Quotes about Anarchy

"Concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many. Government in its last analysis is this power reduced to a science. 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".

Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to be exploited--or even to remain idle and go hungry when it is not in the interest of the bosses to exploit them. We are therefore enemies of the State which is the coercive violent organization of society.

Anarchy works. Italy has proved it for a thousand years.

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hard-headed 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.

"Ideas are bulletproof."- V

You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor.  Why should it?  The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent government.  The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes been objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.  Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars.

"Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, take bread."

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven't tried that for a while. Maybe this time it'll work.

Anarchy changes and adapts to new situation. Without a dominant ruling class or a fixed set of laws carved in stone, an anarchic society can quickly and efficiently adapt to new situations  

ZEN is MEDITATION. ARCHY is Social Order. ZENARCHY is the Social Order which springs from Meditation. As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which a State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.

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Don't question the principles of anarchy, if you think there is a problem go ahead and fix it!
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“It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety, “ assented Syme; “but may I ask you two questions?  You need not fear to give me information, because, as you remember, you very wisely exorted from me a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep.  So it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries.  First of all, what is it really about?  What is it you object to?  You want to abolish Government?”
    “To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic.  “We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists.  We dig deeper and we blow you higher.  We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves.  The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man!  We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs.  We have abolished Right and Wrong.”

It's the anarchy of poverty delights me.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

There's no government like no government.

Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no government at all.

I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of cosmic order expressed by the "Law of Frequency of Error." The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement, amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshaled in the order of their magnitude, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along.

In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind . . . The only sects which he (Locke) thinks ought to be and which by all wise laws are excluded from such toleration are those who teach doctrines subversive of the civil government under which they live. The Roman Catholics or Papists are excluded by reason of such doctrines as these: that princes excommunicated may be deposed, and those they call heretics may be destroyed without mercy; besides their recognizing the pope in so absolute a manner, in subversion of government, by introducing as far as possible into the states under whose protection they enjoy life, liberty, and property that solecism in politics, imperium in imperio, leading directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war and bloodshed.

Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Our government . . . teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life; anarchy and competition the laws of death.

Where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand; For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mast'ry.

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

If the wealth of this country were distributed, 90 per cent. would be destroyed by the act of distribution. The resulting starvation and anarchy would destroy the rest in less than thirty days.

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

Hurrah for anarchy! This is the happiest moment of my life. [Last words on the gallows. ]

Anarchism . . . stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral.

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