what is your favorite anarchist quotation?

Question

at least this week?
this is mine (for today, anyway):

If politics, socialism, christianity, humanism, logic, coherence, right, duty, just and unjust, good and evil, truth and justice, are already boring, vacuous, and slumbering things, phantoms that have grown dim and vanished in the anthropocentric sun of the unique negator; parodies of a dying civilization that inspires nausea, repugnance, and contempt in us; Art teaches us the great love of Life. We have the need to love it “up to the annihilation of being”. Sorrow and Anguish are the pure fountain of pulsating Beauty for Art. It is in the sulfurous chasms of Sorrow that Art lays its luminous roots in order to be able to fling the verdant happiness of its branches high among the mysterious conflicts of the winds, in the dance of Sun and Light where dreams, hope, and Beauty are founded on a tragic song of happiness and Greatness.
from Novatore ("in the circle of life")

Answer 1

Not sure I can pull out one favorite anarchist quote right now, but I can narrow it down to my favorite Novatore quote:

"Oh, good people, listen to me again since I am so revolutionary that I barely even recognize myself! And do you know why I am a revolutionary who can barely be recognized? For a reason so simple that it is great in its simplicity. Here it is: because I am a revolutionary guided only by the vast and uncontrollable impulse of MY expansion of will and potential.
There is no phantom guiding me, but rather there I am, walking. There is no chimerical dream of a perfect society of universal human redemption, but rather there is the absolute need for my potential affirmation before other potentialities."

My favorite non-anarchist quote of the year:
"What is the seal of attained freedom? To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself." - F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Answer 2

"The destroyers of the death reality are struggling against the mythical reign of capitalist illusion, a reign which although it aspires to eternity rolls in the dust of the contingent.  Joy emerges from the play of destructive action, from the recognition of the profound tragedy that this implies and an awareness of the strength of enthusiasm that is capable of slaying the cobwebs of death.  It is not a question of opposing horror with horror, tragedy with tragedy, death with death.  It is a confrontation between joy and horror, joy and tragedy, joy and death."

Alfredo Bonanno "Armed Joy"

Answer 3

When they put on that badge and strap that gun to their waist you suddenly stop being a person with feelings, dreams, and a future. You cease to be a son, daughter, mother, or father. You are not a human being. You’re just part of the job. Do the police really know how much harm they are doing? Sometimes they don’t, sometimes they do, but most of the time they simply do not care. That is the reason people fear the police. We voice our anger peacefully, show our dissent in the streets without violence, yet they show up prepared for a fight. - Ramone Grey "The World That Could Grow A Man"

Comments

Interesting that in a discussion of anarchist quotations, you choose one that is not about anarchists or anarchism at all, but rather focuses on one enemy. Why is this your favorite anarchist quote?

---

Anarchism at its heart is anti-authoritarian. The police serve as the enforcing tools of coercion from an authoritarian government. The quote focuses more on a specific part of anarchist principles. There's probably better quotes to use, to be honest, but this was written by a late anarchist and always stuck out to me.

Answer 4

"Property is Theft!" is nice and pithy.

But I'm liking this lately:

"The creation of true socialism isn’t a matter of political parties or violent revolution. Socialism is what’s quietly emerging as the forces of the free market — i.e., of peaceful cooperation — destroy capitalism."
- Kevin Carson

Answer 5

"Obedience is death. Each instant in which man submits to an outside will is an instant taken away from his own life."

Alexandra-David Neel
"Pour la vie"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_David-N%C3%A9el

"Our individualism is not an individualism of the graveyard, an individualism of sadness and of shadow, an individualism of pain and suffering. Our individualism is a creator of happiness, in us and outside of us. We want to find happiness wherever it is possible, thanks to our potential as seekers, discoverers, realizers."

Emile Armand
"Anarchist Individualism and Amorous Comradeship"
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emile-armand-anarchist-individualism-and-amorous-comradeship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Armand

"Modern Communists are more individualistic than Stirner. To them, not merely religion, morality, family and State are spooks, but property also is no more than a spook, in whose name the individual is enslaved — and how enslaved! The individuality is nowadays held in far stronger bondage by property, than by the combined power of State, religion and morality.

Modern Communists do not say that the individual should do this or that in the name of Society. They say: “The liberty and Eigenheit of the individual demand that economic conditions — production and distribution of the means of existence — should be organized thus and thus for his sake.” Hence follows that organization in the obedience or despotism. The prime condition is that the individual should not be forced to humiliate and lower himself for the sake of property and subsistence. Communism thus creates a basis for the liberty and Eigenheit of the individual. I am a Communist because I am an Individualist. "


Max Baginski
"Stirner: The Ego and His Own"
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-baginski-stirner-the-ego-and-his-own
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Baginski

"The present forms of greed lose out, in the end, because they turn out to be not greedy enough...The repression of egoism, contrary to the dictates of every one of the so-called “Communists” (in opposition to Marx and Engels), from Lenin right down to Mao, can never be the basis of communist society...The original self-expansion of egoism was identically the demise of the primitive community. But its further self-expansion will resolve itself into a community once again. It is only when greed itself at last (or rather, once again) beckons in the direction of community that that direction will be taken. Here the ancient Christian truth that no earthly force can withstand human greed rejoins us on our side of the barricades."

For Ourselves
"The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything"
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/for-ourselves-the-right-to-be-greedy-theses-on-the-practical-necessity-of-demanding-everything

Answer 6

"Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter."
-- Max Stirner

And this one, which isn't as crisp as the first, but speaks to the same issue more specifically...

"Where socialists go wrong...is in their assumption that the individual can only be free--i.e. self-governing, self-owning--when his interests are combined with those of all other individuals. They believe in the collectivization of interests. But I am not free if my interests are inseparable from yours. My freedom lies in my opportunity to differ, in dis-unity, dis-connection, dis-sent. I am freest when interests are individualized, when I can be sole sovereign over my person and can dispose of the things I produce, or the services I can offer, as I see fit.

"Anarchism lies in the direction of the individualization of interests, economic or any other, not their socialization.

"Socialism is a religion of society--it is the sacrifice of the individual to the Collective.

"Anarchy is the philosophy of the individual--it is the affirmation of individuality, the proud denial of legitimacy to any institution, group or idea that claims authority over the ego."
--S.E. Parker