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I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.

— Pierre-Joseph Proudhon What is Property? (1840)

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More quotes by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.

What is Property? (1840)

All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.

Philosophy at Work : A Constructive Approach to Philosophy (1960)

To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance.

What is Property? (1840)

As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.

What is Property? (1840)

Talents is a creation of society rather than a gift of nature; it is an accumulated capital of which the recipient is only the guardian.

What is Property? (1840)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.