God and the State (written 1870-1876, published 1882; Benjamin Tucker translation)

Their wordsYes, the whole history of humanity, intellectual and moral, political and social, is but a reflection of its economic history.

Their wordsThree elements or, if you like, three fundamental principles constitute the essential conditions of all human development, collective or individual, in history: (1) human animality; (2) thought; and (3) rebellion.

Their wordsNothing, in fact, is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and absurd; truth and justice, on the contrary, are the least universal, the youngest features in the development of human society.

Their wordsWhence it results that the antiquity of a belief, of an idea, far from proving anything in its favor, ought, on the contrary, to lead us to suspect it.

Their wordsThey are the instinctive and passionate protest of the human being against the narrowness, the platitudes, the sorrows, and the shame of a wretched existence. For this malady, I have already said, there is but one remedy—Social Revolution.

Their wordsWith all due respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious idealists, philosophers, politicians, or poets: The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice.

Their wordsIf God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist.

Their wordsA jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.

Their wordsThe liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.

Their wordsIt is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether politically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart.

Their wordsBut I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.

Their wordsTherefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

Their wordsIn a word, we reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even though arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interests of the immense majority in subjection to them.

Their wordsOf all despotisms that of the doctrinaires or inspired religionists is the worst.

Their wordsIt follows that the only mission of science is to enlighten life, not to govern it.

Their wordsWell, religion is a collective insanity, the more powerful because it is traditional folly, and because its origin is lost in the most remote antiquity.

Their wordsThere is not, there cannot be, a State without religion.