People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against “society,” that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship.
No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed.
To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.
Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.
Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.
The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.
I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.
So long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man’s deepest aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.
[M]an has as much liberty as he is willing to take.
A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and robbery.
Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don’t give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.
Patriotism … is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair but after all the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
The motto should not be: Forgive one another rather understand one another.
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.
The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal outside of the law.
Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.
There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.
No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution… revolution is but thought carried into action.
If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
Morality and its victim, the mother – what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?
All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.
The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.