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

As others have noted, this is a hard question to answer.

A couple that stay near the top of the list:

"...I despise you, I despise your order, your laws, your force propped authority. Hang me for it." - Louis Lingg

"Do you mean to destroy?
Do you mean to build?
These questions we have been asked from many quarters, sympathetic and otherwise.
Our reply is frank and bold:
We mean both:to destroy /and/ to build." -Alexander Berkman

and on the 90's culture tip (edited for brevity):

"Hear the ticking of your heartbeat beating
Hear the breaking of their promises
Hear the smashing of your expectations
Hear the shattering of half-rhymes

I am a time bomb
A ticking ticking ticking time bomb...

...And all the time bombs
They're all dancing to the same song,
In a world filled with no-ones,
I am a someone." - Chumbawamba

Answer 2

"If god really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him."
 - Bakunin

Answer 3

I could quote from the Revolution of Everyday Life all day but here's one that made everything click for me:
 

" God has been abolished but the pillars which supported him still rise towards an empty sky. "

We survive by the sweat of our brow(more of a protestant thing but anyway). Laziness is a sin, the unemployed should be ashamed, working hard is a virtue.

The GDP is merit, debt is sin, growth is virtuous deeds, austerity is absolution.

The economists are theologians, explaining to us the will of the markets.

God is everywhere, the God of money. This is what David Harvey means when he says we're all neoliberals. We live in economic fundamentalism. Our lives revolve around numbers.

Racism and sexism are universally condemned(albeit hypocritically) but the poor can be discriminated against universally.

Money is morality. Wealth is virtue, a sign of worth and merit, of intelligence. Poverty is shameful.

I could go on but you get my point.

Answer 4

It varies from day to day, but this one, from Joseph Déjacque's "Le Scandale," is on heavy mental rotation right now:

"C’est à nous, révolutionnaires, lambeaux de l’humanité que le souffle du progrès soulève, haillons sociaux que la lumière colore de ses feux pourpres, et qu’elle arbore au-dessus des civilisés comme un épouvantail ou un drapeau, – épouvantail pour ceux qui veulent rester stationnaires, drapeau pour ceux qui veulent s’élancer en avant, – c’est à nous d’activer l’œuvre de décomposition, à nous d’essayer de déceler la pierre qui retient l’Humanité dans l’immobilisme, à nous de lui frayer les voies de l’universelle régénération."

"It is up to us, revolutionaries, tatters of humanity whom the breath of progress lifts, social rags that the light of understanding colors with its purple fires, and that it displays above the Civilized like a scarecrow or a flag,—a scarecrow for those who want to remain stationary, and a flag for those who want to press forward,–it is up to us to stimulate the work of decomposition, up to us to try to indicate the stone that holds Humanity immobile, up to us to open the paths of universal regeneration."

Comments

This isn't related to your answer, but are you the same humanispherian that posts on /r/anarchism? What a shit show that place is. :P

---

That's me.

Answer 5

I don't really like quotes because they're usually out of context and, in a way, it celebratizes the person who wrote/said those words, but here's a short one that I like at this moment.

"Anarchism argues for a classless, egalitarian society devoid of coercive authority and therefore argues — and always has — against some of the primary, distinguishing traits that define civilization. To argue in favor of civilization is as absurd as to argue in favor of the state." -Anarchism Versus Civilization by Margaret Killjoy.

Answer 6

Right now:

"There's no time for hope, there's no reasons for fear, and we need only think of new weapons"

- Cody Wilson (paraphrasing Deleuze, I think)

Yeah the guy who developed 3D printable guns and worked on DefCAD and Dark Wallet. I feel a bit skeptical about him given that he's seemingly emerged from the anacap/American Libertarian mileu, but I rarely find myself wholly disagreeing with what he has to say, and sometimes I find him quite inspirational. I don't know if he's civ-critical but I love that his work forces the idea that technological advancement isn't an unambiguous 'good', into mainstream socio-political discourse and the public psyche.

Comments

Yeah this is just Deleuze, Wilson's version isn't even any shorter: "There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons." (Il n'y a pas lieu de craindre ou d'espérer, mais de chercher de nouvelles armes)

Answer 7

there are so many great anarchists quotes, they specialize in it! Heres a list i spent a lot of time pondering today, enjoy:

"Id rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck"

"If voting changed anything, theyd make it illegal"

-Emma Goldman

"My revolution already started a long time ago.

From the moment I knew life, I took up MY weapons and declared MY war."

-Renzo Novatore

"Show me, that i may question him, the man who would reproach and blame me. Does my egoism do you any harm? If you say no, you have no reason to object to it, for I am free in all that does not injure you. If you say yes, you are a thief...."

-Anselme Bellagarigue

"Our lives are nothing but a series of moments, and within the moment you lose site of this, you are in danger of losing everything."

-me