Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history’s fingers, down it goes.

Media is an assemblage of tools with which to expand an audience’s conception of what “the world” is to such and extent that their own lives and capabilities seem utterly insignificant; a means of psychological warfare by which people are overloaded with information and desensitized to their own and others’ suffering; the sum of all...

If crimes are committed they must be seen as a disease, and punishment as treatment rather than as social vengeance.

Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he’s against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist and three or four years ago he took up Einstein and vitamins.

If Adam and Eve were not hunter-gatherers, then they were certainly gatherers. But, then, consumer desire, or self-embitterment, or the ‘itch,’ as Schopenhauer called it, appeared in the shape of the serpent. This capitalistic monster awakens in Adam and Eve the possibility that things could be better. Instantly, they are cast out of the garden...

If you are a warrior, the nature and scale of your enemies will determine the nature and scale of your actions. In this sense, it is even more important to choose your enemies more wisely than your friends.

We don’t need unity in theory, we need solidarity in practice.

Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.

Work, then, institutionalizes homicide as a way of life. People think the Cambodians were crazy for exterminating themselves, but are we any different? The Pol Pot regime at least had a vision, however blurred, of an egalitarian society. We kill people in the six-figure range (at least) in order to sell Big Macs and Cadillacs...

Because I care about human beings, I want them to be free to do what is right for them. Isn’t that more important than mere peace on earth? Isn’t freedom, even dangerous freedom, preferable to the safest slavery, to peace bought with ignorance, cowardice, and submission?

An anarchist is someone who rejects the curious notion that crimes become virtues as they grow in size.

I begin with the respect that the anarch shows towards the rules. Respectare as an intensive of respicere means: ‘to look back, to think over, to take into account.’ These are traffic rules. The anarchist resembles a pedestrian who refuses to acknowledge them and is promptly run down. Even a passport check is disastrous for...

The social system of capital separates most people from the conditions of existence. This compels the vast majority to accept the mediations of work and commodity consumption in order to maintain a minimal existence at the expense of their lives, desires and dreams, of their individuality. The artificial economic scarcity imposed by capital leads to...

Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.

Right and wrong are superstitions; your desires, however, are real. Those who cannot achieve their desires, or who despair of doing so, often compensate by constructing imaginary frameworks. For example, if you wish to live in a world in which no one exploits animals, it is moralism to judge those who eat meat immoral instead...

Far from checking the spread of immorality, repression has always extended and deepended it. Thus it is futile to oppose it by rigorous legislation which trespasses on individual liberty.

One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . ‘Libertarians’ . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the...

Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two...

No one is more qualified than you are to decide how you live; no one should be able to vote on what you do with your time and your potential unless you invite them to.

The voices of actual communities are alive in a way no theory could every be even if, for now, it takes the form of tiny acts of resistance. Who doesn’t cheat on taxes, avoid cops, or skip class? These acts themselves may not be revolutionary, but they begin to unravel the control from above. Anarchist...

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

Modern industrial civilisation has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilisation has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation.Now, it’s long been understood very well that a society that is...

The faithful of Shiva or Dionysus seek contact with those forces which…lead to a refusal of the politics, ambitions and limitations of ordinary social life. This does not involve simply a recognition of world harmony, but also an active participation in an experience which surpasses and upsets the order of material life.

At first, one only recognizes particular instances to be worth of critique; critique appears synonymous with rejection, implying deficiency in the object. Over time, one discovers that everything warrants critique. This can produce cynicism: nothing is above reproach, nothing is pure, therefore nothing has value. But followed through to its logical conclusion, this insight inspires...

A libertarian is someone who graduated from thinking that there are problems with the state to realizing that the state is the problem.

The anarchist, as the born foe of authority, will be destroyed by it after damaging it more or less. The anarch, on the other hand, has appropriated authority; he is sovereign. He therefore behaves as a neutral power vis-à-vis state and society. He may like, dislike, or be indifferent to whatever occurs in them. That...

Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin), your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? … If...

I am he.

There is no returning to the masses – once your forays into theory have borne you far enough away from them that you can perceive them and the benefits of being among them. the only return is through the process of disillusionment; one must cease to care about motivating the masses to be reunited with...

School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.

Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can’t really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism

Yes, I believe in the displacement of this system of injustice by a just one; I believe in the end of starvation, exposure, and the crimes caused by them; I believe in the human soul regnant over all laws which man has made or will make; I believe there is no peace now, and there...

The authorities don’t grant concessions out of the kindness of their hearts; they simply concede the reality of what their subjects are strong enough to compel from them. If you want political leverage, don’t beg for it, don’t seek it through their channels – take power outside them.

We reject the blame game and accusations so common in efficient groups. With each person accepting full responsibility for their actions, no on can have any more of the blame than anyone else. Let’s all be accountable to ourselves, so we can grow and learn from our mistakes and be buoyed by our successes.

Not only my arrest but the others smack of the Haymarket. The police are very much in disrepute all over the country, and they wish to do something to clear themselves. They are trying to make it an anarchist plot. If they wish to make up a case, they may succeed.

With the way a lot of men function, I’d say “single” womyn are a threat to society. In fact, I’d go as single womyn are a threat to the system. As a womyn, if you aren’t spending all your time looking for what you were socialized to, you’re doing something productive. I’d say that scares...

An anarchist government somehow creates an impression in the hearts of citizens that no one cares.

One does not suffer nearly so much from one’s inadequacies as from one’s unused abilities.

One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You’ve been told these stories since you were a child. You believe them. You eat dog shit hotdogs, dog shit...

Basically, if you’re not a utopianist, you’re a schmuck.

Throughout the history of our civilisation, two traditions, two opposed tendencies, have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition, the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition, the authoritarian tradition and the libertarian tradition.

In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.

One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery.

Un fait capital domine toute la civilisation moderne, le fait que la propriété d’un seul peut s’accroître indéfiniment, et même, en vertu du consentement presque universel, embrasser le monde entier.

Libertarian opponents of anarchy are attacking a straw man. Their arguments are usually utilitarian in nature and amount to “but anarchy won’t work” or “we need the (things provided by the) state.” But these attacks are confused at best, if not disingenuous. To be an anarchist does not mean you think anarchy will “work” (whatever...

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted,...

In the United States, people don’t revolt in order to obtain freedom, but continue denying it to others.

Never confuse efficiency with effectiveness.

L’homme qui n’a pas été anarchiste à seize ans est un imbécile. Mais c’en est un autre, s’il l’est encore à quarante.