Anarchy

“ Had our population intelligence enough to comprehend that the choice was between order and anarchy, between the equilibrium of a government by law and the tussle of misrule by pronunciamiento? Could a war be maintained without the ordinary stimulus of hatred and plunder, and with the impersonal loyalty of principle? ”

“ And everywhere the people, or the populace, take their own government upon themselves; and open "kinglessness," what we call anarchy,—how happy if it be anarchy plus a street-constable!—is everywhere the order of the day. ”

“ This Revolution has been defined, as "An open, violent rebellion and victory of unimprisoned anarchy, against corrupt worn-out authority; breaking prison, raging uncontrollable and enveloping a world in fever frenzy, until the mad forces are made to work toward their object, as sane and regulated ones." ”

“ Civilisation was saved, but at what a price! The tide of popular feeling turned and ebbed almost as fast as it had risen. Imprudent and obstinate opposition to reasonable demands had brought on anarchy; and as soon as men had a near view of anarchy they fled in terror to crouch at the feet of despotism. ”

“ You are yourselves victims of the system you maintain, and your enemy, no less than mine, if you knew it, is government. For government means compulsion, exclusion, distinction, separation; while anarchy is freedom, union and love. Government is based on egotism and fear, anarchy on fraternity. It is because we divide ourselves into nations that we endure the oppression of armaments; because we isolate ourselves as individuals that we invoke the protection of laws. ”

“ When this opinion is changed, and the public convinced that government is not necessary, but extremely harmful, the word Anarchy, precisely because it signifies without government, will become equal to saying natural order, harmony of the needs and interests of all, complete liberty with complete solidarity. ”

“ The horrid picture of anarchy was held always before their child's eyes until they, in turn, obsessed by this cultivated fear, held the picture of anarchy before the eyes of the children that followed them. This was the beast to be stamped upon, and the highest duty of the aristocrat was to stamp upon it. In short, they alone, by their unremitting toil and sacrifice, stood between weak humanity and the all-devouring beast ”

“ My sympathies are with the poor. My sympathies are with the workingmen of the United States. Understand me distinctly. I am not an Anarchist. Anarchy is the reaction from tyranny. I am not a Socialist. I am not a Communist. I am an Individualist. I do not believe in tyranny of government, but I do believe in justice as between man and man.
What is the remedy? Or, what can we think of—for do not imagine that I think I know. It is an immense, an almost infinite, question, and all we can do is to guess. You have heard a great deal lately upon the land subject. ”

“ It was anarchy for the sheer fun of anarchy's sake, a struggle which pervaded the nation without ever contriving to be national, a riot of forces directed by no intellectual or ethical purpose whatever. ”

“ Anarchy—the absence of master, of sovereign—such is the form of government which we approach every day, and our inveterate habit of taking man for a guide and his will for law makes us regard it as a heap of disorder and an expression of chaos.... ”

“ The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the hand-maiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order, enforced by justice and by strength, lie at the foundation of civilization. ”

“ But this older anarchism is as ancient as tyranny, and never at any moment has it ceased to menace human civilization. Based on a real mastery over the industrial and political institutions of mankind, this actual anarchy has never for long allowed the law, the Constitution, the State, or the flag to obstruct its path or thwart its avarice. ”

“ It never has been, and never will be, that in times of civil contention, when anarchy has dissolved the bonds of law, the fierce passions, which in the breasts of too many are only fettered by fear, will not break forth to ravage and destroy. There never was yet strife without crime, and never will be. ”

“ Thus the revolutionary theory, which is permanent anarchy, is at the same time organized despotism. At other periods, we have seen society, deprived of its equilibrium, oscillate between these two extremes, passing in turn from anarchy to tyranny, and from tyranny to anarchy. Thanks to revolutionary progress, we can enjoy simultaneously the advantages of these two states, and taste the vexations of despotism, without escaping the agitations of anarchy. ”

“ Side by side, in the same rank, are now indeed set the pride that revolts against authority, and the misery that appeals against avarice. But, so far from being a common cause, all anarchy is the forerunner of poverty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. ”

“ I neglect, in a word, the more than interesting history of the slow evolution of modern anarchism, and coming directly, without further ado, to the France of to-day, attack the questions,—What is anarchy? What does the anarchist want? ”

“ But anarchy is intolerable, and a civilized people, yea, even barbarians, will submit to anything rather than social and political chaos. Then comes the iron band of despotism to hold together the antagonistic fragments.
'The supremacy of the people's will' is the second idea. Vox Populi, vox Dei! What the people decree is right, and nothing must stand between their will and the subject or object upon which it operates! ”

“ Nor will bad laws, revolutions, and anarchy be able to obliterate that love of prosperity and that spirit of enterprise which seem to be the distinctive characteristics of their race, or to extinguish that knowledge which guides them on their way. ”

“ In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger.... ”

“ Anarchy means no domination or authority of one man over another, yet you call that "disorder." A system which advocates no such "order" as shall require the services of rogues and thieves to defend it you call "disorder." ”

“ Those who give this answer are called Anarchists, and their movement, Anarchy or Anarchism. The complete Anarchist is the perfect idealist; the man whose goal is entire freedom of action for all, knowing this to be the only possible condition in which equality and fraternity can exist. ”

“ Her short phrases had meaning and were accentuated by sure gestures.
"How can you talk about anarchy?" the judge muttered. "You don't even know what it is." "And you have studied anarchy more closely? So it exists. Will you teach me about it?"
No, little one, they won't teach you anything! Revolt is instinctual. ”

“ I don't suppose you have studied very deeply that great issue which our century is about to try,—the cause of order versus anarchy,—the right to rule of the good, the virtuous, and the enlightened, against the tyranny of the unlettered, the degraded, and the base. ”

“ And with this puril pretext they seek to make palatable to the public conscience an infamous crusade against cartain men and women on account of a certain political idea they hold, viz, the idea of Anarchy, which, as defined by the Century Dictionary, is "a social theory which regards the union of order with the absence of all direct government of man by man as the political ideal." ”

“ And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.—And the anarchists shall spoil the ideals (riches) , and stop the teaching (merchandise) of philosophy; they shall break down the defense of philosophy's adherents (walls) , and destroy the pleasing philosophical organizations (pleasant houses) . They shall engulf the believers (stones) and supporters (timbers) in the rising tide of anarchy. ”

“ And when the same men shall be displeased with those that have the administration of the Democracy, or Aristocracy, they are not to seek for disgraceful names to expresse their anger in; but call readily the one Anarchy, and the other Oligarchy, or the Tyranny Of A Few. ”

“ Often, too--like the same power exerting itself to repress anarchy--his better judgment would rise up against the crowd of wild images presented by an irritable fancy, and after a short struggle would regain its power. ”

“ The usual transition and natural issue of popular anarchy, when it has lasted long enough to exhaust its own fearful violence, is a perpetual dictatorship or despotism in some shape or other, but devoid of a higher and diviner sanction. ”

“ The time was one, indeed, in which, on both sides, there were manifested the passion which is born of political excitement, and the violence which springs from terror. Timid people might be excused if, in such a mad world, they clung with desperation to existing authority as the only protection to society against revolution and anarchy. ”

“ The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost—not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. ”

“ This organization was "to accelerate the universal revolution," and what was understood by the revolution was "the unchaining of what is to-day called the bad passions and the destruction of what in the same language is called 'public order.' We do not fear, we invoke anarchy, convinced that from this anarchy, that is to say, from the complete manifestation of unchained popular life, must come forth liberty, equality, justice ..." ”

“ A too universal evil invites resistance by means which in lesser cases might be scouted. In short, if the remedy is left to anarchy, anarchy there will be. Even in our young lands the shadow of the coming evil is beginning to show itself. ”

“ But if you believe that these evils are likely to be redressed by such measures as have been pointed out to you this evening, or that anarchy and rebellion can lead to any other result than misery and ruin—ar—I tell you, that you are fearfully mistaken! Ar—as a man, possessed of—ar—no inconsiderable influence—and ar—intimately connected with those powers against which you are madly arraying yourselves, I warn you! ”

“ And no less evident are the political facts which the prophet employs these metaphors to describe. It is the anarchy which has beset more than one corrupt and unfortunate people, when their misleaders have been overthrown: the anarchy in which each faction seeks to slaughter out the rest. ”

“ Traveling from place to place and directing the general movement, were men who had held positions as generals in the armies of the rebellion. Disappointed political tricksters aiming to elevate to power a party whom they claimed had been in sympathy with the rebel cause North and South; and determined to do this though the land of their birth should go to ruin. Anarchy and confusion usurp the places of law and order, and the blood of the outraged ones reach up to heaven in cries for vengence. ”

“ Faced by a world in which rule and classes and order seem to do little but give opportunity for personal selfishness and unrighteous oppression, the first impatient movement was to declare for a universal equality and a practical anarchy. ”

“ But we, beholding in the State no expression of our ordinary self, but even already, as it were, the appointed frame and prepared vessel of our best self, and, for the future, our best self's powerful, beneficent and sacred expression and organ,—we are willing and resolved, even now, to strengthen against anarchy the trembling hands of our Barbarian Home Secretaries, and the feeble knees of our Philistine Alderman-Colonels ”

“ The old vicious cycle of empires threatened to repeat itself, the old story of the many led by the few. Always it had come, autocracy, the too great power of one man; then anarchy, the overthrow of that power by the angry mob. Out of that anarchy the gradual restoration of order by the people themselves, into democracy. And then in time again, by that steady gravitation of the strong up and the weak down, some one man who emerged from the mass and crowned himself, or was crowned. And there was autocracy again, and again the vicious circle. ”

“ Anarchy means the negation of authority. Now, Government claims to base the legitimacy of its existence upon the necessity of defending [108] social institutions: the family, religion, property, etc. It has created a vast machinery in order to assure its exercise and its sanction. ”

“ As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy. ”

“ The suppression, for instance, of anarchy and resistance to law—the complete establishment of the authority of the central government, in a state of society like that of Europe in the Middle Ages—is one of the strongest interests of the people, and also of the rulers simply because they are the rulers ”

“ In proportion as we know them better the facts seem to consecrate the fiction: this crowd, without chiefs and without laws, the very image of chaos, did for five years govern and command, speak and act, with a precision, a consistency, and an entirety that were marvellous. Anarchy gave lessons in order and discipline to the defeated party of order . ”

“ The fourth revolutionary period witnessed the first bitter struggles between rich and poor, the final triumph of anarchy, and the consequent establishment of a new and horrible form of despotism,—the despotism of the popular Tyrant. ”