Mikhail Bakunin Quotes & Sayings

I am a passionate seeker after Truth and a not less passionate enemy of the malignant fictions used
by the "Party of Order", the official representatives of all turpitudes, religious, metaphysical,
political, judicial, economic, and social, present and past, to brutalise and enslave the world; I am a
fanatical lover of Liberty; considering it as the only medium in which can develop intelligence,
dignity, and the happiness of man; — Mikhail Bakunin

What is freedom? What is slavery? Does man's freedom consist in revolting against all laws? We say No, in so far as laws are natural, economic, and social laws, not authoritatively imposed but inherent in things, in relations, in situations, the natural development of which is expressed by those laws. We say Yes if they are political and juridical laws, imposed by men upon men: whether violently by the right of force; whether by deceit and hypocrisy - in the name of religion or any doctrine whatever; or finally, by dint of the fiction, the democratic falsehood called universal suffrage. — Mikhail Bakunin

The right to unite freely and to separate freely is the first and most important of all political rights. — Mikhail Bakunin

I feel myself always the patriot of all oppressed fatherlands. Nationality is a historic, local fact which, like all real and harmless facts, has the right to claim general acceptance. Every people, like every person, is involuntarily that which it is and therefore has a right to be itself. Nationality is not a principle; it is a legitimate fact, just as individuality is. Every nationality, great or small, has the incontestable right to be itself, to live according to its own nature. This right is simply the corollary of the general principal of freedom. — Mikhail Bakunin

The passion for destruction is also a creative passion — Mikhail Bakunin

Anarchism is stateless socialism. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

The star of revolution will rise high above the streets of Moscow, from a sea of blood and fire, and turn into a lodestar to lead a liberated humanity — Mikhail Bakunin

The state is a force incarnate. Worse, it is the silly parading of force. It never seeks to prevail by persuasion. Whenever it thrusts its finger into anything it does so in the most unfriendly way. Its essence is command and compulsion. — Mikhail Bakunin

Intellectual slavery, of whatever nature it may be, will always have as a natural result both political and social slavery. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

In every State, the government is nothing but a permanent conspiracy on the part of the minority against the majority, which it enslaves and fleeces. — Mikhail Bakunin

A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable - and this is why we are the enemies of the State. — Mikhail Bakunin

All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. — Mikhail Bakunin

The peoples' revolution ... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty. — Mikhail Bakunin

We must overthrow the material and moral conditions of our present-day life ... We must first purify our atmosphere and completely transform the milieu in which we live; for it corrupts our instinct and our will, and constricts our heart and our intelligence — Mikhail Bakunin

Theology created the fiction of Satan which represents the revolt if an infinite being against the existence of an absolute infinity, against God. — Mikhail Bakunin

Liberty is so great a magician, endowed with so marvelous a power of productivity, that under the inspiration of this spirit alone, North America was able within less than a century to equal, and even surpass, the civilization of Europe. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker. — Mikhail Bakunin

The general idea is always an abstraction and, for that very reason, in some sort a negation of real life. And every time that scientific men, emerging from their abstract world, mingle with living creation in the real world, all that they propose or create is poor, ridiculously abstract, bloodless and lifeless, still-born, like the homunculus created by Wagner, the pedantic disciple of the immortal Doctor Faust. — Mikhail Bakunin

Every command slaps liberty in the face. — Mikhail Bakunin

Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him. — Mikhail Bakunin

But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

The freedom of all is essential to my freedom. — Mikhail Bakunin

We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality. — Mikhail Bakunin

The privilege of ruling would be in the hands of the skilled and the learned, with a wide scope left for profitable crooked deals carried on by the Jews, who would be attracted by the enormous extension of the international speculations of the national banks. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

If there be a human being who is freer than I, then I shall necessarily become his slave. If I am freer than any other, then he will become my slave. Therefore equality is an absolutely necessary condition of freedom. — Mikhail Bakunin

Nationality is not a universal human principle but an historical, local fact ... Every nation, even a small one, has its own character, its own particular way of life and manner of speaking, feeling, thinking, and behaving. These distinctive features are the essence of nationality, the product of a nation's entire history and conditions of existence. Every nation, like every individual, is of necessity what it is, and has an unquestionable right to be itself. So-called national rights consist precisely of this. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

Whoever says State necessarily says domination, and, consequently, slavery; a State without slavery, open or concealed, is inconceivable: that is why we are enemies of the State. — Mikhail Bakunin

Theology is the science of the divine lie. — Mikhail Bakunin

There is only one power and one dictatorship whose organisation is salutary and feasible: it is that collective, invisible dictatorship of those who are allied in the name of our principle. — Mikhail Bakunin

I myself am human and free only to the extent that I acknowledge the humanity and liberty of all my fellows ... I am properly free when all the men and women about me are equally free. Far from being a limitation or a denial of my liberty, the liberty of another is its necessary condition and confirmation. — Mikhail Bakunin

Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. — Mikhail Bakunin

Christianity is the complete negation of common sense and sound reason. — Mikhail Bakunin

Religion is collective insanity. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

Anarchism or freedom is the aim, while the state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses, they have first to be enslaved. — Mikhail Bakunin

Children do not constitute anyone's property:
they are neither the property of their parents nor even of society.
They belong only to their own future freedom. — Mikhail Bakunin

One exploiting sect, one people of leeches, one single devouring parasite closely and intimately bound together not only across national boundaries, but also across all divergences of political opinion ... [Jews have] that mercantile passion which constitutes one of the principle traits of their national character — Mikhail Bakunin

Our first work must be the annihilation of everything as it now exists. — Mikhail Bakunin

Throw a theory into the fire; it only spoils life. — Mikhail Bakunin

Thus, as I have already observed, materialism starts from animality to establish humanity; idealism starts from divinity to establish slavery and condemn the masses to an endless animality. Materialism denies free will and ends in the establishment of liberty; idealism, in the name of human dignity, proclaims free will, and on the ruins of every liberty founds authority. Materialism rejects the principle of authority, because it rightly considers it as the corollary of animality, and because, on the contrary, the triumph of humanity, the object and chief significance of history, can be realised only through liberty. In a word, you will always find the idealists in the very act of practical materialism, while you will see the materialists pursuing and realising the most grandly ideal aspirations and thoughts. — Mikhail Bakunin

All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice - that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity. — Mikhail Bakunin

Man is only truly free only among equally free men. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

The urge to destroy is a creative urge. — Mikhail Bakunin

It clearly follows that to make men moral it is necessary to make their social environment moral. And that can be done in only one way; by assuring the triumph of justice, that is, the complete liberty of everyone in the most perfect equality for all. Inequality of conditions and rights, and the resulting lack of liberty for all, is the great collective iniquity begetting all individual iniquities. — Mikhail Bakunin

My personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of all, extends to infinity. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

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.
Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy — Mikhail Bakunin

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

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

They maintain that only a dictatorship - their dictatorship, of course - can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up. — Mikhail Bakunin

Religion is a collective insanity. — Mikhail Bakunin

If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist. I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle; now, therefore, let all choose. — Mikhail Bakunin

It should be added that, in general, it is the character of every metaphysical and theological argument to seek to explain one absurdity by another. — Mikhail Bakunin

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called the People's Stick. — Mikhail Bakunin

[Jehovah is] certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty. — Mikhail Bakunin

Destroy or be destroyed-there is no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers! — Mikhail Bakunin

Human nature is so constituted that the propensity for evil is always intensified by external circumstances, and the morality of the individual depends much more on the conditions of his existence and the environment in which he lives than on his own will. — Mikhail Bakunin

We must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda. — Mikhail Bakunin

Revolution requires extensive and widespread destruction, a fecund and renovating destruction, since in this way and only this way are new worlds born — Mikhail Bakunin

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

We are materialists and atheists, and we glory in the fact ... — Mikhail Bakunin

Real humanity presents a mixture of all that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most monstrous in the world. — Mikhail Bakunin

If God existed, only in one way could he serve the cause of human liberty-by ceasing to exist. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

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

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

Priests, kings, statesmen, soldiers, bankers and public functionaries of all sorts; policemen, jailers and hangmen; capitalists, usurers, businessmen and property-owners; lawyers, economists and politicians - all of them, down to the meanest grocer, repeat in chorus the words of Voltaire, that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent Him. — Mikhail Bakunin

In antiquity slaves were, in all honesty called slaves. In the middle ages, they took the name of serfs. Nowadays they are called wage earners. — Mikhail Bakunin

We exhort the compromisers to open their hearts to truth, to free themselves of their wretched and blind circumspection, of their intellectual arrogance, and of the servile fear which dries up their souls and paralyzes their movements.Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too! — Mikhail Bakunin

Collective property and individual property, these two banners will be the standards under which, from now on, the great battles of the future will be fought. — Mikhail Bakunin

The individual who dares commit a crime is guilty in a two-fold sense; first, he is guilty against human conscience, and, above all, he is guilty against the State in arrogating to himself one of its most precious privileges. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

Every people, like every person, ... has a right to be itself. — Mikhail Bakunin

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker. — Mikhail Bakunin

If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

From each according to his faculties; to each according to his needs — Mikhail Bakunin

There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the routes of the wine-shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether practically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart. — Mikhail Bakunin

Everything that lives, does so under the categorical condition of decisively interfering in the life of someone else ... — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

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

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle - a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak - and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States - it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice. — Mikhail Bakunin