EXCERPTS FROM
THE REVOLUTIONIST’S HANDBOOK AND POCKET COMPANION
BY JOHN TANNER, M.I.R.C.
FOREWORD
A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order and try another.
MAXIMS FOR REVOLUTIONISTS (SELECTED)
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for more than five minutes about either.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are.
Hypocrisy is not the parent’s first duty.
The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mold a child’s character.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.
Activity is the only road to knowledge.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
The essential function of marriage is the continuance of the race, as stated in the Book of Common Prayer.
The accidental function of marriage is the gratification of the amoristic sentiment of mankind.
The artificial sterilization of marriage makes it possible for marriage to fulfill its accidental function whilst neglecting its essential one.
Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who are condemned to celebacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one. Polyandry has not been tried under these conditions.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater.
Whilst we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
Ladies and gentlemen are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen.
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.
In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.
The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Decency is Indecency’s Conspiracy of Silence.
Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones.
All men mean well.
Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.
Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.
The most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of the roulette table.
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?
The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing; age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
The Chinese tame fowls by clipping their wings, and women by deforming their feet. A petticoat round the ankles serves equally well.
If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.
