I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these t...erms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The consistent anarchist ... should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and sp...ecialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat.... Some sort of council communism is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive understanding that democracy is largely a sham when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, and technocrats, a "vanguard" party, or a State bureaucracy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn't wan...t to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Not until he acquires European manners does the American anarchist become the gentleman who assures you that people cannot be made... moral by Act of Parliament (the truth being that it is only by Acts of Parliament that men in large communities can be made moral, even when they want to).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hollywood keeps before its child audiences a string of glorified young heroes, everyone of whom is an unhesitating and violent Ana...rchist. His one answer to everything that annoys him or disparages his country or his parents or his young lady or his personal code of manly conduct is to give the offender a "sock" in the jaw.... My observation leads me to believe that it is not the virtuous people who are good at socking jaws.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ordinary man--we have to face it: it is every bit as true of the ordinary Englishman as of the ordinary American--is an Anarch...ist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »