Alexander Berkman > Quotes

“Violence is the method of ignorance, the weapon of the weak. The strong of heart and brain need no violence, for they are irresistible in their consciousness of being right.”
― Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism

“Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.”
― Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist

“If you can see, hear, feel, and think, you should know that King Dollar rules the United States, and that the workers are robbed and exploited in this country to the heart's content of the masters.

If you are not deaf, dumb, and blind, then you know that the American bourgeois democracy and capitalistic civilization are the worst enemies of labor and progress, and that instead of protecting them, you should help to fight to destroy them.”
― Alexander Berkman

“No intelligent radical can fail to realize the need of the rational education of the young. The rearing of the child must become a process of liberation by methods which shall not impose ready-made ideas, but which should aid the child's natural self-unfoldment. The purpose of such an education is not to force the child's adaptation to accepted concepts. but to give free play to his [and her] originality, initiative, and individuality. Only by freeing education from compulsion and restraint can we create the environment for the manifestation of the spontaneous interest and inner incentives on the part of the child. Only thus can we supply rational conditions favorable to the development of the child's natural tendencies and his latent emotional and mental faculties. Such methods of education, essentially aiding the child's imitative quality and ardor for knowledge, will develop a generation of healthy intellectual independence. It will produce men and women capable, in the words of Francisco Ferrer, “of evolving without stopping, of destroying and renewing their environment without cessation; of renewing themselves also; always ready to accept what is best, happy in the triumph of new ideas, aspiring to live multiple lives in one life.”
― Alexander Berkman

“Away with the hypocritical horror on the part of capitalist, labor leader, and politician.”
― Alexander Berkman, Life Of An Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader

“You don’t question the right of the government to kill, to confiscate and imprison. If a private person should be guilty of the things the government is doing all the time, you’d brand him a murderer, thief and scoundrel. But as long as the violence committed is “lawful,” you approve of it and submit to it. So it is not really violence that you object to, but to people using violence “unlawfully.”
― Alexander Berkman, ABC of Anarchism

“I have said that there is no "average" American. That is due to the circumstance that the people of the United States differ from each as widely as the parts they live in. The New Yorker is a different specimen of man from the Westerner; the latter is entirely different again from the people of Texas. The Middle West, such States for instance as Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska or Iowa, have an entirely different psychology from that of Florida or Lower California. Their habits of life, their modes of thought, even their language is different. Still further, it must also be considered that millions of foreigners and descendants of foreign born people live in the United States and are part of the entire population that is known as "American". Add to this more than 10 million negroes, not to mention the score of different Indian (red-skin) tribes, who are the real, indigenous Americans. In this conglomeration of races it is impossible to speak of the "average" American, nor can any adequate estimate of American psychology be made on such a basis.”
― Alexander Berkman

“These days even mere attempts to improve capitalism are often called ‘Socialism,’ while in reality they are only reforms.”
― Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism

“What is a fanatic but a man whose faith is impregnable to doubt? It is the faith that moves mountains, the faith that accomplishes. Revolutions are not made by Hamlets. The traditional “great” man, the “big personality” of current conception, may give to the world new thoughts, noble vision, inspiration. But the man that “sees every side” cannot lead, cannot control. He is too conscious of the fallibility of all theories, even of thought itself, to be a fighter in any cause.”
― Alexander Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth

“Any one who tells you that Anarchists don’t believe in organization is talking nonsense. Organization is everything, and everything is organization.”
― Alexander Berkman

“The stupendous task of human regeneration will be accomplished only by the purified vision of hearts that grow not cold.”
― Alexander Berkman

“Think it over and see if it is not the law itself, the government which really creates crime by compelling people to live in conditions that make them bad. See how law and government uphold and protect the biggest crime of all, the mother of all crimes, the capitalistic wage system, and then proceeds to punish the poor criminal.”
― Alexander Berkman, Now & After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism

“In the name of patriotism you are ordered to stop being decent and honest, to cease being yourself, to suspend your own judgment, and give up your life; to become a will-less cog in a murderous machine, blindly obeying the order to kill, pillage, and destroy; to give up your father and mother, wife and child, and all that you love, and proceed to slaughter your fellow-men who never did you any harm — who are just as unfortunate and deluded victims of their masters as you are of yours.”
― Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism

“In an absolutism, the autocrat is visible and tangible. The real despotism of republican institutions is far deeper, more insidious, because it rests on the popular delusion of self-government and independence. That is the subtle source of democratic tyranny, and, as such, it cannot be reached with a bullet.”
― Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist

“It is not the wrongs and crimes punishable by law that cause the greatest evil in the world. It is the lawful wrongs and unpunishable crimes, justified and protected by law and government, that fill the earth with misery and want, with strife and conflict, with class struggles, slaughter, and destruction.”
― Alexander Berkman, THE ABC OF ANARCHISM: What is Communist Anarchism

“Our social institutions are founded on certain ideas; as long as the latter are generally believed, the institutions built on them are safe. Government remains strong because people think political authority and legal compulsion necessary. Capitalism will continue as long as such an economic system is considered adequate and just. The weakening of the ideas which support the evil and oppressive present-day conditions means the ultimate breakdown of government and capitalism. Progress consists in abolishing what man has outlived and substituting in its place a more suitable environment.”
― Alexander Berkman, THE ABC OF ANARCHISM: What is Communist Anarchism

“The solution — the only possible one — consists in the producer receiving the full value of his product, or its equivalent. This involves the termination of capitalist production for profit, and the organization of cooperative social production for use.”
― Alexander Berkman

“There is nothing more corrupting than compromise. One step in that direction calls for another, makes it necessary and compelling, and soon it swamps you with the force of a rolling snowball become a landslide.”
― Alexander Berkman, THE ABC OF ANARCHISM: What is Communist Anarchism

“...,freedom means that you have the right to do a certain thing; but if you have no opportunity to do it, that right is sheer mockery”
― Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism

“The reformer and the politician are both on the wrong track. To try to change men by law is just like trying to change your face by getting a new mirror. For men make laws, not laws men. The law merely reflects men as they are, as the mirror reflects your features.”
― Alexander Berkman, THE ABC OF ANARCHISM: What is Communist Anarchism

“That’s what is called democracy: to get the people to believe that they are their own rulers and that they themselves pass the laws of their country.”
― Alexander Berkman, THE ABC OF ANARCHISM: What is Communist Anarchism

“There are revolutions and revolutions. Some revolutions change only the governmental form by putting a new set of rulers in place of the old. These are political revolutions, and as such they often meet with little resistance. But a revolution that aims to abolish the entire system of wage slavery must also do away with the power of one class to oppress another. That is, it is not any more a mere change of rulers, of government, not a political revolution, but one that seeks to alter the whole character of society. That would be a social revolution.”
― Alexander Berkman