Rudolph Rocker Quotes

Power always acts destructively, for its possessors are ever striving to lace all phenomena of social life into a corset of their laws to give them a definite shape. Its mental expression is dead dogma; its physical manifestation of life, brute force. This lack of intelligence in its endeavours leaves its imprint likewise on the persons of its representatives, gradually making them mentally inferior and brutal, even though they were originally excellently endowed. Nothing dulls the mind and soul of man as does the eternal monotony of routine, and power is essentially routine.

Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.

The coercive power of government is always a beacon to those who want to dominate others -- summoning the worst dregs of society to Washington to use that power to impose their will upon others.

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others.

'The Sea Wolf' is the story of a man who believes only in brute force. He is so firm in belief in his own ideas that he despises all who disagree with him. He preaches the doctrine of intolerance. He flaunts the notion that democracy is anything but weakness.

The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization.

A new kind of slavery will emerge. It will probably adopt the cruelest form of domination the community could impose upon the individual and the state upon the community.

The art of power often involves brutality — and other offenses too.

The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.

To repress rebellion is to maintain the status quo, a condition which binds the mortal creature in a state of intellectual or physical slavery. But it is impossible to chain man merely by slaving his body; the mind also must be held, and to accomplish this, fear is the accepted weapon. The common man must fear life, fear death, fear God, fear the Devil, and fear most the overlords, the keepers of his destiny.

You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk.

The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.

The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.

Slaves would be tyrants were the chance theirs.

Tyranny is always weakness

I have come to think of violence as a self-perpetuating mania of the power of the aggressive over those less strong.

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.

Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims

Narrow minds can develop as well through persecution as through benevolence; they can assure themselves of their power by tyrannizing cruelly or beneficially over others.

Man alone can enslave man.

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

It is odd to consider the connection between despotism and barbarity, and how the making one person more than man makes the rest less.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.