William Powell (author)
Author of The Anarchist Cookbook, which he has since disowned.
This is a brutal book – sensual, rude, coarse, and cruel. However, it is timely and well-written, even witty.
If people depend on the state to make laws, to prevent themselves from doing what they really want to do, then I say these people are nuts. I mean to say, if I really want to do something, I don't particularly care if it's legal, illegal, moral, immoral, or amoral. I want to do it, so I do it. The only laws a man can truly respect are the ones he makes for himself.
A word of advice: If you get the choice between the upper and lower bunks in a cell, choose the lower. Prisons do not turn off their lights at night, and I spent a sleepless night, without a mattress, with a five-hundred-watt bulb shining directly into my eyes.
If I could come out in this book and advocate complete revolution and the violent overthrow of the United States of America, without being thrown in jail, I would not have written The Anarchist Cookbook, and there would be no need for it.
I would warn against holsters with devices for quick-draw. Devices always fail when you need them most.
If a man is to be a man, a free spirit unto himself, he must arm himself not only with weapons but with ideals and concepts he is willing to die for.
When you are put into a big city jail, you will probably be frightened, lonely, humiliated, and completely drained of any spirit. This is normal. Talk to the fellow prisoners, write, play cards, read, doodle, do anything to keep your mind occupied, but above all do not verbalize your misfortune to your fellow prisoners. Each one of them has had similar situations, and is sick of thinking about it.
Treat any and all drugs with respect, for most of the time they are stronger than you are.
One of the greatest myths of all time is that so-called civilized man is no longer an animal, and for that reason can strive to disarm himself and grow fat with false concepts.
Never before have self-suffiency and education been so important, and they are virtually inseparable from survival.
Have you noticed that the people who actually make the laws, the people in power, never make laws for themselves?
Prison does strange things to men. Although its purpose is to break the free spirit of a man, in many cases it just adds fuel to the fire that has never been and will never be extinguished.
Anarchy can no longer be defined as freedom from oppression or lack of government control. It has gone further than that. It has become, especially in the young people today, a state of mind, an essence of being. It can be expressed as "doing their own thing", or maybe just having the freedom to do or not to do.
I have no patience with individuals who claim that everything will be beautiful if guns and other weapons are outlawed. These people do not have the foresight to realise that, if weapons are made illegal, they will only be possessed by enemies of the people (i.e., the army, the police, outlaws, and madmen). I feel very strongly that every person should be armed and that he or she should be prepared for the worst. There is no justice left in the system. The only real justice is that which the individual creates for himself, and the individual is helpless without a gun. This may sound like the dogma expounded by radical right-wing groups, like the Minute Men. It is.
Power is not a material possession that can be given, it is the ability to act. Power must be taken, it is never given.
It is easy to pick up a weapon and in a short while become a reasonably good shot. This makes it extremely easy for the virtually untrained individual to come to believe that he is an expert in ballistics. False confidence is as great a fault as no confidence at all. In the training of any freedom fighters there must be a merger of fearlessness and intelligent caution. A dead man has no use for confidence or courage.
I can fully appreciate the fury and anger that a person can feel when put through a humiliating experience by a cop, but I would recommend strongly that a person maintain his cool, and in no circumstances lose his temper. If you lose your temper, you are playing right into the cop's hands.
It seems acceptable today to scream for revolution, without any concept of what will follow it. This is just what the forces at large want, for who will follow a man who doesn't know where he's going?
When confronted on the street by the police, a common emotion for a person to feel is fear. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it's quite healthy, but do not show it to the cop. If the cop realizes you are afraid of him, he will take full advantage of the situation and play on your fear. This doesn't mean act belligerently, and, for God's sake, do not be a high school or college lawyer, and explain to the cop what he can and cannot do. He can do anything, he's got the gun.
A revolution was never fought, throughout history, for ideals. Revolutions were fought for much more concrete things: food, clothes, housing, and to relieve intolerable oppression. … I know of no one, outside of Patrick Henry, willing to die for an abstraction.