Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakuninwas a Russian revolutionary anarchist, and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism, and one of the principal founders of the social anarchist tradition. Bakunin's enormous prestige as an activist made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, and he gained substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionRevolutionary
Date of Birth30 May 1814
CountryRussian Federation
The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.
Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him.
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
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.
If God existed, only in one way could he serve the cause of human liberty-by ceasing to exist.
Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.
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.
A divine falsehood is more powerful than any human truth.
Every people, like every person, . . . has a right to be itself.
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.
Anarchism is "stateless socialism.
By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible.
I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.
Throw a theory into the fire; it only spoils life.