I do not wish to hear tell of revelation, tradition or Chinese, Phoenician, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, German or French philosophies; outside of my faith or my religion, for which I am answerable to none, I do not know what use to make of the ramblings of ancestors; I have no ancestors. As far as I am concerned, the creation of the world dates from the day I was born; as far as I am concerned, the world must end on the day when my body and the breath which go together to make up my individual existence are returned to the earth. I am first roan and I will be last man. My history is a summary of the history of humankind; I know nothing else and wish to know nothing else.
What do I care for what was done before me? How can what will be done after me affect me? I need be neither a burnt offering to dead generations nor an example to posterity. I am encapsulated within the span of my existence, and the only problem I must resolve is the problem of my well-being. I have but one doctrine and that doctrine has but a single formula, and that formula but a single word: ENJOYMENT. Whoever recognises that is honest; whoever denies it an impostor.
Selflessness is slavery, shabbiness wail abjection; it is king, government, tyranny, mourning and civil war. Individualism, on the other hand, is redemption, greatness, chivalry; it is man, people, liberty, fraternity and order.
Anselme Bellegarrigue (Born ca. 1820)
“Anarchist Manifesto” (1850)
