Quotes By Mikhail Bakunin

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason.

Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.

From each according to his faculties; to each according to his needs.

From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.

This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.

To my utter despair I have discovered, and discover every day anew, that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion.

If there is a State, then there is domination, and in turn, there is slavery.

Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary.

Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.

People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.

The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.

The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.

Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.

Look at Christ, my dear friend: His life was divine through and through, full of self-denial, and He did everything for mankind, finding His satisfaction and His delight in the dissolution of His material being.

Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person.

The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.

Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty - by ceasing to exist.

I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.

Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.

He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.

A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.

The communism of Marx seeks a strong state centralization, and where this exists, there the parasitic Jewish nation - which speculates upon the labor of people - will always find the means for its existence.

I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds.

I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.

The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.