Every anarchist, as an anarchist, would be perfectly willing to surrender his own scheme directly, if he saw that another worked better.

-- Voltairine de Cleyre

You have a will that can be influenced by all with whom you come in contact.

Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized

that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that

all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but

James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive

women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took

*thousands* of words to say it.

Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father.

Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because

what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk

as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a

major world power.

I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise

the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right

out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."

Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:

* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize

nature and will kill you.

* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.

-- Dave Barry

Knock, knock!

Who's there?

Sam and Janet.

Sam and Janet who?

Sam and Janet Evening...

Just to have it is enough.

As you have undertaken to destroy these races, not inferior, but merely latecomer, you tend in like manner to destroy the working class, which you also qualify as inferior.

-- Jean Grave

In a republic, all are lords, that is, all despotize one over another.

-- Max Stirner

Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes -- the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

-- Howard Zinn

Your boss climbed the corporate ladder, wrong by wrong.

Talkers are no good doers.

-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"

Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship.

-- Voltairine de Cleyre

All that which is not liberty is against liberty. Liberty is not a thing that can be allocated.

-- Joseph Dejacque

Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?

A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.

Our cause cannot expect me to become a nun and the movement will not be turned into a cloister.

-- Emma Goldman

Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?

-- Henry David Thoreau

You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.

There is a fly on your nose.

The most complete freedom for the individual, his right to full satisfaction of all his needs, are absolutely legitimate claims, and there was no need to go out to dig up Nietszche and Stirner to give them some consecration.

-- Jean Grave

I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New

England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be

raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in

New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for

countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere

if they don't get it.

-- Mark Twain

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at

fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take

the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will

find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil,

you will say that she did it with her teeth.

-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"