Ammon Hennacy Quotes & Sayings

Too many of us dissipate our energy by being 'for all good causes,' attending meetings and passing resolutions, organizing and presenting petitions - all this effort to change others, when if we really got down to it we could use this energy to change ourselves ... We become tired radicals because we use our weakest weapon: the ballot box, where we are always outnumbered, and refuse to use our strongest weapon: spiritual power. — Ammon Hennacy

A pacifist between wars is like a vegetarian between meals. — Ammon Hennacy

Oh judge! Your damn laws! The good people don't need them, and the bad people don't obey them. — Ammon Hennacy

I wasn't disturbing the peace, I was disturbing the war — Ammon Hennacy

Being a pacifist to save your own life is normal, being a pacifist for the lives of others is true pacifism. — Ammon Hennacy

We really can't change the world. We really can't change other people! The best we can do is to start a few thinking here and there. The best way to do this, if we are sincere, is to change ourselves! — Ammon Hennacy

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage and wisdom moves the world. — Ammon Hennacy

I'm not trying to change the world. I'm trying to stop the world from changing me. — Ammon Hennacy

An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to make him behave. — Ammon Hennacy

Despite the popular idea of anarchists as violent men, Anarchism is the one non-violent social philosophy. ... The function of the Anarchist is two-fold. By daily courage in non-cooperation with the tyrannical forces of the State and the Church, he helps to tear down present society; the Anarchist by daily cooperation with his fellows in overcoming evil with good-will and solidarity builds toward the anarchistic commonwealth which is formed by voluntary action with the right of secession. — Ammon Hennacy

The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world. — Ammon Hennacy

To change the world by bullets or ballots was a useless procedure. If the workers ever did get a majority of either, they would have the envy and greed in their hearts and would be chained by these as much as by the chains of the master class. And the State which they would like to call a Cooperative Commonwealth would be based on power; the state would not wither away but would grow. Therefore the only revolution worthwhile was the one-man revolution within the heart. Each one could make this by himself and not need to wait on a majority. — Ammon Hennacy

A Christian anarchist has no business belonging to such a reactionary organization [the Catholic Church]. I do not believe in original sin, indulgences, the infallibility of the pope, or obedience to any church official if it is against my conscience. I am not interested in earning "merit" or in being saved by priestly incantation. — Ammon Hennacy

Force is the weapon of the weak. — Ammon Hennacy

Pastor Russell lived in nearby Pittsburgh and said that there was no hell. This was terrible for we all knew that everyone but the Baptists were going there, so to believe there was no hell upset all the countryside theology. — Ammon Hennacy