Peter Kropotkin Quotes
-
War is the usual condition of Europe.
→ -
Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
The future cannot be legislated. All that can be done is to anticipate its most important movements and to clear the path for them.
→ -
When one has talent, everything contributes to its development.
→ -
Where there is authority, there is no freedom.
→ -
Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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?
→ -
Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor.
→ -
Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin], your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.
→ -
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.
→ -
He objected, though, to indiscriminate reading. 'One must have some question,' he wrote, 'addressed to the book one is going to read.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
Men passionately desire to live after death, but they often pass away without noticing the fact that the memory of a really good person always lives. It is impressed upon the next generation, and is transmitted again to the children. Is that not an immortality worth striving for?
→ -
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?
→ -
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.
→ -
Prisons are universities of crime, maintained by the state.
→ -
It is only those who do nothing who makes no mistake.
→ -
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.
→ -
The moral sense is a natural faculty in us like the sense of smell or of touch.
→
Related Authors
-
Errico Malatesta Writer -
-
Friedrich Engels Author -
Emma Goldman Writer -
Rudolf Rocker Writer -
Ba Jin Writer -
Vladimir Lenin Revolutionary -
Max Stirner Philosopher -
Karl Marx Philosopher -
Charles Darwin Naturalist -
-
-
Alexander Herzen Writer -
Noam Chomsky Linguist -
Murray Bookchin Author -
William Godwin Journalist -
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Author -
Colin Ward Writer -
David Graeber Anthropologist -
Leo Tolstoy Writer