Quote

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

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
Something
Easily
Ordinarily
Would
Difficulty
Steals
Men
Cost
Consequently
Unless
Involve
Liberty
Steal
Greater
Producing
Cannot
Difficulties
Without
Stealing

More quotes by Voltairine de Cleyre

Image
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
Image
I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
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
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
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
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
I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
[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
Image
Is it not enough that 'things are cruel and blind'? Must we also be cruel and blind?
Voltairine de Cleyre
Image
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
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
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
There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women.
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
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
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
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