Think For Yourself

.... Göethe here .... gives expression to one of the tragic facts of life, namely that the very act of living involves a man (or a commonwealth) in wrong-doing, inevitably. this becomes all the more painfully apparent as a man's career develops in scope and power. To illustrate this by an extreme, negative example, one might call to mind those Buddhist monks in Tibet who did not venture forth from their cells in the summertime for fear of the crime of destroying the life crawling beneath their feet. This solution in inaction is one hardly valid or generally acceptable to man; he must resolutely face the fact that action means sin and so conduct his life that the active good he does will in the end far outweigh the wrong in which he will necessarily be involved, realizing that with care and awareness he may actually be able to turn his particular wrongs into a general good.
— Johann Wolfgang von Göethe, The Soothsayings of Bakis, Harold Jantz (tr.), p. 12.

     In our day, also, the impassioned social idealists, in their admiration for the words, tend to overlook the acts and intents of the neotyranies. They continue to use every trick of mental self-deception to keep on believing that the deeds are somewhat unimportant, that the millions who perish in the process are as nothing compared to the glorious goal envisaged for mankind. It is an old insight shared by Göethe that the idealist in power becomes the ruthless tyrant sweeping away all human opposition to the realization of his idea while disregarding the real needs of the people.
— Johann Wolfgang von Göethe, Ibid., p. 21.

....Out of the many promising undertakings of men and nations, only a few come to fruition; out of the hopes and ambitions of the individual, only a few are realized; out of the millions of children with brilliant promise, only a few reach greatness. As Göethe observed in the second book of his autobiography, "If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses." The prodigality of blossoming life is simply a part of the process of nature; we should not expect too much future fruit from it. But what of it? The blossoms are so beautiful.
— Johann Wolfgang von Göethe, Ibid., p. 43.

    The percept he conveys in his life and work [Göethe] could perhaps be phrased in this way: know which way the wind blows, but take your direction from the stars.
— Johann Wolfgang von Göethe, Ibid., p. 51.

     People go to church as they go to a tavern, in order to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to see themselves in their imagination, for a few minutes at least, free and happy, as happy as others, the well-to-do people. Give them a human existence, and they will never go into a tavern or a church. And it is only the Social Revolution that can and will give them such an existence.
— Michael Bakunin, A Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy, 10-1871, in Quotations From the Anarchists, Paul Berman (ed.), p. 91.

     Reduced intellectually and morally as well as materially, to the minimum of human existence, confined in their life like a prisoner in his prison, without horizon, without outlet, without even a future if we believe the economists, the people would have the singularly narrow souls and blunted instincts of the bourgeois if they did not feel a desire to escape; but of escape there are but three methods — two chimerical and a third real. The first two are the tavern and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution.
— Michael Bakunin, God and State, 1871, in Ibid., p. 98.

     The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the state is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism, 1910, in Ibid., p. 182.

     Let us not be afraid to say that we want men capable of evolving endlessly, capable of destroying and renewing their environments without cessation, of renewing themselves also; men whose intellectual independence will be their greatest force, who will attach themselves to nothing, always ready to accept what is best, happy in the triumph of new ideas aspiring to live many lives in one life. Society fears such men; therefore, we must not hope that it will ever want an education able to give them to us.
— Francisco Ferrer, The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School, 1913, in Ibid., p. 209.