Voltairine de Cleyre Quotes (1866-1912)

“Among the fundamental likeness between the Revolutionary Republicans and the Anarchists is the recognition that the little must precede the great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate; that the spirit of the latter is carried into the councils of the former, and a local tyranny may thus become an instrument for general enslavement.”

“Those who, by the essence of their belief, are committed to Direct Action only are — just who? Why, the non-resistants; precisely those who do not believe in violence at all!”

“And sometimes when I am weary, When the path is thorny and Wild, I'll look back to the Eyes in the twilight, Back to the eyes that smiled.And pray that a wreath like a rainbow May slip from the beautiful past, And Crown me again with the sweet, strong love And keep me, and hold me fast.”

“And sometimes when I am weary, When the path is thorny and Wild, I'll look back to the Eyes in the twilight, Back to the eyes that smiled.And pray that a wreath like a rainbow May slip from the beautiful past, And Crown me again with the sweet, strong love And keep me, and hold me fast.”

“Miss Goldman is a communist; I am an individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should. But whether she or I be right, or both of us be wrong, of one thing I am sure; the spirit which animates Emma Goldman is the only one which will emancipate the slave from his slavery, the tyrant from his tyranny — the spirit which is willing to dare and suffer''.”

“And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter the last possibility of freedom will become easy.”

“What appears to be injustice in our eyes, in the sight of omniscience may be justice. God's ways are not our ways.”

“I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated.”

“Humanity cannot be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal.”

“Miss Goldman is a communist; I am an individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should. But whether she or I be right, or both of us be wrong, of one thing I am sure; the spirit which animates Emma Goldman is the only one which will emancipate the slave from his slavery, the tyrant from his tyranny — the spirit which is willing to dare and suffer.”

“Now the truth is, that what Ferrer was teaching in his schools was really instigating the overthrow of the social order of Spain; furthermore it was not only instigating it, but it was making it as certain as the still coming of the daylight out of the night of the east. But not by the teaching of riot; of the use of dagger, bomb, or knife; but by the teaching of the same sciences which are taught in our public schools, through a generally diffused knowledge of which the power of Spain’s despotic Church must crumble away. Likewise it was laying the primary foundation for the overthrow of such portions of the State organization as exist by reason of the general ignorance of the people. The Social Order of Spain ought to be overthrown; must be overthrown, will be overthrown; and Ferrer was doing a mighty work in that direction. The men who killed him knew and understood it well...Ferrer is with the immortals. His work is spreading over the world; it will yet return, and rid Spain of its tyrants.”

“Nature has the habit of and then producing a type of human being far in advance of the times; an ideal for us to emulate; a being devoid of sham, uncompromising, and to whom the truth is sacred; a being whose selfishness is so large that it takes in the whole human race and treats self only as one of the great mass; a being keen to sense all forms of wrong, and powerful in denunciation of it; one who can reach into the future and draw it nearer. Such a being was VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.”

“The first time I met her — this most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced — was in Philadelphia, in August 1893. I had come to that city to address the unemployed during the great crisis of that year, and I was eager to visit Voltairine of whose exceptional ability as a lecturer I had heard while in New York. I found her ill in bed, her head packed in ice, her face drawn with pain. I learned that this experience repeated itself with Voltairine after her every public appearance: she would be bed-ridden for days, in constant agony from some disease of the nervous system which she had developed in early childhood and which continued to grow worse with the years. I did not remain long on this first visit, owing to the evident suffering of my hostess, though she was bravely trying to hide her pain from me. But fate plays strange pranks. In the evening of the same day, Voltairine de Cleyre was called upon to drag her frail, suffering body to a densely packed, stuffy hall, to speak in my stead. At the request of the New York authorities, the protectors of law and disorder in Philadelphia captured me as I was about to enter the Hall and led me off to the Police Station of the City of Brotherly Love. The next time I saw Voltairine was at Blackwell's Island Penitentiary. She had come to New York to deliver her masterly address, In Defense of Emma Goldman and Free Speech, and she visited me in prison. From that time until her end our lives and work were frequently thrown together, often meeting harmoniously and sometimes drifting apart, but always with Voltairine standing out in my eyes as a forceful personality, a brilliant mind, a fervent idealist, an unflinching fighter, a devoted and loyal comrade. But her strongest characteristic was her extraordinary capacity to conquer physical disability — a trait which won for her the respect even of her enemies and the love and admiration of her friends.”

“While Luisa Capetillo theorized about women and anarchism in Puerto Rico, her contemporaries did the same in many other countries, among them Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Spain and the United States. Juana Belén Gutiérrez (1875-1942) in México, Maria Collazo (n.d.) in Uruguay, Juana Rouco Buela (1889-1969) in Argentina, Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1914) in the United States, and Teresa Clamunt (1862-1981) in Spain, preached the emancipation of women and free love and fought for workers' rights while living lives consonant with their ideals.”

“De Cleyre exemplified the anarchist fascination with spontaneous emotion, with feeling, with intuitive insight. She urged her hearers to eschew a purely intellectual commitment to the cause, to feel rather than think their way into anarchism: “Turn cloudward, . let the dreams rush over one-no longer awed by outside powers.-recognizing nothing superior to oneself,... letting oneself go free, go free beyond the bounds of what fear and custom call the "possible"-This, . . . Anarchism may mean to you, if you dare apply it so." The reward for this emotional conversion was immediate psychological liberation from conventional society; the individual became free, even if political, economic, and social systems remained unchanged. Although de Cleyre suggested that the restructuring of institutions ultimately would develop from this initial emotional rebirth, it was never clear how such changes would come about.”