any vision of a free society, if it is to be truly democratic, must of course be worked out by all of us—first in movements, and later, in our communities and federations."

"It is time to push beyond the oppositional character of the direct action movement by infusing it with a reconstructive vision. That means beginning, right now, to translate movement structures into institutions that embody the good society; in short, cultivating direct democracy in the places we call home. This will involve the harder work of reinvigorating or initiating civic gatherings, town meetings, neighborhood assemblies, community mediation boards, any and all forums where we can come together to decide our lives, even if only in extralegal institutions at first. Then, too, it will mean reclaiming globalization, not as a new phase of capitalism, but as its replacement by confederated, directly democratic communities coordinated for mutual benefit. It is time to move from protest to politics, from shutting down streets to opening up public space, from demanding scraps from those few in power to holding power firmly in all our hands. Ultimately, this means moving beyond the question of "Whose Streets?" We should ask instead "Whose Cities?" Then, and only then, will we be able to remake them as our own."

"It (anarchism) looks at how our forms of social relationships and social organization could revolve, or should revolve, around aspiring to be a social structure of free people in a free society of free beings, not just humans. Anarchism has a dual process or practice. It’s very much about questioning and dismantling all forms of hierarchy, domination, oppression, and subjugation — things like the state, colonialism, capitalism, fascism, et cetera. In its place, and at the same time, anarchism tries to envision and experiment with how we structure our daily lives as much as possible around egalitarian, do-it-ourselves forms of self-organization: self-determination, community self-defense, self-governance. Anarchists fill that out with a whole constellation of ethics, like solidarity, collective care, and mutual aid."

"At the core of Jewishness and Judaism is this foundation of continually questioning and interpreting and communally coming at ways of living. So, putting those together, I understand the core of Jewishness and Judaism as being ultimately a story of liberation and how we continually strive for that in the here and now, wherever we end up. I understand Judaism as a sacred duty, which goes along with anarchism. For most of that history — and I understand myself as a diasporic Jew — we’ve existed outside of empires or states or nations. We’ve almost never been part of those bodies, yet we’ve continually created these really powerful communities. So to me, Judaism and Jewishness is this incredible experiment and beautiful lived practice of having community and solidarity and life without states."

"To me, the goal is in the here and now, constantly trying to act as if it’s (liberation and freedom) already here."

"It’s not enough, but every time we feel the beauty of having a life-giving space, it feels like liberation."

"I expect Anarchism and Its Aspirations to become the introduction to anarchism of the next decade."

"I am an anarchist, this is because I am moved by the suffering of hundreds of millions of workers and I struggle for a world in which such exploitation is no longer possible."

"While so much of our other work—theory and direct action protest alike—presents answers to the world, fiction presents questions."

"We need to be inspired and we need to inspire. And fiction offers the chance to explore things deeply in ways that other mediums can't."

"(about anarchists) we've got a wonderful critique of failure: if you don't fail from time to time, you're not setting your goals high enough."

"we need to tell stories about ourselves, because others are talking too. Every book and movie out there with a cop as a hero, saving the world from terrorists and thugs hellbent on chaos? We need to counter that. We need books about the oppressed, about the beauty of resistance."

"(SFP: Can you tell us your work’s message in 25 words or less?) MK: We, all of us, need to explore our own agency as individuals and communities in order to fix this dying planet. (2022)"

"(SFP: What authors are you inspired by?) MK: Well now I’d be a liar if I didn’t say Tolkien. I like authors that talk about power and talk about community. So Tolkien (for all his faults), Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Cory Doctorow, Terry Pratchett, I love them. (2022)"

"(SFP: Where do you think science fiction as a genre is headed?) MK: Well, probably all sci-fi that doesn’t directly address climate change is going to read as nonsensical fantasy soon enough. So I think the future is there. Personally, I hope it heads in the direction of offering alternatives, instead of just saying “here’s some stuff that’s bad.” (2022)"

"(do you have any advice for aspiring writers?) MK: Store at least 5 gallons of water per person and a week’s worth of food in your pantry. Connect with your local mutual aid organizations, or start your own. Talk seriously about how you and your friends and family will attempt to interfere with the global resurgence of fascism, utilizing the skill sets and resources available to you. You can’t write fiction on a dead planet. Furthermore, it’s our participation in life that allows us to reflect life with accuracy and beauty on the page. Find inspiration for your characters from people in the world instead of people in books. Find inspiration for conflict and resolution in history and the present instead of what you’ve read in other novels. Live life as fully as you can, feel things as fully as you can. Your life will be better and your books will be better. (2022)"

"it’s just a big inner woven net that is the way to get things done."

"survival isn’t about hoarding supplies, and hiding in the basement, but instead about building connections with community and building resilient communities. And sometimes hoarding food in your basement!"

"fiction – not just written fiction, but stories in general – are how we generate what we perceive as possible, as a society and as individuals. And so we need stories that show other ways of living, besides the one that we’re in now that is obviously doing us all a great bit of disservice."

"at some point, you realize that almost all fiction, especially science fiction, is activist fiction. Sometimes it’s an activist fiction for the status quo! But for the most part, it’s not, there’s like people all over the right and left and then weird combinations of both right and left, all over the history of science fiction."

"That was the first interview I did for the project [the interview with Ursula Le Guin]. And talking about what role fiction has within social change. That really opened my eyes. I saw them as very separate activities. And I no longer do, although I also do believe that it’s also easy to go too far the other way and be like, well, I’m doing my part, I sit at home and take no risks! And, you know, I do think that the actual work of making things change in this world involve organization, and they involve direct action, and they involve confronting oppressive powers directly."

"(Q: Do you see all your creative work across the different bands and projects as being connected?)…they’re also just coming in from the same place in terms of how I see the world, in terms of how I see the physical manifestation of different thematic ideas, of what Gods are and aren’t. All that stuff will tie in together. And it’s fun. I totally get now why so many writers that I love are just 50 years into one wild, weird world building thing. Or just declare all their work a multiverse. So they’d be like, yeah, it’s all tied together somehow. I totally get it now."

"I don’t believe the places of friction for a reader should be in the prose. I believe they should be in the ideas that are being presented instead."

"There’s no other issue more pressing for everyone alive enough to read these words than climate change. Which is saying something, because we’ve also got a fascism problem — but they’re not unrelated problems."

"(about Leonard Peltier) We always idealize wild rebels who refuse to bow to empire when we read about them in fantasy books, but some of those rebels are alive and imprisoned by the same people who draw their salaries from our taxes."

"I think that story is incredibly good at mitigating suffering. Overall, most people lead fairly hard lives with a lot of physical pain and emotional pain. And being able to step outside oneself every now and then I think is crucial for our mental health."

"when you set magic] in the real world, if you’re honest to the subject, you’re mostly going to write horror because it’s about power and playing with power. I’m interested in understanding how people shape power communally and collectively amongst each other."

"I believe that art involves reaching into the sea of possibility, the void, and coming back with ideas in order to then build those ideas into things, so I’m going to use similar tools, similar building blocks, similar themes, regardless of the medium. As I come up with ideas, I have to figure out which format is best for those ideas."

"On some level, everything I write is about the fact that we are of the earth and we’ll return to it, and I can’t help it and I don’t want to help it because I think that reading should connect us to something grounding whenever possible. And I think that there’s actually nothing more grounding than realizing that we are dirt temporarily taking on a different form."

"(Q: what is your favorite part about launching a new thing into the world?) When people indicate to me that something in what I have written has been useful to them, and that they take something from what I’ve written and find their own ways of applying it and make it their own. So, it’s not like when people quote me, but more when I can see that I have been a participant in the great art of shaping the world. And when people leave me alone about how pretentious it is to talk about art."

"I think the human condition is knowing that you’ll die. And I actually don’t think that books have to be a way to avoid thinking about that. I think instead they can be a way to find peace with that. I think feeling that it’s okay that this is going to happen is necessary for our well-being. But when you imagine the full breadth of what’s possible as a human being, I think you have to come back to an awareness of mortality and to seek out lives of meaning and beauty. And I think that fiction can be a really good way to give us ideas of how we can be in the world to try and accomplish those things."

"What I would argue is really useful about studying and understanding history is not just looking for these patterns as they repeat, but to look at trajectories…if you want to hit a ball and you know where the ball is, that’s useful. But unless you also know where the ball was, you can’t tell where the ball is going. In order to understand trajectory, you need more than one point of reference. History provides us a second point of reference. I admit, most of the patterns that I see as they relate to queerness and transness and things like that throughout history—the trajectories that I see are dangerous. They are reasons for us to keep our guard up. There’s this quote that lives in my head by Edward Murrow, “We are not descended from fearful men.” Obviously, he’s very gendered. We can look back at the history of queer and trans stuff and be like, “Oh, we were really repressed and oppressed and now we’re looking like we’re going to be again.” And that’s true. But the other thing we can look back at is be like we were fierce. We took people to task for trying to hurt us. We organized collective defense and self-defense. The fact that Stonewall was a riot is not just a quip. It is a fundamental truth about where we come from and what built our movement. There had been decades of aboveboard, polite, acquiescent, homosexual organizations, and then some people were fucking tired of it and physically fought the police. And that actually catches fire. That actually catches people’s attention. And those are the people that we come from. We come from both, and I’m not embarrassed or mad at the people who tried to make us look polite. I understand why they did it. But yeah, what we can learn from history is that we have claws. Whether we win or lose the fight is not as important as that we fight it. But we can win."