They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that it’s all choice and chance.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the core of anarchism is the concept of freedom, independent of other ideological frameworks.
In this quote, Karl Hess argues that anarchists are united by a fundamental belief in liberty, which he describes as the 'seed' from which their ideas grow. He asserts that this seed is not tied to socialism, capitalism, or any other ideology, but rather serves as a straightforward declaration of the human capacity for freedom. After establishing this idea, he implies that the choices individuals make and the outcomes that follow are based on personal decisions and random events.
In practice
In a discussion about political ideologies, you might quote Hess to emphasize the importance of individual liberty.
It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.
We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.
The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.
I'm sure I would still have anxiety even if I got a bunch of surgery, and was the most conventionally attractive, cis-passing woman in the world; I think those are traumas that never go away.
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For he who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.
The hypocrite, certainly, is a secret atheist; for if he did believe there was a God, he durst not be so bold as to deceive Him to His face.
When Alex left for Alaska," Franz remembers, "I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn't believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex.
Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
In California, there are huge problems because of dams. I'm against big dams, per se, because I think that they are economically unfeasible. They're ecologically unsustainable. And they're hugely undemocratic.
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