Anarchist

Emma Goldman

Social Activism

1869–1940

"I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years past been working to undo the botched job your God has made."

Peter Kropotkin

Philosophy

anarchism

1842–1921

"Educated men — "civilized," as Fourier used to say with disdain — tremble at the idea that society might some day be without judges, police, or gaolers."

Mikhail Bakunin

Philosophy

Anarchism

1764–1837

"Nothing, in fact, is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and absurd; truth and justice, on the contrary, are the least universal, the youngest features in the development of human society."

🇺🇦Nestor Makhno

Military

1888–1934

"Anarchism — a life of freedom and creative independence for humanity."

🇷🇺Victor Serge

Literature

1901–1941

"All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now where's this omelette of yours?"

🇲🇽Práxedis Guerrero

Journalism

1882–1910

"Weaving the Past: Journey of Discovery, Documental by Walter Dominguez about Práxedis Guerrero."

🇺🇸Lucy Parsons

Journalism

1853–1942

"Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then."

🇺🇸Ammon Hennacy

Social Activism

pacifism

1893–1970

"A Christian Anarchist does not depend on bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused and dying world."

🇸🇪Stig Dagerman

Mathematics

1923–1954

"Browsing in books as lovers do, they were only being considerate, because their tenderness to each other made them tender towards others as well."

"We aren’t afraid, just stupidly full of prefabricated ideas we cannot break free from."

🇩🇪Rudolf Rocker

Music

anarcho-syndicalism

1873–1958

"For the machine, because of the way it is built, can work only in a given direction, no matter who pulls its levers."

🇫🇷Octave Mirbeau

Literature

Impressionism

1848–1917

"“During Humankind’s long centuries societies have risen and fallen, all alike in this one fact which rules all history: the great are protected, the small are crushed."

🇺🇸John Zerzan

hunter-gatherer

anarcho-primitivism

b. 1943

"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."

🇨🇦George Woodcock

Literature

Anarchism

1912–1995

"The Tyranny of the Clock" — a recitation of Woodcock's essay"

🇦🇺Germaine Greer

gender studies

Feminism

b. 1939

"Consensus politics means that you cannot afford to give the many-headed beast, the public, anything to vote against, for voting against is what gargantuan pseudodemocracy has to come down to."

🇺🇸Lysander Spooner

Literature

1808–1887

"For this reason, whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.:"

"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."

Errico Malatesta

Journalism

1853–1932

"We follow ideas and not men, and rebel against this habit of embodying a principle in a man."

🇫🇷Anselme Bellegarrigue

Literature

1813–1890

"Up to now you have believed in the existence of tyrants. Well, you were mistaken. There are only slaves. Where none obeys, none commands."

🇫🇷Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Philosophy

Anarchism

1809–1865

"Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Page at the Anarchist Encyclopedia"

🇬🇧Herbert Read

Literature

Existentialism

1893–1968

"The words in a poem, are vocal signs that convey an intangible essence that vanishes the moment we approach it with an analytical intelligence."

Johann Most

Journalism

anarchism

1846–1906

"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."

🇪🇸Buenaventura Durruti

Politics

1896–1936

"The only church that illuminates is a burning church."