text:
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (pronounced [ˈpruːd.ɒn] in BrE, [pʁu.dɔ̃] in French) (15 January 1809 – 19 January 1865) was the first individual to call himself an "anarchist," and the first documented as using the word "Capitalist" to mean property-owner.

Quotes

 *  La République est l'organisation par laquelle toutes les opinions, toutes les activités demeurant libres, le Peuple, par la divergence même des opinions et des volontés, pense et agit comme un seul homme.  Dans la République, tout citoyen, en faisant ce qu'il veut et rien que ce qu'il veut, participe directement à la législation et au gouvernement, comme il participe à la production et à la circulation de la richesse. Là tout citoyen est roi ; car il a la plénitude du pouvoir, il règne et gouverne. La République est une anarchie positive. Ce n'est ni la liberté soumise A l'ordre comme dans la monarchie constitutionnelle, ni la liberté emprisonnée DANs l'ordre, comme l'entend le Gouvernement provisoire. C'est la liberté délivrée de toutes ses entraves, la superstition, le préjugé, le sophisme, l'agiotage, l'autorité; c'est la liberté réciproque, et non pas la liberté qui se limite; la liberté non pas fille de l'ordre, mais MÈRE de l'ordre.
 * Idée générale de la revolution au XIXe siècle (1851), p. 235, as cited in Anarchism (1908) by Paul Eltzbacher, p. 76
 * The Republic is the organization by which, all opinions and all activities remaining free, the People, by the very divergence of opinions and of wills, thinks and acts as a single man. In the Republic every citizen, in doing what he wishes and nothing but what he wishes, participates directly in legislation and government, just as he participates in the production and circulation of wealth. There every citizen is king; for he has plenary power, he reigns and governs. The Republic is a positive anarchy. It is neither liberty subjected to order, as in the constitutional monarchy, nor liberty imprisoned in order, as the provisional government would have it. It is liberty delivered from all its hobbles, superstition, prejudice, sophism, speculation, authority; it is mutual liberty, not self-limiting liberty; liberty, not the daughter but the MOTHER of order.
 * As translated in Anarchism (1908) by Paul Eltzbacher, p. 76
 * The Republic is the organization by which, all opinions and all activities remaining free, the People, by the very divergence of opinions and will, think and act as a single man. In the Republic, every citizen, by doing what they want and nothing but what they want, participates directly in the legislation and in the government, as they participate in the production and circulation of wealth. There, every citizen is king; for he has the fullness of power; he reigns and governs. The Republic is a positive anarchy. It is neither liberty subjected to order, as in the constitutional monarchy, nor liberty imprisoned in order, as the Provisional Government intends. It is liberty delivered from all its shackles: superstition, prejudice, sophistry, stock-jobbing, authority. It is reciprocal liberty, and not the liberty which restricts; liberty, not the daughter of order, but the MOTHER of order.
 * As translated in "Notes on Proudhon's changing notion of the state" by Shawn P. Wilbur (19 January 2013); this is cited there to "Solution of the Social Problem" (1849)

 * To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
 * Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle [The General Idea of the Revolution] (1851); quoted in The Anarchists (1964) by James Joll, Ch. 3, p. 78

 * All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization.
 * Du principe Fédératif [Principle of Federation] (1863)

 * All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.
 * As quoted in Philosophy at Work : A Constructive Approach to Philosophy (1960) by Ralph Bubrich Winn

 * I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. 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.
 * As quoted in "The Authority Principle" in No Gods, No Masters : An Anthology of Anarchism (1980) Daniel Guérin, as translated by Paul Sharkey (1998), p. 90

What is Property? (1840)

 * Using primarily the translation of Benjamin R. Tucker What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government (1890)

 * I have found more peace in the knowledge of truth than anger in the feeling of oppression, and the most precious fruit that I could want to collect in this memoir would be to inspire my readers with that peace of mind arising from the clear perception of evil and its causes.
 * Preface
 * The nineteenth century is in my eyes a creative age in which new principles are produced but in which nothing written will endure.
 * Preface
 * I should like to restore with one hand what I destroy with the other. When pruning an old tree one should avoid destroying the buds and fruit; you know this is as well as anyone.
 * Preface

 * If we pass from physical nature to the moral world, here we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influence of spontaneity and habit.
 * Chapter One

 * Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only the declaration and application of what is just in all circumstances where men have relations with one another.
 * Chapter One

 * If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property! may I not likewise answer, It is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first? I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our institutions, property: I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the conclusion which shall result from my investigations: I am in my right. I think best to place the last thought of my book first: still am I in my right.
 * Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

 * Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions! Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way! ... Alas! philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished?
 * Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
 * Property is theft! is a more famous translation of the original: La propriété, c'est le vol!

 * Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is truth-seeker. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him? Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments.
 * Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

 * I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.
 * Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

 * I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.
 * Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

 * All that the sovereign people, legislators, and reformers see in public office is, to speak plainly, their own benefit.
 * Ch. I

 * To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea, — an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another if I fail to announce it to-day, — I can claim no merit save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the dawn? Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical with equality of rights; that property and robbery are synonymous terms; that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.
 * Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

 * The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people — who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale — will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, “So perish idlers and vagrants!”
 * Ch. III: "Labor as the Efficient Cause of the Domain of Property"

 * Property is impossible.
 * Ch. IV: "That Property Is Impossible"

 * The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.
 * Ch. IV

 * AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.
 * Ch. IV

 * 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.
 * Ch. IV

 * What is conscription? An act of property exercised over families by the government without warning, a robbery of men and money.
 * Ch. IV

 * Talents is a creation of society rather than a gift of nature; it is an accumulated capital of which the recipient is only the guardian. Without society, without education and powerful assistance which it gives, the finest nature would be inferior to the most ordinary capacities even in the rare as where it ought to shine.
 * Ch.IV

 * Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other; justice is the same attraction, accompanied by reflection and knowledge.
 * Ch.V

 * Friendship is precious in the hearts of the children of men. Generosity, gratitude (I mean here only that gratitude which is born of admiration of a superior power), and friendship are three three distinct shades of a single sentiment which I will call "equity" or "social proportionality. Equity does not change justice; but always taking equity as the base, it adds to it esteem and thereby forms in man a third degree of sociability. Equality makes it at once our duty and our pleasure to aid the weak who need us and to make them our equals; to pay to the strong a just tribute of gratitude and honour without making ourselves slaves to them; to cherish our neighbors, friends, and equals for what we receive from them, even by right of exchange. Equity is sociability raised to this ideal through reason and justice; its most usual manifestation is urbanity or politeness, which among certain nations sums up in a single word almost all the social duties.
 * Ch. V
 * Justice is the product of nature and labour
 * Ch. V
 * If God should descend to earth and come to live among us, we could not love him unless he became like us or give him anything unless he produced something or listen to him unless he proved us mistaken or worship him unless he manifested his power. All the laws of our nature, affective, economic, and intellectual, would prevent us from treating him as we treat other men, that is, according to reason, justice, and equity. From this I infer that if God ever put himself into immediate communication with man, he would have to become a man.
 * Ch. V

 * Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, fortune; force of accumulated property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, — they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task. Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words. Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.
 * Ch. V: "Psychological Explanation of the Idea of Justice and Injustice, and the Determination of the Principle of Government and of Right," Part 2: Characteristics of Communism and of Property

 * As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
 * Ch. V, Part 2; this might be the ultimate inspiration of the later slogan coined in 1848 by Anselme Bellegarrigue (and often attributed to Proudhon): "Anarchy is order, government is civil war."

 * Up to now the victories of justice over injustice and of equality over inequality have been won by instinct and the simple force of things, but the final triumph of our social nature will be due to our reason, or else we shall fall back into feudal chaos. Either this is reserved for our intelligence, or this depth of poverty for our indignity.
 * Ch.V

 * The end of the old civilization has come; the face of the earth will be renewed under a new son. Let the present generation perish, let the old prevaricators die in the desert! The holy earth will not cover their bones.
 * Ch.V

The General Idea of the Revolution
"Come to me, Lucifer, Satan, whoever you may be! Devil whom the faith of my fathers contrasted with God and the Church. I will act as spokesman for you and will demand nothing of you." (Idee Generale De La Revolution, pp. 433-434; also in Justice III)

The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1846)

 * The System of Economic Contradictions (1846)

 * Before entering upon the subject-matter of these new memoirs, I must explain an hypothesis which will undoubtedly seem strange, but in the absence of which it is impossible for me to proceed intelligibly: I mean the hypothesis of a God. To suppose God, it will be said, is to deny him. Why do you not affirm him? Is it my fault if belief in Divinity has become a suspected opinion; if the bare suspicion of a Supreme Being is already noted as evidence of a weak mind; and if, of all philosophical Utopias, this is the only one which the world no longer tolerates? Is it my fault if hypocrisy and imbecility everywhere hide behind this holy formula?

 * Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, — I mean a necessary dialectical tool.
 * Introduction

 * In order better to grasp the thought of Malthus, let us translate it into philosophical propositions by stripping it of its rhetorical gloss: — "'"Individual liberty, and property, which is its expression, are economical data; equality and solidarity are not."''' "Under this system, each one by himself, each one for himself: labor, like all merchandise, is subject to fluctuation: hence the risks of the proletariat." "Whoever has neither income nor wages has no right to demand anything of others: his misfortune falls on his own head; in the game of fortune, luck has been against him." From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory.
 * Chapter I

Confessions of a Revolutionary (1849)

 * As translated in "P. J. Proudhon in the Revolution of 1848" by Mary B. Allen The Journal of Modern History (1952) 24:1-14.

 * Power, instrument of the collective force, created in society to serve as mediator between capital and labor, has become inescapably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat. No political reform can resolve this contradiction, since, according to the avowal of politicians themselves, such a reform could only end by giving more energy and expansion to power, and until it had overthrown the hierarchy and dissolved society, power would not be able to attack the prerogatives of monopoly. The problem consists, then, for the working classes, not in capturing, but in defeating both power and monopoly, which would mean to make rise from the bowels of the people, from the depths of labor, a power greater, an action more powerful which would envelop capital and the State and subjugate them.

 * It is necessary to have lived in this insulator which is called the national assembly, in order to perceive how the men who are the most completely ignorant of the state of the country are almost always the ones who represent it. I set myself to read everything that the distribution bureau sends the representatives: proposals, reports, brochures, even the Moniteur and the Bulletin of the laws. The greater part of my colleagues of the left and the extreme left were in the same perplexity of spirit, in the same ignorance of the daily facts. The national workshops were spoken of only with a kind of fright; for fear of the people is the defect of all those who belong to authority; the people, as concerns power, is the enemy.

Quotes about Proudhon

 * Proudhon is the master of us all.
 * Mikhail Bakunin, as cited in Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962) by George Woodcock, p. 152

 * France had been the cradle of anarchism, fathered for a long time by some of her most brilliant sons, of whom Proudhon was the greatest.
 * Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)

 * Proudhon said that it is surprising how at the bottom of politics one always finds theology.
 * Erik von Kuhnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: Freom de Sade and Marx to Hilter and Marcuse, Arlingthon House (1974), p. 54

 * Proudhon in spite of his anticlericalism (which abated toward the end of his life) was deeply imbued with Christian moral principles.
 * Erik von Kuhnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: Freom de Sade and Marx to Hilter and Marcuse, Arlingthon House (1974), p. 124

 * It is difficult to name a single author, alive or dead, of whom Proudhon ever found anything good to say. His other crochets included antisemitism, Anglophobia, tolerance for slavery (he publicly sided with the South during the American civil war), dislike of Germans, Italians, Poles--indeed of all non-French nationalities--and a firmly patriarchal view of family life ... After this it comes as no surprise that he believed in inherent inequalities among the races or that he regarded women as inferior beings.
 * George Lichtheim, The Origins of Socialism (1969)

 * Proudhon had considered the patriarchal family as the fundamental social unit in his society without laws. He also disapproved of divorce and expected that women would always fulfill domestic functions...Proudhon, Kropotkin, and the other anarchist theorists who viewed women in such conventional ways argued that certain behavior patterns were natural for each sex. Since nature provided woman with a dependent personality, a nurturing instinct, and a desire for motherhood, to have her act in accord with those feelings would not violate her freedom because they would be an expression of her natural self. Many anarchist women, from Emma Goldman to the unassuming Helena Born, disagreed with this notion of woman's nature. Dismissing the interpretations of the male theorists, they appropriated for themselves the dogma of absolute individual liberty, reminded their male comrades of their responsibility not to infringe on the liberty of women, and rejected patriarchal as well as governmental authority. In their lives, perhaps as much as in their work, they gave evidence of their determination to apply anarchist tenets equally to men and women.
 * Margaret S Marsh, Anarchist Women, 1870-1920 (1981)

 * Benjamin Tucker derived his economic and political ideas principally from two sources: Josiah Warren and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon, the French printer whom all anarchists considered their intellectual father, developed an economic and social system that abolished government while it emphasized economic equality. Proudhon believed that such equality could be achieved only if individuals were left free to work out with each other the kinds of social and economic relationships most compatible with the autonomy of each...it was Tucker who brought their ideas together in Liberty and whose efforts attracted a solid core of followers and sympathizers.
 * Margaret S Marsh, Anarchist Women, 1870-1920 (1981)

 * Proudhon was the first to draw attention to the fact that the sum of the wages of the individual workers, even if each individual labour be paid for completely, does not pay for the collective power objectified in its product, that therefore the worker is not paid as a part of the collective labour power.
 * Karl Marx, in The Holy Family, Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume 4, p. 52 (1845)

 * In France, Proudhon has the right to be a bad economist because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher because he is reputed to be one of the ablest of French economists. But being both a German and an economist, I wish to protest against this double error.
 * Karl Marx, in The Poverty of Philosophy [Das Elend der Philosophie] (1847)

 * We can find the origins of the doctrine of surplus value, that grand "scientific discovery" of which our marxists are so proud, in the writings of Proudhon. It was thanks to him that Marx became acquainted with that theory to which he added modifications through his later study of the English socialists Bray and Thompson.
 * Rudolf Rocker, in Marx and Anarchism (1925)

 * Proudhon hated all authority and rebuked anyone planning a dictatorial form of socialism. He abhorred government altogether and made the call for a free federation of independent communes. He rejected all laws as instruments of oppression; he wanted communes to conclude agreements with each other about how their members should live.
 * Robert Service, Comrades! A History of World Communism (2007), p. 17
 * Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against egoism. Therefore they are continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something general, something alien. They complete in property, only what has long been extant as a matter of fact — namely, the propertylessness of the individual. ... In this too Proudhon is like the Christians, that he ascribes to God that which he denies to men. He names him the Proprietaire of the earth. Herewith he proves that he cannot think away the proprietor as such; he comes to a proprietor at last, but removes him to the other world.
 * Max Stirner, in The Individual and His Property [Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum] (1845)

 * Like such titles as Christian and Quaker, "anarchist" was in the end proudly adopted by one of those against whom it had been used in condemnation. In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, that stormy, argumentative individualist who prided himself on being a man of paradox and a provoker of contradiction, published the work that established him as a pioneer libertarian thinker. It was What Is Property?, in which he gave his own question the celebrated answer: "Property is theft." In the same book he became the first man willingly to claim the title of anarchist. Undoubtedly Proudhon did this partly in defiance, and partly in order to exploit the word's paradoxical qualities. He had recognized the ambiguity of the Greek anarchos, and had gone back to it for that very reason — to emphasize that the criticism of authority on which he was about to embark need not necessarily imply an advocacy of disorder. The passages in which he introduces "anarchist" and "anarchy" are historically important enough to merit quotation, since they not merely show these words being used for the first time in a socially positive sense, but also contain in germ the justification by natural law which anarchists have in general applied to their arguments for a non-authoritarian society.
 * What is to be the form of government in the future? … I hear some of my readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question? You — are a republican." A republican! Yes, but that word specifies nothing. Res publico; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs — no matter under what form of government, may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans. "Well, you are a democrat." No … "Then what are you?" I am an anarchist!
 * George Woodcock, in Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), Prologue

 * Proudhon goes on to suggest that the real laws by which society functions have nothing to do with authority; they are not imposed from above, but stem from the nature of society itself. He sees the free emergence of such laws as the goal of social endeavour. ... Proudhon conceiving a natural law of balance operating within society, rejects authority as an enemy and not a friend of order, and throws back at the authoritarians the accusations leveled at anarchists; in the process he adopts the title he hopes to have cleared of obloquy.
 * George Woodcock, in Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), Prologue

 * Proudhon was a voluntary hermit in the political world of the nineteenth century. He sought no followers, indignantly rebuffed suggestions that he had created as system of any kind, and almost certainly rejoiced in the fact that he accepted the title anarchist in virtual isolation.
 * George Woodcock, in Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), Prologue

 * It is the general idea put forward by Proudhon in 1840 that unites him with the later anarchists, with Bakunin and Kropotkin, and also with certain earlier and later thinkers, such as Godwin, Stirner, and Tolstoy, who evolved anti-governmental systems without accepting the name of anarchy; and it is in this sense that I shall treat anarchism, despite its many variations: as a system of social thought, aiming at fundamental changes in the structure of society and particularly — for this is the common element uniting all its forms — at the replacement of the authoritarian state by some form of non-governmental cooperation between free individuals.
 * George Woodcock, in Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), Prologue

title: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon


text:
The Hospital

The Hospital is a 1971 black comedy film in which a suicidal doctor struggles to find meaning in his life while a murderer stalks the halls of his hospital.
 * Directed by Arthur Hiller. Written by Paddy Chayefsky.

Behind the lab coat beats the heart of a man who's been pushed to the edge. taglines

Dr. Bock

 * Now what in hell am I going to tell this boy Schaefer's parents? That a substitute nurse assassinated him because she couldn't tell the doctors from the patients on the floor? My God! The incompetence in this hospital is absolutely radiant... I mean, where do you train your nurses, Mrs. Christie, Dachau!?

 * You're greedy, unfeeling, inept, indifferent, self-inflating, and unconscionably profitable. Besides that, I have nothing against you. I'm sure you play a hell of a game of golf.

 * We've got a 23-year-old boy. I threw him out of the house last year. A shaggy-haired Maoist. I don't know where he is. Presumably, building bombs in basements as an expression of universal brotherhood.

 * I'm middle class. Among us middle class, love doesn't triumph over all - responsibility does.

Barbara Drummond

 * Within a week, my father had closed his Beacon Hill practice and set out to start a mission in the Mexican Mountains. I turned in my SDS card and my crash helmet, and I followed him. It was a disaster, at least for me. My father had received the revelation, not I. He stood gaunt on a mountain slope and preached the Apocalypse to solemnly amused Indians. I masturbated a great deal. We lived in a grass wickiup, ate raw rabbit and crushed piñon nuts. It was hideous. Within two months, I was back in Boston. A hollow shell, disenchanted with everything, and dizzy with dengue. I turned to austerity, combed my hair tight, entered nursing school. I became haggard, driven - had shamelessly incestuous dreams about my father. I took up with some of the senior staff there. One of them a portly psychiatrist, explained I was generated by an unresolved lust for my father. I cracked up. One day, they found me walking to work naked and screaming obscenities. There was talk of institutionalizing me. So I packed a bag and went back to join my father in the Sierra Madre Mountains. I've been there ever since. That's three years. My father is, of course, as mad as a hatter. I watch over him, and have been curiously content. You see, Doctor, I believe in everything.

 * Mr. Blacktree disapproves of my miniskirt, the only thing I had to come to the city with. Back at the tribe, I wear ankle-length buckskin.

 * You're a very tired, very damaged man. You've had a hideous marriage, I assume a few tacky affairs along the way. You're understandably reluctant to get involved again. On top of that, here I am with this preposterous idea you throw everything up and go off with me to some barren mountains in Mexico. Utterly mad, I know. On the other hand, you obviously find this world as desolate as I do. You did try to kill yourself last night. So that's it, Herb. Either me and the mountains or - a bottle of potassium.

Edmund Drummond

 * This is Dr. Ives. He's in the Nephrology Lab. I was in there a little while ago, and he was suddenly taken ill, and I thought I'd better get him over here right away. He had at that time perhaps an hour to live. Prompt treatment would have saved his life. As a staff doctor, he was seen without preliminaries... His vital signs were taken, an electrocardiogram... which revealed occasional ventricular premature contractions. An intern took his history... and then he was promptly... simply... forgotten to death.

 * I am the fool for Christ, and Paraclete of Caborca.

 * Mislaid. Mislaid among the broken wrists, the chest pains, the scalp lacerations, the man whose fingers were crushed in a taxi door, the infant with a skin rash, the child swiped by a car, the old lady mugged in the subway, the derelict beaten by sailors, the teenage suicide, the paranoids, drunks, asthmatics, the rapes, the septic abortions, the overdosed addicts, the fractures, infarcts, hemorrhages, concussions, boils, abrasions, the colonic cancers, the cardiac arrests - the whole wounded madhouse of our times.

Other

 * Mrs. Cushing: Dr. Spezio, may I see you for a moment, Doctor, if you don't mind? Doctor is this your handwriting, if you don't mind? Am I supposed to read this? Was that a sprain? Was that a broken wrist? I can't read that scribbling. I mean I have to bill these people. I know you doctors are the ministering angels and I'm the bitch from the accounting department, but I've a job to do too. I mean, if you don't mind, Doctor.

Dialogue

 * Dr. Sundstrom: Herb, do you want to take a couple of days off?
 * Dr. Bock: No.
 * Dr. Sundstrom: Go down to Montego Bay, get drunk, get laid, get a little sun?
 * Dr. Bock: For God's sake, I'm 53 years old, with all the attendant fears. I just left my wife, after 24 years. A standard case of menopausal melancholy.
 * Dr. Sundstrom: Maybe you wanna see Joe Einhorn.
 * Dr. Bock: Don't wanna see a psychiatrist. Stop worrying about me. All I got to do is get my ass back to work, I'll be fine. I'm sorry if I caused you concern.

 * Dr. Einhorn: I see a man exhausted, emotionally drained, riddled with guilt, has been systematically stripping himself of wife, children, friends - isolating himself from the world. Are you impotent?
 * Dr. Bock: Intermittently.
 * Dr. Einhorn: What does that mean?
 * Dr. Bock: It means I haven't tried in so long, I don't know.

 * Dr. Bock: A man comes into this hospital in perfect health, and in the space of one week, we chop out one kidney, damage another, reduce him to coma, and damn near kill him.
 * Dr. Brubaker: Yes, sir.
 * Dr. Bock: You know, Brubaker, last night I sat in my hotel room, reviewing the shambles of my life - and contemplating suicide. I said, "No, Bock. No, don't do it. You're a doctor, you're a healer. You're the Chief of Medicine at one of the great hospitals of the world. You are a necessary person. Your life is meaningful." Then I walk in here, today, and I find out that one of my doctors. was killed by a couple of nurses who mistook him for a patient; because, he screwed a technician from the Nephrology Lab.
 * Dr. Brubaker: Hematology.
 * Dr. Bock: And now you come to me with this gothic horror story in which the entire machinery of modern medicine has apparently conspired to destroy one lousy patient. Now, how am I to sustain my feeling of meaningfulness in the face of this?

 * Edmund Drummond: So at 9:15 this morning I rang for my nurse...
 * Dr. Bock: Rang for your nurse?
 * Edmund Drummond: To ensure one full hour of uninterrupted privacy.
 * Dr. Bock: Good.

 * Barbara: I don't want my father in this hospital. I had a dream about this hospital. I dreamt this enormous, starched, white-tile building suddenly erupted like a volcano, and all the patients, doctors, nurses, attendants, orderlies, the whole line-staff, food-service people, the aged, the lame, and you, right in the middle, were stampeding in one hideous, screaming, suicidal mass into the sea. I'm taking my father out of here and as quickly as I can.
 * Dr. Bock: You're really a fruitcake, you know?

 * Mrs. Cushing: Dr. Spezio. I think one of your patients in here is dead, Dr. Spezio.
 * Dr. Spezio: Why do you say that, Mrs. Cushing?
 * Mrs. Cushing: Because he wouldn't give me his Blue Cross number, Dr. Spezio.

 * Barbara: I fancied you from the first moment you came lumbering down that hallway, upstairs. I said to Mr. Blacktree, "Who's that hulking bear of a man?" Apaches are reverential about bears. Won't eat bear meat, never skin bears. Bears are thought of as both benign and evil, but very strong power. Men with bear power are highly respected and are said to be great healers. "That man," I said, "gets his power from the bear."
 * Dr. Bock: Swell.

 * Barbara: I have a thing about middle-aged men.
 * Dr. Bock: I admire your candor.
 * Barbara: You've been admiring a lot more than that.
 * Dr. Bock: You're wasting your time. I've been impotent for years.
 * Barbara: Rubbish.
 * Dr. Bock: What the hell is wrong with being impotent? Kids are more hung up on sex than the Victorians. I got a son, 23 years old. I threw him out of the house last year. Pietistic little humbug. He preached universal love, and he despised everyone. Had a blanket contempt for the middle class, even its decencies. He detested my mother because she had a petit bourgeois pride in her son, the doctor. I cannot tell you how brutishly he ignored that rather good lady. When she died, he didn't even come to the funeral. He felt the chapel service was an hypocrisy. He told me his generation didn't live with lies. I said, 'Listen, everybody lives with lies.' I — I grabbed him by his poncho and I dragged him the length of our seven-room, despicably affluent, middle-class apartment, and I flung him — out! I haven't seen him since. You know what he said to me? He's standing there on the landing, you know, on the verge of tears. He shrieked at me: 'You old fink. You can't even get it up anymore.' That was it, you see. That was his real revolution. It wasn't racism, the oppressed poor, or the war in Vietnam. No, the ultimate American societal sickness was a limp dingus. My God. If there is a despised, misunderstood minority in this country, it is us poor, impotent bastards. Well, I'm impotent, and I'm proud of it. Impotence is beautiful, baby! POWER TO THE IMPOTENT! RIGHT ON, BABY! ...You know, when I say impotent, I don't mean merely limp. Disagreeable as it may be for a woman, a man may lust for other things, something a little less transient than an erection. A sense of permanent worth. That's what medicine was to me, my reason for being.  You know, Miss Drummond, when I was 34, I presented a paper before the annual convention of the Society of Clinical Investigation that pioneered the whole goddamn field of immunology. A breakthrough. I'm in all the textbooks. I happen to be an eminent man, Miss Drummond. You know something else, Miss Drummond? I don't give a goddamn. When I say impotent, I mean I've lost even my desire to work. That's a hell of a lot more primal passion than sex. I've lost my reason for being. My purpose. The only thing I ever truly loved. Well, it is all rubbish, isn't it?  I mean, transplants, anti-bodies. We manufacture genes. We can produce birth ecto-genetically. We can practically clone people like carrots, and half the kids in this ghetto haven't even been inoculated for polio! We have established the most enormous, medical entity ever conceived and people are sicker than ever! WE CURE NOTHING! WE HEAL NOTHING! The whole goddamn wretched world is strangulating in front of our eyes. That's what I mean when I say impotent. You don't know what the hell I'm talking about, do you?...I'm tired. I'm very tired, Miss Drummond. And I hurt. And I've got nothing going for me anymore. Can you understand that?...And you also understand that the only admissible matter left is death.
 * Barbara: You have a familiar case of morbid menopause. It's hard for me to take your despair seriously, doctor. You obviously enjoy it so much.
 * Dr. Bock: Bugger off! That's all I need now is clinical insight. Some cockamamie 25 year-old acidhead is gonna reassure me about the menopause now!

 * Dr. Bock: What do you say, Miss Drummond?
 * Barbara: I expect you can call me Barbara... considering you ravished me three times last night....
 * Dr. Bock: Three times?
 * Barbara: Oh, look at him pretending he didn't count. You were as puffed up as a toad about it. Punched a couple of holes in your crusade for universal impotence, didn't it? I think we're on first-name basis now.

 * Dr. Mead: For heaven's sake, William, you're gonna be in the hospital for two lousy days. What are you making such a fuss about?
 * William Mead: You're supposed to be a big wheel around here.
 * Milton Mead: There are no private rooms available. If they brought in Jesus Christ fresh off the cross, I couldn't get him a private room.

 * Barbara: We could really use you down there, you know there's a curiously high incidence of TB. You would be a doctor again, Herb. You would be necessary again. If you love me, I don't see what other choice you have?
 * Dr. Bock: What do you mean if I love you? I raped you in a suicidal rage, how do we get to love and children all the sudden?

Taglines

 * Behind the lab coat beats the heart of a man who's been pushed to the edge.
 * Madness, Murder and Malpractice.
 * Watch them operate!
 * I may be crazy, but I think I've operated on the wrong patient.

Cast

 * George C. Scott - Dr. Herbert "Herb" Bock
 * Diana Rigg - Miss Barbara Drummond
 * Robert Walden - Dr. Brubaker
 * Barnard Hughes - Edmund Drummond (and an uncredited role as Dr. Mallory, the OB/GYN who discovers he's got the wrong patient.)
 * Richard A. Dysart - Dr. Welbeck
 * Stephen Elliott - Dr. John Sundstrom
 * Andrew Duncan - William "Willie" Mead
 * Donald Harron - Dr. Milton Mead
 * Nancy Marchand - Mrs. Christie, Head of Nurses
 * Jordan Charney - Hitchcock, Hospital Administration
 * Roberts Blossom - Guernsey
 * Lenny Baker - Dr. Howard Schaefer
 * Richard Hamilton - Dr. Ronald Casey
 * Arthur Junaluska - Mr. Blacktree
 * Kate Harrington - Nurse Dunne
 * Katherine Helmond - Mrs. Marilyn Mead
 * David Hooks - Dr. Joe Einhorn
 * Frances Sternhagen - Mrs. Sally Cushing
 * Stockard Channing - E.R. Nurse

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Hospital


text:
Cynicism

Cynicism is a term which originally referred to the ancient Greek philosophy of the Cynics, often considered to have been founded by Antisthenes. Currently, the word "cynicism" generally refers to the opinions of those who are inclined to reject appearances of sincerity, human virtue, or altruism, and maintain that self-interest is the primary motive of human behaviour. The most extreme forms of cynicism can lead to anomie and nihilism.

A

 * There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
 * Maya Angelou, as quoted in The Truth in Words (2005) by Neal Zero

B

 * Cynic: An idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision.
 * Rick Bayan (b. 1950), U.S. author, copyrighter and cynic. The Cynic’s Dictionary (1994)

 * The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one.''' He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes — openly bad and secretly bad.
 * Henry Ward Beecher, in Lectures to Young Men: On Various Important Subjects (1860) Lecture IV : Portrait Gallery

 * Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
 * Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

C

 * If you scratch a cynic, you will find a disappointed idealist.
 * George Carlin
 * Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
 * Charlie Chaplin, in The Great Dictator (1940)

 * Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because '''cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.
 * Stephen Colbert, Knox College Commencement Address (3 June 2006)

 * Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying "yes"...
 * Stephen Colbert, Knox College Commencement Address (3 June 2006)

 * Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.
 * Mason Cooley (1927-2002), American aphorist. City Aphorisms (1984)

 * Cynicism formulates issues clearly, but only to dismiss them.
 * Mason Cooley, City Aphorisms, Sixth Selection (1989)

 * Cynicism is intellectual treason.
 * Norman Cousins, Human Options (1981)

D

 * Cynics are disappointed romantics; they keep looking for someone to admire and can never find anyone.
 * Len Deighton, Stated by the character, Byrd, in An Expensive Place to Die (1967), Ch. 34

E

 * People who are stupid, unscrupulous, or hypocritical, think that others are just the same. And — this is the real pity — they treat them as if they were.
 * Josemaría Escrivá Furrow #551

F

 * I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope – an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
 * John Fowles, The Magus (1966)

 * Cynicism is cheap – you can buy it at any Monoprix store – it’s built into all poor-quality goods.
 * Graham Greene (1904–1991), British novelist. The Comedians (1966), pt. 1, ch. 1, sct. 3

H

 * A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
 * Sydney J. Harris (b. 1917), American journalist. On the Contrary (1962) Ch. 7

 * Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
 * Lillian Hellman in The Little Foxes (1939)

 * Your universities teach you to be eternal cynics, a cynicism that can be only drowned in alcohol and diet pills and psychoanalysts and golf. Forget your cynicism. There is not one who has more respect for life than a revolutionist.
 * Abbie Hoffman, Woodstock Nation (1969)

 * Irony differentiates. Cynicism never does.
 * Paul Horgan, in Approaches to Writing (1973), No. 398

 * Those who are too weak to make a stand against reality have no choice but to obliterate themselves by identifying with it. They are never rationally reconciled to civilization. Instead, they bow to it, secretly accepting the identity of reason and domination, of civilization and the ideal, however much they may shrug their shoulders. Well-informed cynicism is only another mode of conformity. These people willingly embrace or force themselves to accept the rule of the stronger as the eternal norm.
 * Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 113

 * There is a principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations.
 * David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Appendix 2

 * A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist.
 * Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by Sir Nigel Hawthorne in Yes, Minister, Series Three (1982), Episode Four: The Moral Dimension, written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn

J

 * Cynicism isn't smarter, it's only safer. There's nothing fluffy about optimism.
 * Jewel Kitcher on The Late Late Show (24 January 1997)

L

 * You resemble those political economists who, if they see a paragraph in the paper one day rejoicing over the country's prosperity, examine its columns to see what new tax is to be suggested.
 * Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), Vol. I, Chapter 11

 * I once said cynically of a politician, "He'll double-cross that bridge when he comes to it."
 * Oscar Levant, in The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965), p. 13

M

 * During the Cold War, you could trot out communism or anti-imperialism as alternatives, but today few people will believe your obviously corrupt system is better than the rule of law and democracy championed by the West. So you appeal to cynicism rather than idealism. You say that the so-called democracies of the world are just as craven and corrupt as anyone, but less honest about it; that every country kills its enemies; that all media is propaganda; that morality is just a weapon some countries use to beat up others; that in this contest, there is no objective truth, just subjective opinion, no right or wrong, just winners and losers.
 * Tom Malinowski, "What America Stood For" (25 March 2017), The Atlantic

 * Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.
 * George Meredith, in The Egoist (1879), Ch. 7

 * A society that is in its higher circles and on its middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of ‘success’ to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.
 * C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956), p. 347

N

 * Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness — that means cynically and with innocence.
 * Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Will to Power, Preface (1888)

O

 * The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
 * Joyce Carol Oates, American author and academic, Do What You Will, pt 2, ch 15

 * All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism — it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.
 * Conan O'Brien, Final words, January 22, 2010 TV Guide news

 * Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo — or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?
 * José Ortega y Gasset, in The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Ch. XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

R

 * Cynicism is only intellectual sloth.
 * Henry Rollins, "Riff on life's journey blends humor, hope", Columbus Dispatch

 * The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities — all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance... It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat... The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic" (23 April 1910)

S

 * The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
 * George Bernard Shaw, The World (18 July 1894), Music in London 1890-1894 being criticisms contributed week by week to The World (New York: Vienna House, 1973).

 * A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.
 * Edgar A. Shoaff, as quoted in Bathroom Almanac (1981) by Gus McLeavy, p. 8

T

 * The greater part of the truth is always hidden, in regions out of the reach of cynicism.'''
 * J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter to his son, Michael Tolkien, 1st November 1963, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Allan and Unwin (1981), p. 336

W

 * What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
 * Oscar Wilde, in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892); often paraphrased : "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

 * Cynicism is just an excuse for not helping. Anger only diminishes our power. Whining is absolutely not an option. The answer now? GET BUSY. Progressive candidates are running in primaries all over the country. HELP THEM!
 * Marianne Williamson, Twitter (16 January 2020)

title: Cynicism