Roads to Freedom quotes

It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism important, and it is this that makes them dangerous to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously upon the evils of our present order of society.

The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large.

They find themselves born into a certain place in society, and they accept what each day brings forth, without any effort of thought beyond what the immediate present requires.

… intense faith which enables him to withstand persecution for the sake of his beliefs makes him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest, and must be actuated by some sinister motive of treachery to the cause.

Hence arises the spirit of the sect, that bitter, narrow orthodoxy which is the bane of those who hold strongly to an unpopular creed.

So many real temptations to treachery exist that suspicion is natural. And among leaders, ambition, which they mortify in their choice of a career, is sure to return in a new form:

… general reflections at the beginning of our study, in order to make it clear to the reader that, whatever bitterness and hate may be found in the movements which we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their mainspring.

It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love.

Though difficult, it is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest.

Syndicalism arose in France as a revolt against political Socialism, and in order to understand it we must trace in brief outline the positions attained by Socialist parties in the various countries.

After a severe setback, caused by the Franco-Prussian war, Socialism gradually revived, and in all the countries of Western Europe Socialist parties have increased their numerical strength almost continuously during the last forty years;

Many others, through their activities in industry or finance, enjoy an income which is certainly very far in excess of anything to which their social utility entitles them.

On the other hand, it often happens that inventors and discoverers, whose work has the very greatest social utility, are robbed of their reward either by capitalists or by the failure of the public to appreciate their work until too late.

The better paid work is only open to those who have been able to afford an expensive training, and these men are selected in the main not by merit but by luck.

To such men, the possibility of pursuing their own work regardless of any public recognition of its utility would be invaluable.

Whoever will observe how many of our poets have been men of private means will realize how much poetic capacity must have remained undeveloped through poverty; for it would be absurd to suppose that the rich are better endowed by nature with the capacity for poetry.

Freedom for such men, few as they are, must be set against the waste of the mere idlers.

It is these things that make an age or a nation worthy of existence, and these things are not to be secured by bowing down before the State.

It is the individual in whom all that is good must be realized, and the free growth of the individual must be the supreme end of a political system which is to refashion the world.

… of groups which are jealous of their privileges and determined to preserve their autonomy, even if this should involve resistance to laws decreed by the State, when these laws interfere in the internal affairs of a group in ways not warranted by the public interest.

The glorification of the State, and the doctrine that it is every citizen’s duty to serve the State, are radically against progress and against liberty.

The State, though at present a source of much evil, is also a means to certain good things, and will be needed so long as violent and destructive impulses remain common.

But it is merely a means, and a means which needs to be very carefully and sparingly used if it is not to do more harm than good.

It is not the State, but the community, the worldwide community of all human beings present and future, that we ought to serve.

And a good community does not spring from the glory of the State, but from the unfettered development of individuals:

Even then, this ground of union would have ceased with their victory, and on the morrow of the social revolution the old national rivalries might have revived.

There is no alchemy by which a universal harmony can be produced out of hatred.

Those who have been inspired to action by the doctrine of the class war will have acquired the habit of hatred, and will instinctively seek new enemies when the old ones have been vanquished.

In such circumstances, all the passions and interests required to produce a war would exist, in spite of the establishment of Socialism in both countries.

Ants are as completely Socialistic as any community can possibly be, yet they put to death any ant which strays among them by mistake from a neighboring ant-heap.

Men do not differ much from ants, as regards their instincts in this respect, whereever there is a great divergence of race, as between white men and yellow men. Of course the instinct of race-hostility can be overcome by suitable circumstances;

A simultaneous revolution in Germany and Russia would no doubt have had such an effect, and would have made the creation of a new world possible here and now.

Dis aliter visum: the millennium is not for our time.

The great moment has passed, and for ourselves it is again the distant hope that must inspire us, not the immediate breathless looking for the deliverance.

A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable.

The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.

… in the future as well as in the present, there can be no question that a society in which some men pursue knowledge while others endure great poverty offers more hope of ultimate good than a society in which all are sunk in slothful comfort.

It is true that poverty is a great evil, but it is not true that material prosperity is in itself a great good.

If it is to have any real value to society, it must be made a means to the advancement of those higher goods that belong to the life of the mind.

If the wild side of human nature is to be permanently subjected to the orderly rules of the benevolent, uncomprehending bureaucrat, the joy of life will perish out of the earth, and the very impulse to live will gradually wither and die.

Better a thousandfold the present world with all its horrors than such a dead mummy of a world.

Better Anarchism, with all its risks, than a State Socialism that subjects to rule what must be spontaneous and free if it is to have any value. It is this nightmare that makes artists, and lovers of beauty generally, so often suspicious of Socialism.

In such a world all that makes life tolerable to the lover of beauty would perish.

Art springs from a wild and anarchic side of human nature; between the artist and the bureaucrat there must always be a profound mutual antagonism, an age-long battle in which the artist, always outwardly worsted, wins in the end through the gratitude of mankind for the joy that he puts into their lives.

If the wild side of human nature is to be permanently subjected to the orderly rules of the benevolent, uncomprehending bureaucrat, the joy of life will perish out of the earth, and the very impulse to live will gradually wither and die.

It is impossible for art, or any of the higher creative activities, to flourish under any system which requires that the artist shall prove his competence to some body of authorities before he is allowed to follow his impulse.

Any really great artist is almost sure to be thought incompetent by those among his seniors who would be generally regarded as best qualified to form an opinion.

And the mere fact of having to produce work which will please older men is hostile to a free spirit and to bold innovation.

Apart from this difficulty, selection by older men would lead to jealousy and intrigue and backbiting, producing a poisonous atmosphere of underground competition. The only effect of such a plan would be to eliminate the few who now slip through owing to some fortunate accident.

It is not by any system, but by freedom alone, that art can flourish.

There are two ways by which the artist could secure freedom under Socialism of the right kind.

What we have been suggesting will, no doubt, be objected to by orthodox Socialists, since they will find something repugnant to their principles in the whole idea of a private person paying to have certain work done.

But it is a mistake to be the slave of a system, and every system, if it is applied rigidly, will entail evils which could only be avoided by some concession to the exigencies of special cases.

On the whole, a wise form of Socialism might afford infinitely better opportunities for the artist and the man of science than are possible in a capitalist community, but only if the form of Socialism adopted is one which is fitted for this end by …

In a thoroughly commercialized society, an artist is respected if he makes money, and because he makes money, but there is no genuine respect for the works of art by which his money has been made.

A millionaire whose fortune has been made in buttonhooks or chewing-gum is regarded with awe, but none of this feeling is bestowed on the articles from which his wealth is derived.

In a society which measures all things by money the same tends to be true of the artist.

The whole side of life of which art is the flower requires something which may be called disinterestedness, a capacity for direct enjoyment without thought of tomorrow’s problems and difficulties.

When people are amused by a joke they do not need to be persuaded that it will serve some important purpose.

The same kind of direct pleasure is involved in any genuine appreciation of art. The struggle for life, the serious work of a trade or profession, is apt to make people too solemn for jokes and too preoccupied for art.

When people are amused by a joke they do not need to be persuaded that it will serve some important purpose. The same kind of direct pleasure is involved in any genuine appreciation of art.

The struggle for life, the serious work of a trade or profession, is apt to make people too solemn for jokes and too preoccupied for art.

The easing of the struggle, the diminution in the hours of work, and the lightening of the burden of existence, which would result from a better economic system, could hardly fail to increase the joy of life and the vital energy, available for sheer delight …

There are dangers, but they will all vanish if the importance of liberty is adequately acknowledged.

In this as in nearly everything else, the road to all that is best is the road of freedom.

In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope: they are more filled with the thought of the possessions that others may take from them, than of the joy that they might create in their own lives and in the lives with which they come in contact.

It is not so that life should be lived.

they are more filled with the thought of the possessions that others may take from them, than of the joy that they might create in their own lives and in the lives with which they come in contact.

It is not so that life should be lived.

Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends, or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence.

It is not so that life should be lived.

Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends, or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence.

In their private relations they are not preoccupied with anxiety lest they should lose such affection and respect as they receive: they are engaged in giving affection and respect freely, and the reward comes of itself without their seeking.

In a world where all men and women enjoy economic freedom, there will not be the same habit of command, nor, consequently, the same love of despotism; a gentler type of character than that now prevalent will gradually grow up.

Men are formed by their circumstances, not born ready-made.

The bad effect of the present economic system on character, and the immensely better effect to be expected from communal ownership, are among the strongest reasons for advocating the change.

There is not infrequently, in marriage, a suggestion of purchase, of acquiring a woman on condition of keeping her in a certain standard of material comfort.

Often and often, a marriage hardly differs from prostitution except by being harder to escape from.

The whole basis of these evils is economic. Economic causes make marriage a matter of bargain and contract, in which affection is quite secondary, and its absence constitutes no recognized reason for liberation.

The whole basis of these evils is economic. Economic causes make marriage a matter of bargain and contract, in which affection is quite secondary, and its absence constitutes no recognized reason for liberation.

Marriage should be a free, spontaneous meeting of mutual instinct, filled with happiness not unmixed with a feeling akin to awe

: it should involve that degree of respect of each for the other that makes even the most trifling interference with liberty an utter impossibility, and a common life enforced by one against the will of the other an unthinkable thing of deep horror.

And there is no doubt that intellect would work more keenly and creatively in a world where instinct was less thwarted, where the joy of life was greater, and where consequently there would be more vitality in men than there is at present.

There remains the population question, which, ever since the time of Malthus, has been the last refuge of those to whom the possibility of a better world is disagreeable.

But this question is now a very different one from what it was a hundred years ago.

It is by its effects outside economics and politics, at least as much as by effects inside them, that a social system should be judged. And if Socialism ever comes, it is only likely to prove beneficent if non-economic goods are valued and consciously pursued.

The world that we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others.

It must be a world in which affection has free play, in which love is purged of the instinct for domination, in which cruelty and envy have been dispelled by happiness and the unfettered development of all the instincts that build up life and fill …

… world in which affection has free play, in which love is purged of the instinct for domination, in which cruelty and envy have been dispelled by happiness and the unfettered development of all the instincts that build up life and fill it with mental delights.

Such a world is possible; it waits only for men to wish to create it.

Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass away, burned up in the fire of its own hot passions;

Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims.

But it will pass away, burned up in the fire of its own hot passions; and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, with the light of morning in its eyes.