Peter Kropotkin Quotes & Sayings

Each individual is a cosmos of organs, each organ is a cosmos of cells, each cell is a cosmos of infinitely small ones; and in this complex world, the well-being of the whole depends entirely on the sum of well-being enjoyed by each of the least microscopic particles of organized matter. A whole revolution is thus produced in the philosophy of life. — Peter Kropotkin

Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels. — Peter Kropotkin

Where there is authority, there is no freedom. — Peter Kropotkin

In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. — Peter Kropotkin

Poverty, the existence of the poor, was the first cause of riches. — Peter Kropotkin

The immense and ever increasing sums which the state wrings from the people are never enough for it; it mortgages the income of future generations, and steers resolutely toward bankruptcy. — Peter Kropotkin

But times and tempers are changed. Rebels are everywhere to be found who no longer wish to obey the law without knowing whence it comes, what are its uses, and whither arises the obligation to submit to it, and the reverence with which it is encompassed. The rebels of our day are criticizing the very foundations of society which have hitherto been held sacred, and first and foremost amongst them that fetish, law. — Peter Kropotkin

Revolutions, we must remember, are always made by minorities. — Peter Kropotkin

It is only by the abolition of the State, by the conquest of perfect liberty by the individual, by free agreement, association, and absolute free federation that we can reach Communism - the possession in common of our social inheritance, and the production in common of all riches. — Peter Kropotkin

A different conception of society , very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day. — Peter Kropotkin

The State is only one of the forms assumed by society in the course of history. Why then make no distinction between what is permanent and what is accidental? — Peter Kropotkin

Anarchy, when it works to destroy authority in all its aspects, when it demands the abrogation of laws and the abolition of the mechanism that serves to impose them, when it refuses all hierarchical organization and preaches free agreement - at the same time strives to maintain and enlarge the precious kernel of social customs without which no human or animal society can exist. Only, instead of demanding that those social customs should be maintained through the authority of a few, it demands it from the continued action of all. — Peter Kropotkin

Any revolutionary agitation exacts enormous sacrifices, not so much in terms of prison sentences and years of incarceration - which have been raining down by the hundreds of years annually - as in terms of the manifold personal sacrifices sustained by those who commit themselves to revolutionary agitation. — Peter Kropotkin

You know how I always believe in the future ... Without disorder, the revolution is impossible; knowing that, I did not lose hope, and I do not lose it now. — Peter Kropotkin

Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime? — Peter Kropotkin

The moral sense is a natural faculty in us like the sense of smell or of touch. — Peter Kropotkin

The hopeless don't revolt, because revolution is an act of hope. — Peter Kropotkin

The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation. — Peter Kropotkin

Educated men - "civilized," as Fourier used to say with disdain - tremble at the idea that society might some day be without judges, police, or gaolers. — Peter Kropotkin

As an anarchist, I cannot reconcile myself to any government. — Peter Kropotkin

You reason like the king, who, being sent across the frontier, called out, 'What will become of my poor subjects without me?' — Peter Kropotkin

Freedom of the press, freedom of association, the inviolability of domicile, and all the rest of the rights of man are respected so long as no one tries to use them against the privileged class. On the day they are launched against the privileged they are overthrown. — Peter Kropotkin

The whole aspect of the universe changes with this new conception. The idea of force governing the world, of pre-established law, preconceived harmony, disappears to make room for the harmony that Fourier had caught a glimpse of: the one which results from the disorderly and incoherent movements of numberless hosts of matter, each of which goes its own way and all of which hold each other in equilibrium. — Peter Kropotkin

All things for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men worked to produce them in the measure of their strength, and since it is not possible to evaluate everyone's part in the production of the world's wealth ... All is for all! — Peter Kropotkin

While in the course of ages the nucleus of social custom inscribed in law has been subjected to but slight and gradual modifications, the other portion has been largely developed in directions indicated by the interests of the dominant classes, and to the injury of the classes they oppress. — Peter Kropotkin

The confused mass of rules of conduct called law, which has been bequeathed to us by slavery, serfdom, feudalism, and royalty, has taken the place of those stone monsters, before whom human victims used to be immolated, and whom slavish savages dared not even touch lest they should be slain by the thunderbolts of heaven. — Peter Kropotkin

All this we see, and, therefore, instead of inanely repeating the old formula, Respect the law, we say, Despise law and all its Attributes! In place of the cowardly phrase, Obey the law, our cry, is Revolt against all laws! — Peter Kropotkin

A national movement, which does not include in its platform the demand for an economical change advantageous to the masses has no chance of success unless supported by foreign aid. — Peter Kropotkin

Idlers do not make history: they suffer it! — Peter Kropotkin

ANARCHISM (from the Gr. , and , contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. — Peter Kropotkin

Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor. — Peter Kropotkin

Think about the world you want to live and work in. What do you need to know to build the world? Demand that your teachers teach you that. — Peter Kropotkin

No evolution is accomplished in nature without revolution. Periods of very slow changes are succeeded by periods of violent changes. Revolutions are as necessary for evolution as the slow changes which prepare them and succeed them. — Peter Kropotkin

True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery. — Peter Kropotkin

Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization — Peter Kropotkin

But what right had I to these highest joys, when all around me was nothing but misery and struggle for a moldy bit of bread; when whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live in that world of higher emotions must needs be taken from the very mouths of those who grew the wheat and had not bread enough for their children? — Peter Kropotkin

The millions of laws which exist for the regulation of humanity appear upon investigation to be divided into three principal categories: protection of property, protection of persons, protection of government. And by analyzing each of these three categories, we arrive at the same logical and necessary conclusion: the uselessness and hurtfulness of law. — Peter Kropotkin

It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us. — Peter Kropotkin

There are those, on the one hand, who hope to achieve the social revolution through the State by preserving and even extending most of its powers to be used for the revolution. And there are those like ourselves who see the State, both in its present form, in its very essence, and in whatever guise it might appear, an obstacle to the social revolution, the greatest hindrance to the birth of a society based on equality and liberty, as well as the historic means designed to prevent this blossoming. — Peter Kropotkin

Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible. — Peter Kropotkin

Man is appealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at best tribal, but by his perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can re-trace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support- not mutual struggle- has had the leading part. — Peter Kropotkin

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror. — Peter Kropotkin

When we have but the will to do it, that very moment will Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the Earth shall bite the dust. — Peter Kropotkin

We take men for what they are worth - and that is why we hate the government of man by man, and that we work with all our might - perhaps not strong enough - to put an end to it. — Peter Kropotkin

When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions! — Peter Kropotkin

Struggle so that all may live this rich, overflowing life. And be sure that in this struggle you will find a joy greater than anything else can give. — Peter Kropotkin

Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is ... death!Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.The choice lies with you! — Peter Kropotkin

The education we all receive from the State, at school and after, has so warped our minds that the very notion of freedom ends up by being lost, and disguised in servitude. It is a sad sight to see those who believe themselves to be revolutionaries unleashing their hatred on the anarchist just because his views on freedom go beyond their petty and narrow concepts of freedom learned in the State school. — Peter Kropotkin

War is the usual condition of Europe. — Peter Kropotkin

America is just the country that how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society. — Peter Kropotkin

In order that the revolution should be something more than a word, in order that the reaction should not lead us back tomorrow to the situation of yesterday, the conquest of today must be worth the trouble of defending; the poor of yesterday must be worth the trouble of defending; the poor of yesterday must not be poor tomorrow. — Peter Kropotkin

But how do European railways manage without them? How do they continue to convey millions of travellers and mountains of luggage across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg-Warsaw Company and that of Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies, consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government? — Peter Kropotkin

The two great movements of our century
towards Liberty of the individual and social co-operation of the whole community
are summed up in Anarchist-Communism. — Peter Kropotkin

If you want to know the people of a nation, I am sure you can judge a great deal more about them from their cooking and eating traditions than you can from the words and actions of their public officials. — Peter Kropotkin

Of all parties I now see only one party- The Anarchist- which respects human life, and loudly insists upon the abolition of capital punishment, prison torture and punishment of man by man altogether. — Peter Kropotkin