Mikhail Bakunin Quotes

The most terrible poverty, however, even when it strikes a proletariat numbering in the many millions, is not a sufficient guarantee of revolution. Nature has given man an astonishing and, indeed, sometimes despairing, patience, and the devil knows what he will not endure when, along with poverty that condemns him to unheard-of privations and slow starvation, he is also endowed with obtuseness, emotional numbness, lack of any consciousness of his rights, and the kind of imperturbability and obedience that particularly characterize the east Indians and the Germans, among all nations. Such a fellow will never take heart; he will die, but he will not rebel.

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.

To be free ... means to be acknowledged and treated as such by all his fellowmen. The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his brothers and his equals. (...) I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen.

Muy otro es el punto de vista de los idealistas. En su sistema, el hombre se produce primeramente como un ser inmortal y libre y acaba por convertirse en un esclavo.

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.

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.

Look into yourself and tell me truthfully: are you satisfied with yourself and can you be satisfied? Are you not all sad and bedraggled manifestations of a sad and bedraggled time? — are you not full of contradictions? — are you whole men? — do you believe in anything really? — do you know what you want, and can you want anything at all? — has modern reflection, the epidemic of our time, left a single living part in you; and are you not penetrated by reflection through and through, paralyzed and broken? Indeed, you will have to confess that ours is a sad age and that we all are its still sadder children.

A Russia of the people is inconceivable without Polish freedom and independence.

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.

"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;"

Slavery may change its form or its name — its essence remains the same. Its essence may be expressed in these words: to be a slave is to he forced to work for someone else, just as to he a master is to live on someone else's work In antiquity, just as in Asia and in Africa today, as well as even in a part of America, slaves were, in all honesty, called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of serfs: nowadays they are called wage earners. The position of tins latter group has a great deal more dignity attached to it, and it is less hard than that of slaves, but they are nonetheless forced, by hunger as well as by political and social institutions, to maintain other people in complete or relative idleness, through their own exceedingly hard labor. Consequently they arc slaves. And in general, no state, ancient or modern, has ever managed or will ever manage to get along without the forced labor of the masses, either wage earners or slaves, as a principal and absolutely necessary foundation for the leisure, the liberty, and the civilization of the political class — the citizens.

May we not suppose that all men are equally inspired by God? Then, surely, there is no further use for mediators. But this supposition is impossible, because it is too clearly contradicted by the facts. It would compel us to attribute to divine inspiration all the absurdities and errors which appear, and all the horrors, follies, base deeds, and cowardly actions which are committed, in the world.

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

The glory and grandeur of a nation lie only in the
development of its humanity. Its strength and inner vitality are measured by the degree of its liberty.

Que no se objete que el cristianismo ordena a los niños a amar a sus padres, a los padres a amar a sus hijos, a los esposos a feccionarse mutuamente. Sí, les manda eso, pero no les permite amarlo inmediata, naturalmente y por sí mismos, sino sólo en dios y por dios; no admite todas esas relaciones actuales más que a condición de que dios se encuentre como tercero, y ese terrible tercero mata las uniones. El amor divino aniquila el amor humano. El cristianismo ordena, es verdad, amar a nuestro prójimo tanto como a nosotros mismos, pero nos ordena al mismo tiempo amar a dios más que a nosotros mismos y por consiguiente también más que al prójimo, es decir sacrificarle el prójimo por nuestra salvación, porque al fin de cuentas el cristiano no adora a dios más que por la salvación de su alma.

Aceptando a dios, todo eso es rigurosamente consecuente: dios es lo infinito, lo absoluto, lo eterno, lo omnipotente; el hombre es lo finito, lo impotente. En comparación con dios, bajo todos los aspectos, no es nada. Sólo lo divino es justo, verdadero, dichoso y bueno, y todo lo que es humano en el hombre debe ser por eso mismo declarado falso, inicuo, detestable y miserable. El contacto de la divinidad con esa pobre humanidad debe devorar, pues, necesariamente, consumir, aniquilar todo lo que queda de humano en los hombres.

La intervención divina en los asuntos humanos no ha dejado nunca de producir efectos excesivamente desastrosos. Pervierte todas las relaciones de los hombres entre sí y reemplaza su solidaridad natural por la práctica hipócrita y malsana de las comunidades religiosas, en las que bajo las apariencias de la caridad, cada cual piensa sólo en la salvación de su alma, haciendo así, bajo el pretexto del amor divino, egoísmo humano excesivamente refinado, lleno de ternura para sí y de indiferencia, de malevolencia y hasta de crueldad para el prójimo. Eso explica la alianza íntima que ha existido siempre entre el verdugo y el sacerdote, alianza francamente confesada