ALEXANDER BERKMAN

War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood.

Certainly the worker has nothing to lose by a change from government and capitalism to a condition of no government, of anarchy. ~

Capitalism robs you and makes a wage slave of you. The law upholds and protects that robbery. The government fools you into believing that you are independent and free. In this way you are fooled and duped every day of your life.

Government is the common enemy. All weapons are justifiable in the noble struggle against this terrible curse.

In the larger life of society, the people are made to submit to the orders of those who were originally meant to serve them—the government and its agents.

The Law! It is the arch-crime of the centuries. The path of Man is soaked with the blood it has shed. Can this great criminal determine Right? Is a revolutionist to respect such a travesty? It would mean the perpetuation of human slavery.

It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.... My prison-house is but an intensified replica of the world beyond, the larger prison locked with the levers of Greed, guarded by the spawn of Hunger.

Disorder is the child of authority and compulsion. Liberty is the mother of order.

Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing.

The removal of a tyrant is not merely justifiable; it is the highest duty of every true revolutionist.

The revolutionist has no personal right to anything. Everything he has or earns belongs to the Cause. Everything, even his affections.

Why does everyone think that he can be decent enough without the policeman, but that the club is needed for "the others?

Conscription is the cemetery where every vestige of your liberty is to be buried.

Tyranny must be opposed at the start. Autocracy, once secured in the saddle, is difficult to dislodge.

Our movement has accomplished nothing—anywhere.

Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.

In short, Anarchism means a condition or society where all men and women are free, and where all enjoy equally the benefits of an ordered and sensible life.

War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,' like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.

Anarchism means voluntary co-operation instead of forced participation. It means harmony and order in place of interference and disorder.

The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression.

Are you not compelled to work for an employer? Your need compels you just as the highwayman’s gun. You must live … You can’t work for yourself … The factories, machinery, and tools belong to the employing class, so you must hire yourself out to that class in order to work and live. Whatever you work at, whoever your employer may be, it always comes to the same: you must workfor him. You can’t help yourself. You are compelled.

It is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation. My prison-house environment is but another manifestation of the Midas-hand, whose cursed touch turns everything to the brutal service of Mammon.

Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.