Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Quotes

All men are equal and free: society by nature, and destination, is therefore autonomous and ungovernable. If the sphere of activity of each citizen is determined by the natural division of work and by the choice he makes of a profession, if the social functions are combined in such a way as to produce a harmonious effect, order results from the free activity of all men; there is no government. Whoever puts a hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.

All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.

Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.

The social revolution is seriously compromised if it comes through a political revolution.

The newspapers are the cemeteries of ideas.

AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.

As soon as I set foot in the parliamentary Sinai, I ceased to be in touch with the masses.

All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.

Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.

The law does not generate justice. The law is nothing but a declaration and application of what is just.

The faults of which we ask you [God] the remittance, it is you who make us commit them; the traps of which we implore you to deliver us, it is you who has set them for us; and the Satan which surrounds us, this Satan, it is you.

We want property, but property restored to its proper limits, that is to say, free distribution of the products of labour, property minus usury!

The idea of God is the type and foundation of the principle of authority and absolutism, which it is our task to destroy or at least to subordinate wherever it manifests itself.

All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization.

I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.

the government can do nothing for you. But you can do everything for yourselves

It is a proof of philosophical mediocrity, today, to look for a philosophy.

By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me.

To be governed ... is to be watched, inspected, directed, indoctrinated, numbered, estimated, regulated, commanded, controlled, law-driven, preached at, spied upon, censured, checked, valued, enrolled - by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so.

Communism is a society where each one works according to his abilities and gets according to his needs.

Of my private life I have nothing to say: it does not concern others. I have always had little liking for autobiographies and have no interest in anyone's affairs. History proper and novels hold no attractions for me except insofar as, I can discern there, as within our immortal Revolution, the adventures of the mind.

Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy.

I do not wish to be either governor nor governed!

Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people.

The possessions of the rich are stolen property.

Producer and consumer are always one and the same person, merely considered from two different viewpoints.

Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.

A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.

As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.

When deeds speak, words are nothing.

If one were to ask. . ."What is slavery?" and I should answer in one word, "murder," my meaning would be understood at once. Why, then, to this other question: "What is property?" may I not likewise answer, "theft". . .?

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.

Justice is a faculty that may be developed. This development is what constitutes the education of the human race.

The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!

To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance.

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-ridden, regulated, penned up, indoctrinated, preached at, checked, appraised, seized, censured, commanded, by beings who have neither title, nor knowledge, nor virtue. To be governed is to have every operation, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, indorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected.

To be governed is, under pretext of public utility and in the name of the general interest, to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed and robbed; then, upon the slightest resistance, at the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, annoyed, hunted down, pulled about, beaten, disarmed, bound, imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, banished, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and, to crown all, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.

In any given society the authority of man over man runs in inverse proportion to the intellectual development of that society.

it is the liberty that is the mother, not the daughter, of order.