Rudolf Rocker famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I am an Anarchist not because I believe Anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Believe #Goal #Finals
Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human conditions which are always straining after higher forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Believe #Expression #Order
For the anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility of every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities and talents with which nature has endowed them, and turn them to social account.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Philosophical #Development #Talent
Power always acts destructively, for its possessors are ever striving to lace all phenomena of social life into a corset of their laws to give them a definite shape. Its mental expression is dead dogma; its physical manifestation of life, brute force. This lack of intelligence in its endeavours leaves its imprint likewise on the persons of its representatives, gradually making them mentally inferior and brutal, even though they were originally excellently endowed. Nothing dulls the mind and soul of man as does the eternal monotony of routine, and power is essentially routine.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Men #Expression #Law
We have come more and more under the dominance of mechanics and sacrificed living humanity to the dead rhythm of the machine without most of us even being conscious of the monstrosity of the procedure. Hence we frequently deal with such matters with indifference and in cold blood as if we handled dead things and not the destinies of men.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Destiny #Men #Blood
Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our times, whose adherents advocate the abolition of economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society. In place of the present capitalistic economic order Anarchists would have a free association of all productive forces based upon co-operative labour, which would have as its sole purpose the satisfying of the necessary requirements of every member of society, and would no longer have in view the special interest of privileged minorities within the social union.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Views #Order #Political
So long as millions of human beings in every country has to sell their labour-power to a small minority of owners, and to sink into the most wretched misery if they could find no buyers, the so called â€œequality before the lawâ€ remains a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can also be no talk of a â€œright over one's own person,â€ for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if he does not want to starve.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Country #Law #Long
Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Philosophy #Men #Expression
Our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Attitude #Independent #Men
One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Courage #Dignity #Humans
Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International and which were best understood and most strongly held by the libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Wings #Alliances #Shapes
Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Inspiration #Successful #Diversity
The will to power which always emanates from individuals or from small minorities in society is in fact a most important driving force in history. The extent of its influence has up to now been regarded far too little, although it has frequently been the determining factor in the shaping of the whole of economic and social life.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Important #Minorities #Littles
Anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything,
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Paper #Broads #Endure
Culture is not created by command. It creates itself, arising spontaneously from the necessities of men and their social cooperative activity. No ruler could ever command men to fashion the first tools, first use fire, invent the telescope and the steam engine, or compose the Iliad. Cultural values do not arise by direction of higher authorities. They cannot be compelled by dictates nor called into life by the resolution of legislative assemblies.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Fashion #Men #Fire
People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should be only a means to insure to man his material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a ruthless economic despotism whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Mean #Blessing #Men
Political [or individual] rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will be meet with the violent resistance of the populace... One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being... The people owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today, in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Rights #Government #People
Asceticism in most cases is either the result of a sordid imagination or of passion diverted from its natural course, and experience has shown that when the protection of public morals is entrusted to its votaries, the consequences are usually appalling.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Passion #Imagination #Asceticism
Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force. And this unintelligence of its objectives sets its stamp on its supporters also and renders them stupid and brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the best of talents. One who is constantly striving to force everything into a mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Stupid #Expression #Order
For the machine, because of the way it is built, can work only in a given direction, no matter who pulls its levers.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Matter #Way #Machines
The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Struggle #Past #Government
Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force.
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Expression #Law #Intellectual
The nation which can only be saved by one man and wants to be saved that way deserves a whipping!
-- Rudolf Rocker

#Men #Way #Want

You may also like:

Alexander Berkman
Antonio Gramsci
Writer
Bertrand Russell
Philosopher
Daniel Guerin
Author
Emma Goldman
Writer
Errico Malatesta
Writer
Etienne de La Boetie
Writer
Gustav Landauer
Johann Most
Politician
Karl Marx
Philosopher
Leon Trotsky
Revolutionary
Mikhail Bakunin
Murray Bookchin
Author
Nikolai Bukharin
Russian Politician
Noam Chomsky
Linguist
Oscar Wilde
Writer
Peter Kropotkin
Zoologist
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Author
Rosa Luxemburg
Philosopher
William Godwin
Journalist