Quotes by Mikhail Bakunin

A jealous lover of human liberty, and 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.

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts with his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and loose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well—in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

We revolutionary anarchists are the enemies of all forms of State and State organisations ... wethink that all State rule, all governments being by their very nature placed outside the mass of thepeople, must necessarily seek to subject it to customs and purposes entirely foreign to it. Wetherefore declare ourselves to be foes ... of all State organisations as such, and believe that thepeople can only be happy and free, when, organised from below by means of its own autonomousand completely free associations, without the supervision of any guardians, it will create its ownlife.

Do you want to make it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow-man? Then make sure that no one shall possess power.

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.

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.

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.

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.

I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.