Adequate Quote by Errico Malatesta

“The question may seem embarrassing, but it can be answered in a few words. For two people to live in peace they must both want peace; if one insists on using force to oblige the other to work for him and serve him, then the other, if he wishes to retain his dignity as a man and not be reduced to abject slavery, will be obliged in spite of his love of peace, to resist force with adequate means.”

Errico Malatesta

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More by Errico Malatesta

The only limit to the oppression of government is the power with which the people show themselves capable of opposing it.

Errico Malatesta

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Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to…

Errico Malatesta

The basic function of the government everywhere in all times, whatever title it adopts and whatever its origin and organisation may be, is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, of defending the oppressors and the exploiters: and it's principal, characteristic and indispensable instruments are the police agent and the tax-collector, the soldier and the gaoler - to whom…

Errico Malatesta

“In all times and in all places, whatever may be the name that the government takes, whatever has been its origin, or its organization, its essential function is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, and of defending the oppressors and exploiters. Its principal characteristic and indispensable instruments are the bailiff and the tax collector, the soldier and the…

Errico Malatesta

“Capitalism is the same everywhere. In order to survive and prosper it needs a permanent situation of partial scarcity: it needs it to maintain…

Errico Malatesta

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Impossibility never prevented anything from happening.

Errico Malatesta

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“Communism made through the will of a government instead of through the direct and voluntary work of groups of workers does not really appeal…

Errico Malatesta

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Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at the truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is…

Errico Malatesta

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We follow ideas and not men, and rebel against this habit of embodying a principle in a man.

Errico Malatesta

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“The methods from which the different non-anarchist parties expect, or say they do, the greatest good of one and all can be reduced to two, the authoritarian and the so-called liberal. The former entrusts to a few the management of social life and leads to the exploitation and oppression of the masses by the few. The latter relies on free…

Errico Malatesta

And by anarchist spirit I mean that deeply human sentiment, which aims at the good of all, freedom and justice for all, solidarity and…

Errico Malatesta

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If you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defense, they accuse you of pacifism, without…

Errico Malatesta

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