Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Quotes

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.

When deeds speak, words are nothing.

The possessions of the rich are stolen property.

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

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

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

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

The proprietor, producing neither by his own labor nor by his implement, and receiving products in exchange for nothing, is either a parasite or a thief.

Liberty, Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order.

I do not wish to be either governor nor governed!

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

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

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

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.

Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.

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.

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

The newspapers are the cemeteries of ideas.

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

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

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

Universal suffrage is counter-revolution.

The notion of anarchy ...means that once industrial functions have taken over from political functions, then business transactions and exchange alone produce the social order.

Anarchy, the absence of a master, of a sovereign.

ANARCHY, or the government of each man by himself or as the English say, self -government.

The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.

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

Property is impossible.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

It is better to enlighten men’s minds than to teach them to be obstinate in their prejudices.