Berkman Quotes

Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep. ~ Alexander Berkman

The overriding thing has to be a love for people. If you don't love people, you don't care if we live in a morally degrading society. Christ is about love, and that's what we want to be about as well. ~ Lance Berkman

Theres a little more margin for error this year. Last year, it felt like we had to win every game. That wasnt a lot of fun. ~ Lance Berkman

My father always told me that to be successful at anything, whether it was baseball or tiddlywinks, you have to be willing to pay the price. You have to be willing to do more than the kid down the street if you want to be better than he is. ~ Lance Berkman

Words are as beautiful as wind horses, and sometimes as difficult to corral. ~ Ted Berkman

The man who can face vilification and disgrace, who can stand up against the popular current, even against his friends and his country when he know he is right, who can defy those in authority over him, who can take punishment and prison and remain steadfast-that is a man of courage. The fellow whom you taunt as a 'slacker' because he refuses to turn murderer-he needs courage. But do you need much courage just to obey orders, to do as you are told and to fall in line with thousands of others to the tune of general approval and the Star Spangled Banner? ~ Alexander Berkman

Are you not compelled to work for an employer? Your need compels you just as the highwayman's gun. You must live ... You can't work for yourself ... The factories, machinery, and tools belong to the employing class, so you must hire yourself out to that class in order to work and live. Whatever you work at, whoever your employer may be, it always comes to the same: you must workfor him. You can't help yourself. You are compelled. ~ Alexander Berkman

God has given me a lot of ability to play the game of baseball. ~ Lance Berkman

What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment. ~ Alexander Berkman

What comes first, the chicken or the egg? You start out bad, you don't really feel right, you don't have the same explosion, then you start to lose confidence, you start to doubt your ability. It's a snowball effect. ~ Lance Berkman

Violence is the method of ignorance, the weapon of the weak. The strong of heart and brain need no violence, for they are irresistible in their consciousness of being right. ~ Alexander Berkman

War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. ~ Alexander Berkman

Certainly the worker has nothing to lose by a change from government and capitalism to a condition of no government, of anarchy. ~ Alexander Berkman

I want to be a guy who produces runs, who drives in runs, who can beat you with a single or can beat you with a home run, who's just a tough out. ~ Lance Berkman

A wise man once said that human beings were programmed to like boundary conditions - places like tree houses, mountain cabins, or transgressive gay bars. Boundary conditions exist in places where you can stay in one element and look at another different and fascinating element for as long as you wanted. That's why people like beach towns like Cape May; you can sit and look at the ocean, or go in the ocean and look back at the land, whatever's more fun. If that's true, then maybe that's why people go to funerals. Funerals are the boundary condition between life and afterlife. Sheldon Berkman had crossed the boundary between ~ Curtis Edmonds

Alexander Berkman was a self-declared atheist attempting to lift the stultifying fog of the gods from the mind of humankind. ~ David Burns

The only way that we can truly have a purpose and an enriching life experience is to do all things in Christ and through the power of Christ. What happens when we're all about doing good works and we're doing that outside of the power of Christ is that we end up getting the glory and the whole point of this deal is that God gets the glory. That verse beautifully illustrates that point. ~ Lance Berkman

If you can see, hear, feel, and think, you should know that King Dollar rules the United States, and that the workers are robbed and exploited in this country to the heart's content of the masters.
If you are not deaf, dumb, and blind, then you know that the American bourgeois democracy and capitalistic civilization are the worst enemies of labor and progress, and that instead of protecting them, you should help to fight to destroy them. ~ Alexander Berkman

Anarchism means voluntary co-operation instead of forced participation. It means harmony and order in place of interference and disorder. ~ Alexander Berkman

Agile, athletic, sleek-all these things describe my game! ~ Lance Berkman

One-run games can go either way, and most of the time they do. ~ Lance Berkman

I think any great performer or athlete has to have a little bit of a gut to be great. ~ Lance Berkman

War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder. ~ Alexander Berkman

Any one who tells you that Anarchists don't believe in organization is talking nonsense. Organization is everything, and everything is organization. ~ Alexander Berkman

They were chanting my name, but I don't know why. My name is on the back of my uniform. So, it's nice to know they can read. ~ Lance Berkman

In an absolutism, the autocrat is visible and tangible. The real despotism of republican institutions is far deeper, more insidious, because it rests on the popular delusion of self-government and independence. That is the subtle source of democratic tyranny, and, as such, it cannot be reached with a bullet. ~ Alexander Berkman

It is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation. My prison-house environment is but another manifestation of the Midas-hand, whose cursed touch turns everything to the brutal service of Mammon. ~ Alexander Berkman

I almost feel guilty. The physical toll is tremendous. Im exhausted and I only played nine innings. ~ Lance Berkman

What is a fanatic but a man whose faith is impregnable to doubt? It is the faith that moves mountains, the faith that accomplishes. Revolutions are not made by Hamlets. The traditional "great" man, the "big personality" of current conception, may give to the world new thoughts, noble vision, inspiration. But the man that "sees every side" cannot lead, cannot control. He is too conscious of the fallibility of all theories, even of thought itself, to be a fighter in any cause. ~ Alexander Berkman

These days even mere attempts to improve capitalism are often called 'Socialism,' while in reality they are only reforms. ~ Alexander Berkman

Socialism, like Christianity destroyed itself to gain power ~ Alexander Berkman

The key to dealing with people in general is that they have to know that you care about them. You have to deal with people in gentleness. You have to come along side of them. You can't push them. You can't pull them. You have to walk with them. In order to do that, you've got to demonstrate care for that individual. That's my whole thing ~ Lance Berkman

I wish I was just a left-handed hitter. It's really tough having to keep both sides sharp, and that's one reason why you don't see switch-hitters hit for that high of an average. You're always fighting one side or the other. ~ Lance Berkman

I want to play every game of my career in an Astros uniform. ~ Lance Berkman

No intelligent radical can fail to realize the need of the rational education of the young. The rearing of the child must become a process of liberation by methods which shall not impose ready-made ideas, but which should aid the child's natural self-unfoldment. The purpose of such an education is not to force the child's adaptation to accepted concepts. but to give free play to his [and her] originality, initiative, and individuality. Only by freeing education from compulsion and restraint can we create the environment for the manifestation of the spontaneous interest and inner incentives on the part of the child. Only thus can we supply rational conditions favorable to the development of the child's natural tendencies and his latent emotional and mental faculties. Such methods of education, essentially aiding the child's imitative quality and ardor for knowledge, will develop a generation of healthy intellectual independence. It will produce men and women capable, in the words of Francisco Ferrer, "of evolving without stopping, of destroying and renewing their environment without cessation; of renewing themselves also; always ready to accept what is best, happy in the triumph of new ideas, aspiring to live multiple lives in one life. ~ Alexander Berkman

The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression. ~ Alexander Berkman

Anarchy: It is NOT bombs, disorder or chaos. It is NOT robbery and murder. It is NOT a war of each against all. It is NOT a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man. Anarchism is the very opposite of all that. ~ Alexander Berkman