Quotes About Society

When a woman has lost her chastity she will shrink from nothing.

It is for the good of states that men should be deluded by religion.

WHEN ignorance reigns in society and disorder in the minds of men, laws are multiplied

It seems to us that there is only one answer to this question: we must recognize, and loudly proclaim, that everyone, whatever his grade in the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or incapable, has, before everything, the right to live, and that society is bound to share among all, without exception, the means of existence it has at its disposal. We must acknowledge this, and proclaim it aloud, and act upon it.

But today the united city has ceased to exist; there is no more communion of ideas. The town is a chance agglomeration of people who do not know one another, who have no common interest, save that of enriching themselves at the expense of one another.

The more we study the question, the more we are brought to the conclusion that society itself is responsible for the anti-social deeds perpetrated in its midst; and that no punishments, no prisons, and no hangmen can diminish the numbers of such deeds; nothing short of a re-organisation of society itself.

If you wish, like us, that the entire liberty of the individual and, consequently, his life be respected, you are necessarily brought to repudiate the government of man by man, whatever shape it assumes; you are forced to accept the principles of Anarchy that you have spurned so long. You must then search with us the forms of society that can best realize that ideal and put an end to all the violence that rouses your indignation.

If middle-class society is decaying, if we have got into a blind alley from which we cannot emerge without attacking past institutions with torch and hatchet, it is precisely because we have given too much to counting. It is because we have let ourselves be influenced into giving only to receive. It is because we have aimed at turning society into a commercial company based on debit and credit.

Man is not a being whose exclusive purpose in life is eating, drinking, and providing a shelter for himself. As soon as his material wants are satisfied, other needs, which, generally speaking may be described as of an artistic character, will thrust themselves forward. These needs are of the greatest variety; they vary with each and every individual; and the more society is civilized, the more will individuality be developed, and the more will desires be varied.

Should an authoritarian Socialist society ever succeed in establishing itself, it could not last; general discontent would soon force it to break up, or to reorganize itself on principles of liberty.

We take men for what they are worth-and that is why we hate the government of man by man

Es preciso, en fin, sumergirse en la existencia popular para osar retratarla.

Political economy has always confined itself to stating facts occurring in society, and justifying them in the interest of the dominant class. Therefore, it pronounces itself in favour of the division of labour in industry. Having found it profitable to capitalists, it has set it up as a principle.

To make a distinction between simple and professional work in a new society would result in the revolution sanctioning and recognizing as a principle a brutal fact we submit to nowadays, but that we nevertheless find unjust.

People speak of laziness or crime, without giving themselves the trouble to analyse the cause. They are in a hurry to punish these faults without inquiring if the punishment itself does not contain a premium on 'laziness' or 'crime'. This is why a free society, if it saw the number of idlers increasing in its midst, would no doubt think of looking first for the cause of laziness, in order to suppress it, before having recourse to punishment.

After bread has been secured,' he wrote presciently, 'leisure is the supreme aim.

The "right to well-being" means the possibility of living like human beings, and of bringing up children to be members of a society better than ours, whilst the "right to work" only means the right to be always a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited by the middle class of the future.

The right to well-being is the Social Revolution, the right to work means nothing but the Treadmill of Commercialism.

We must take possession, in the name of the people, of the granaries, the shops full of clothing, and the dwelling-houses. Nothing must be wasted. We must organize without delay a way to feed the hungry, to satisfy all wants, to meet all needs, to produce not for the special benefit of this one or that one, but so as to ensure to society as a whole its life and further development.

And we say, 'Down with the privileges of education, as well as those of birth!' We are anarchists precisely because these privileges revolt us. They revolt us already in this authoritarian society. Could we endure them in a society that began by proclaiming equality?

we know that every alleviation, however slight, of the wretchedness of our great cities is followed by a very considerable diminution of crime;

The man who does not feel the slightest remorse when poisoning his customers with noxious drugs covered with pompous labels, thinks he is in honour bound to keep his engagements. But if this relative morality has developed under present conditions, when enrichment is the only incentive and the only aim, can we doubt its rapid progress when appropriation of the fruits of others' labour will no longer be the basis of society?

Every economic phase has a political phase corresponding to it, and it would be impossible to touch private property unless a new mode of political life be found at the same time.

Nine-tenths of the great fortunes made in the United States are (as Henry George has shown in his Social Problems) the result of knavery on a large scale, assisted by the state.