Quotes

Various quotes I have stumbled upon in my reading and research.

Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter.

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other people, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.

– Mikhail Bakunin

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

– Emma Goldman

“Since the day a person had the criminal ability to profit by another person’s labor, since that very same day the exploited toiler has instinctively tried to give to their master less than was demanded from them. In this wise the worker was unconsciously doing SABOTAGE, demonstrating in an indirect way the irrepressible antagonism that arrays Capital & Labor one against the other.”

— Émile Pouget, Sabotage

The State is the organization
Of the evil instincts of mankind.
History is the penalty
We pay for original sin.
In the conflict of appetite
And desire, the person finally
Loses; either the technology
Of the choice of the lesser evil
Overwhelms him; or a universe
Where the stars in their courses move
To ends that justify their means
Dissolves him in its elements.

— Kenneth Rexroth

“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience & through rebellion.”

— Oscar Wilde

 

As the reality of war
drifts off like a thunderhead
our gaze shifts

A blank stare, blink, numb
on to the next one
back to the busy
uneasy of the day.

— Barb Adams

Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled
place, I would keep our governments, our civilization,
& all other spirit-forsaken & corrupt institutions.

— Kenneth Patchen, excerpt from
“There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left,”
The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen