This website frequently delves through the dustbin of history to find real gems. This one features an essay by a famous anarchist first published in 1880. It is clear to me that his ideas are as relevant today as they were then. To be sure some conditions have changed and they require different methods of organizing; but the same spirit of resistance to an oppressive, death and destruction based system and class structure is still revealing itself throughout the world. Today, the resurrection of that life-affirming spirit is more urgent than ever before.
Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action, — men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile, and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles, — intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed, — these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights.