Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Means
Champion
Littles
Worse
Little
Willing
Right
Though
Mean
Less
Even
Faith
Trying
Hope
Invades
Hate
Petitions

More quotes by Voltairine de Cleyre

Image
... 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
Image
The question of souls is old—we demand our bodies, now. We are tired of promises, god is deaf, and his church is our worst enemy.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
There is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
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
Image
[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
Image
Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly consistent with ideal Anarchism Individualism and Mutualism, resting upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all compatible with my notion of freedom.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught, let them never intrust that instruction to any government for the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
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
Image
Is it not enough that 'things are cruel and blind'? Must we also be cruel and blind?
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
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
Image
As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
There is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth, the money, and the machines.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
A right , in the abstract, is a fact it is not a thing to be given, established, or conferred it is. Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me of the right itself, never.
Voltairine de Cleyre