Quotes by Mikhail Bakunin

“If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.”

“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...”

“The passion for destruction is also a creative passion”

“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”

“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 woul...”

“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 confi...”

“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 o...”

“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.”

“The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.”

“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. ...”

“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 thep...”

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