Protest, Resistance and Revolution

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the State.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay; Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.

O imitatores, servum pecus.

Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of Nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him.

[The Republican Party] had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

 

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die

The Gulag Archipelago had already begun its malignant life and would shortly metastasize throughout the whole body of the nation.

 

The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.

 

America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys.

Talking of patriotism what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn’t a foot of land in the world which doesn’t represent the ousting and re-ousting of a long line of successive “owners,” who each in turn, as “patriots,” with proud swelling hearts defended it against the next gang of “robbers” who came to steal it and did —and became swelling-hearted patriots in their turn.

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance; and by the leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert, that the same principle lives in us.

I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard!

Here I was, in a country where a right tosay how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. . . . I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.

Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there. . . . I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.

If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there weretwo, they would cut each other’s throats; butthere are thirty, and they live happily togetherin peace.

I take the word Europe Or the word death And tear them into tiny pieces; I scatter them at your feet.

When we, the Workers, all demand: ‘What are WE fighting for?’ …

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let itgo: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injusticehas a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or acrank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will notbe worse than the evil; but if it is of such anature that it requires you to be the agent ofinjustice to another, then, I say, break the law.Let your life be a counter-friction to stop themachine.

To hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew Is the curriculum.

The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labor reach a point at which they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

[ Responding to a beach club telling him he couldn’t join because he was Jewish :] My son’s only half Jewish. Would it be all right if he went in the water up to his knees?

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not