Quote

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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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
America
Intangible
Government
Unreal
Find
Agent
Trying
Doomed
Believe
Halls
Agents
Unapproachable
Seek
Confer
Ends
Legislative

More quotes by 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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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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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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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
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A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.
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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... 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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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
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There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women.
Voltairine de Cleyre
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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
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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
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And sometimes when I am weary, When the path is thorny and Wild, I'll look back to the Eyes in the twilight, Back to the eyes that smiled. And pray that a wreath like a rainbow May slip from the beautiful past, And Crown me again with the sweet, strong love And keep me, and hold me fast.
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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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
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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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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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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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What I say is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only, never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.
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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[The Catholic convent] had been like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and there are white scars on my soul, where ignorance and superstition burnt me with their hell fire in those stifling days.
Voltairine de Cleyre