Anarchy | Wisdom and the Philosophy of Freedom

"The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force." Milton Friedman

"Government doesn't work. You work, I work, Federal Express works, Microsoft works, the Salvation Army works, Alcoholics Anonymous works, but government doesn't." Harry Browne

"[T]he crucial question is not, as so many believe, whether property rights should be private or governmental, but rather whether the necessarily 'private' owners are legitimate owners or criminals. For ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner. All property is therefore always 'private'; the only and critical question is whether it should reside in the hands of criminals or of the proper and legitimate owners." Murray Rothbard

"We have drawn the completely wrong lesson from the collapse of the Eastern European states if we think it had anything to do with socialism. It has to do with centralization. If we in the West move toward the same kind of centralization—and we are well on our way to doing so—we will end up with the same excesses, the same ills, the same demotivation, and the same deprivation of people’s rights." Hans-Peter Dürr

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable." H. L. Mencken

"It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause." H. L. Mencken

"Ever reviled, accursed, ne’er understood, Thou art the grisly terror of our age. “Wreck of all order,” cry the multitude, “Art thou, and war and murder’s endless rage.” O, let them cry. To them that ne’er have striven The truth that lies behind a word to find, To them the word’s right meaning was not given. They shall continue blind among the blind. But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure, Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken. I give thee to the future! Thine secure When each at least unto himself shall waken. Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest’s thrill? I cannot tell—but it the earth shall see! I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will Not rule, and also ruled I will not be!" John Henry Mackay

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." Emma Goldman

"Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony." Emma Goldman

"History permits the well-founded observation that the policy of hatred always breeds hatred and fatally complicates the general situation, if not leads to final ruin. How many nations perished in this way. Oppressors as well as oppressed! Should we also be doomed? I hope not! And I owe this hope also to the anarchist thinking, which penetrates day by day more and more into the light and renews the human initiative." Jacques Élisée Reclus

"As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." Howard Zinn

"As for politics, I’m an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can’t stand caged animals. People must be free." Charlie Chaplin

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." Oscar Wilde

"Every victim of statism has internalized the State to some degree. The IRS’s annual proclamation that the income tax depends on “voluntary compliance” is ironically true. Should the taxpayer completely cut off the blood supply, the vampire State would helplessly perish, its unpaid police and army deserting almost immediately, defanging the Monster." Samuel Edward Konkin III