(1912 - 1992) ~ Modern Avant-Garde, Musical Composer and Thoreau-Inspired Anarchist : All of his compositions were difficult to reproduce and perform, which was an embodiment of his anarchist views.... Cage considered himself to be an anarchist, and was inspired by the work of Thoreau. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "We have no need for imaginary mountain ranges between separate nations. We can make tunnels through the real ones." (From : "Untitled Anarchist Poem," by John Cage.)
• "...work is now obsolete. We have invented machines to do it for us." (From : "Untitled Anarchist Poem," by John Cage.)
• "Our present laws protect the rich from the poor. If there are to be laws, we need ones that begin with the acceptance of poverty as a way of life. We must make the world safe for poverty without dependence on government." (From : "Untitled Anarchist Poem," by John Cage.)
“Two days later I started for the assembly, having bid farewell to my wife in an excellent and tranquil state of mind. In the district there was always much to be done. It was a world and a life apart. During two days I spent ten hours at the sessions. The evening of the second day, on returning to my district lodgings, I found a letter from my wife, telling me of the children, of their uncle, of the servants, and, among other things, as if it were perfectly natural, that Troukhatchevsky had been at the house, and had brought her the promised scores. He had also proposed that they play again, but she had refused. “For my part, I did not remember at all that he had promised any score. It had seemed to me on Sunday evening that he took a definite leave, and for this reason the news gave me a disagreeable surprise. I read the letter again. There was something tender and timid about it. It produced an extremely painful impression upon me. My heart swelled, and the...
1857. Five rich young men went at three o'clock in the morning to a ball in Petersburg to have a good time. Much champagne was drunk; a majority of the gentlemen were very young; the girls were pretty; a pianist and a fiddler played indefatigably one polka after another; there was no cease to the noise of conversation and dancing. But there was a sense of awkwardness and constraint; every one felt somehow or other—and this is not unusual—that all was not as it should be. There were several attempts made to make things more lively, but simulated liveliness is much worse than melancholy. One of the five young men, who was more discontented than any one else, both with himself and with the others, and who had been feeling all the evening a sense of disgust, took his hat, and went out noiselessly on purpose, intending to go home. There was no one in the ante-room, but in the next room at the door he heard two voices disputing. Th...
(1798 - 1874) ~ Early American Individualist Anarchist Publisher and Writer : Equally notable as an inventive genius, a social philosopher, and a peaceful revolutionist, Josiah Warren stands forth, by descent, by his practical, all-round talents, by the force of an earnest life's work, as an American of the sturdy pioneer type whose brawn and brains have formed the true foundation of the republic. (From : William Bailie Bio.)
• "It is not till after long and painful experience and study that we discover that the precedents, traditions, authorities, and fictions upon which society has been allowed to grow up, do not coincide with each other, nor with the great unconquerable primitive or divine laws." (From : "True Civilization," by Josiah Warren.)
• "It is worse than useless, it is calamitous, to legislate as if it were possible to divest ourselves of this involuntary instinct of self- preservation or self-sovereignty, and those who accept or act on such pledge commit as great an error as those who give it, and all contracts to this effect being impossible of fulfillment are null and void." (From : "True Civilization," by Josiah Warren.)
• "Primitive nature insists on an Individuality in a personal lead, and it is in vain for us to contend against it." (From : "True Civilization," by Josiah Warren.)