M 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

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

In the anarchist milieu, communism, individualism, collectivism, mutualism and all the intermediate and eclectic programmes are simply the ways considered best for achieving freedom and solidarity in economic life; the ways believed to correspond more closely with justice and freedom for the distribution of the means of production and the products of labour among men. Bakunin was an anarchist, and he was a collectivist, an outspoken enemy of communism because he saw in it the negation of freedom and, therefore, of human dignity. — Errico Malatesta

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. — 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

You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world's intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there's cataclysm. — Thomas Pynchon

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

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

The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom - voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory in the economic sense - broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery. — 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

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

For ten centuries Christianity, armed with the omnipotence of the Church and State and opposed by no competition, was able to deprave, debase, and falsify the mind of Europe. It had no competitors, because outside the Church there was neither thinkers nor educated persons. It alone taught, it alone spoke and wrote, it alone taught. — 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

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

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

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

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

1872 the anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin warned Karl Marx that Communists in power would be as oppressive as the aristocracy they replaced. After what has happened in Russia, can you honestly say Bakunin was wrong? — Ken Follett