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A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.

Voltairine de Cleyre

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Voltairine de Cleyre
Age: 45 †
Born: 1866
Born: November 17
Died: 1912
Died: June 19
Anarchist
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Leslie
Michigan
War
Menace
Antiwar
Army
Standing
Liberty
Peace

More quotes by Voltairine de Cleyre

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No one can hate petitions worse than I, and no one has less faith in them than I. But for my champion I am willing to try any means that invades no other's right, even though I have little hope in it.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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Capitalistic Anarchism ? Oh, yes, if you choose to call it so. Names are indifferent to me I am not afraid of bugaboos. Let it be so, then, capitalistic Anarchism.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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Is it not enough that 'things are cruel and blind'? Must we also be cruel and blind?
Voltairine de Cleyre
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If you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul, and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to make manifest then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong and will hold its way and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps the strength will grow.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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Private enterprise manages better all that to which it is equal. Anarchism declares that private enterprise, whether individual or cooperative, is equal to all the undertakings of society.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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A man won't steal, ordinarily, unless that which he steals is something he cannot as easily get without stealing in liberty the cost of stealing would involve greater difficulties than producing, and consequently he would not be apt to steal.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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... it is better to study how to live rather than how to die ... it is better to have a religion of deeds rather than a religion of creeds ... it is better to work for humanity than for God.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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There is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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[The married woman is] is a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, and serves her master's passion [and] who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at his dictation.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license, and they will define freedom out of existence.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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Speak, speak, speak, & remember that whenever anyone's liberty to speak is denied, your liberty is denied also, & your place is where the attack is.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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The paramount question of the day is not political, is not religious, but is economic. The crying-out demand of today is for a circle of principles that shall forever make it impossible for one man to control another by controlling the means of his existence.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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The revolution is ... the blow dealt ... agains the counter force of tyranny, which has never entirely recovered from the blow, but which from then till now has gone on remolding and regrappling the instruments of governmental power, that the Revolution sought to shape and hold as defenses of liberty.
Voltairine de Cleyre