Quotes by George Woodcock

“I began even as a boy to realize how wide the world can be for a man of free intelligence.”

“I was allowed to wander where I could. Here is a case in which you search for your independence and allow something creative to come out of that.”

“It is not in life but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.”

“Pioneers did not produce original works of art because they were creating original human environments they did not imagine Utopias because they were shaping them.”

“If we can find out why the idea rather than the nation of Canada can win a growing loyalty rather than commanding it then it seems to me we shall have come very near to trapping the elusive crea...”

“If we try to envisage an 'average Canadian writer' we can see him living near a campus teaching at least part-time at university level mingling too much for his work's good with academics doing ...”

“Pioneers did not produce original works of art because they were creating original human environments they did not imagine Utopias because they were shaping them.”

“Orwell can only be understood as an essentially quixotic man. … He defended, passionately and as a matter of principle, unpopular causes. Often without regard to reason he would strike out against ...”

“When I die let the black rag fly raven falling from the sky.”

“For out of black soul's night have stirred dawn's cold gleam, morning's singing bird. Let black day die, let black flag fall, let raven call, let new day dawn of black reborn.”

“Whoever denies authority and fights against it is an anarchist, said Sebastien Faure. The definition is tempting in its simplicity, but simplicity is the first thing to guard against in writing a h...”

“Anarchism, nihilism, and terrorism are often mistakenly equated, and in most dictionaries will be found at least two definitions of the anarchist. One presents him as a man who believes that govern...”

“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, argum...”

“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 nothi...”

“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...”

“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 cert...”

“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, Stirn...”

“Anarchism is a creed inspired and ridden by paradox, and thus, while its advocates theoretically reject tradition, they are nevertheless very much concerned with the ancestry of their doctrine. Thi...”

“Because anarchism is in its essence an anti-dogmatic and unstructured cluster of related attitudes, which does not depend for its existence on any enduring organization, it can flourish when circum...”

“While we can doubtless look to some wide changes in the shapes of social relationships as a result of contemporary libertarian movements, and especially to an increase in workers' involvement in de...”