"How ill we go on like human beings eating and sleeping, working and loving, exchanging and dealing, without government? So used have we become to "organized authority" in every department of life that ordinarily we cannot conceive of the most common-place avocations being carried on without their interference and "protection." But anarchism is not compelled to outline a complete organization of a free society. To do so with any assumption of authority would be to place another barrier in the way of coming generations. The best thought of today may become the useless vagary of tomorrow, and to crystallize it into a creed is to make it unwieldy."
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or hierarchy, primarily targeting the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. Anarchism is described as being part of the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
"Oppositional thinking and oppositional risks are necessary. I think that is very important right now and one of the reasons why I think anarchism has so much potential to help us move forward. It is not asking of us to dogmatically adhere to the founders of the tradition, but to be open to whatever increases our democratic participation, our creativity, and our happiness."
"The Boston Anarchists are opposed to mob rule. For this reason they are opposed to the State, whose rule is nothing less than mob rule, since all arbitrary rule which is enforced by brutal agencies is mob rule. The State, then, is the chief of mobbists."
"The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished … Rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority."
"If no one works for you, no one decides for you."
"Jesus Christ was the supreme example of authentic anarchy — the creative non-violent anarchist par excellence — working not from the top down, but from the bottom up with the poor, and the poorest of the poor, to empower people and enable them to realize their potential, as men and women made in the images of God."
"The people themselves have to create structures in which they articulate their own voice and make their own decisions. I didn’t get that from other ideologies: I got that from anarchism."