The older I grow, the more I see of men and of the callings of social life, the more I, an open knave, sicken at the glossed and covert dishonesties around.
I acknowledge no allegiance to society.

From my birth to this hour, I have received no single favour from its customs or its laws; openly I war against it, and patiently will I meet its revenge.

This may be crime; but it looks light in my eyes when I gaze around, and survey on all sides the masked traitors who acknowledge large debts to society, who profess to obey its laws, adore its institutions, and, above all--oh, how righteously!--attack all those who attack it, and who yet lie and cheat and defraud and peculate,--publicly reaping all the comforts, privately filching all the profits.

Repent!--of what?
I come into the world friendless and poor; I find a body of laws hostile to the friendless and the poor! To those laws hostile to me, then, I acknowledge hostility in my turn.

Between us are the conditions of war.