85+ Mikhail Bakunin Quotes On Education, Religion And Death

Mikhail Bakunin was a Russian revolutionary, philosopher and political theorist. He was a major figure in the anarchist movement and is considered by many to be one of the fathers of anarchism. He advocated a stateless society, free from government and class oppression, and believed that the only way to achieve this was through a revolution of the working class. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mikhail Bakunin on education, religion, love.

Top 10 Mikhail Bakunin Quotes

1. Children do not constitute anyone's property: they are neither the property of their parents nor even of society. They belong only to their own future freedom.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. In antiquity slaves were, in all honesty called slaves. In the middle ages, they took the name of serfs. Nowadays they are called wage earners.
5. From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.
6. Destroy or be destroyed-there is no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers!
7. 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.
8. If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
9. When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."
10. The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice.

Mikhail Bakunin Short Quotes

• As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
• Anarchism is "stateless socialism."
• Christianity is the complete negation of common sense and sound reason.
• Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
• By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible.
• The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.
• Theology is the science of the divine lie.
• Our first work must be the annihilation of everything as it now exists.
• Every people, like every person, . . . has a right to be itself.
• A divine falsehood is more powerful than any human truth.

Mikhail Bakunin Quotes About Religion

All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. — 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

Religion is collective insanity. — Mikhail Bakunin

All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice - that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity. — 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

Mikhail Bakunin Quotes About Life

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt. — Mikhail Bakunin

Look at Christ, my dear friend: His life was divine through and through, full of self-denial, and He did everything for mankind, finding His satisfaction and His delight in the dissolution of His material being. — 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

Throw a theory into the fire; it only spoils life. — Mikhail Bakunin

Everything that lives, does so under the categorical condition of decisively interfering in the life of someone else. — Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin Quotes About State

Bourgeois patriotism, as I view it, is only a very shabby, very narrow, very mercenary, and deeply antihuman passion, having for its object the preservation and maintenance of the power of the national state-that is, the mainstay of all the priveleges of the exploiters throughout the nation. — Mikhail Bakunin

That in order to achieve the triumph of liberty, justice and peace in the international relations of Europe, and to render civil war impossible among the various peoples which make up the European family, only a single course lies open: to constitute the United States of Europe — Mikhail Bakunin

If there is a State, then there is domination, and in turn, there is slavery. — Mikhail Bakunin

Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa. — 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

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

The communism of Marx seeks a strong state centralization, and where this exists, there the parasitic Jewish nation - which speculates upon the labor of people - will always find the means for its existence. — Mikhail Bakunin

Whoever says State necessarily says domination, and, consequently, slavery; a State without slavery, open or concealed, is inconceivable: that is why we are enemies of the State. — Mikhail Bakunin

If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable - and this is why we are the enemies of the State. — Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin Quotes About Free

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 confirmation. — Mikhail Bakunin

If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist. I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle; now, therefore, let all choose. — Mikhail Bakunin

Man is only truly free only among equally free men. — Mikhail Bakunin

Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him. — Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin Quotes About Individual

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

Collective property and individual property, these two banners will be the standards under which, from now on, the great battles of the future will be fought. — Mikhail Bakunin

The organization of society is always and everywhere the unique cause of the crimes committed by individuals. — Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin Quotes About Liberty

The peoples' revolution... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty. — 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

We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality. — 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

We wish, in a word, equality - equality in fact as a corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically. — Mikhail Bakunin

If God existed, only in one way could he serve the cause of human liberty-by ceasing to exist. — Mikhail Bakunin

God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master. — Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin Famous Quotes And Sayings

I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen... 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 confirmation. — Mikhail Bakunin

Mr. Marx does not believe in God, but he believes deeply in himself. His heart is filled not with love but with rancor. He has very little benevolence toward men and becomes... furious and... spiteful... when anyone dares question the omniscience of the divinity whom he adores, that is to say, Mr. Marx himself. — Mikhail Bakunin

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. — Mikhail Bakunin

The right to unite freely and to separate freely is the first and most important of all political rights. — Mikhail Bakunin

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself. — 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

There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the routes of the wine-shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution. — 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

It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether practically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart. — 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

...one exploiting sect, one people of leeches, one single devouring parasite closely and intimately bound together not only across national boundaries, but also across all divergences of political opinion ... [Jews have] that mercantile passion which constitutes one of the principle traits of their national character — Mikhail Bakunin

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 upon men by men. — Mikhail Bakunin

The star of revolution will rise high above the streets of Moscow, from a sea of blood and fire, and turn into a lodestar to lead a liberated humanity — 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 clearly follows that to make men moral it is necessary to make their social environment moral. And that can be done in only one way; by assuring the triumph of justice, that is, the complete liberty of everyone in the most perfect equality for all. Inequality of conditions and rights, and the resulting lack of liberty for all, is the great collective iniquity begetting all individual iniquities. — Mikhail Bakunin

We exhort the compromisers to open their hearts to truth, to free themselves of their wretched and blind circumspection, of their intellectual arrogance, and of the servile fear which dries up their souls and paralyzes their movements. Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too! — Mikhail Bakunin

We are materialists and atheists, and we glory in the fact. — 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

Intellectual slavery, of whatever nature it may be, will always have as a natural result both political and social slavery. — Mikhail Bakunin

Priests, kings, statesmen, soldiers, bankers and public functionaries of all sorts; policemen, jailers and hangmen; capitalists, usurers, businessmen and property-owners; lawyers, economists and politicians - all of them, down to the meanest grocer, repeat in chorus the words of Voltaire, that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent Him. — Mikhail Bakunin

The urge for destruction is also a creative urge! — Mikhail Bakunin

There is only one power and one dictatorship whose organisation is salutary and feasible: it is that collective, invisible dictatorship of those who are allied in the name of our principle. — Mikhail Bakunin

We must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda. — Mikhail Bakunin

People’s State, is a yoke, on the one hand giving rise to despotism and on the other to slavery. They say that such a yoke – dictatorship is a transitional step towards achieving full freedom for the people: anarchism or freedom is the aim, while state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses of people, they have first to be enslaved! — Mikhail Bakunin

If there be a human being who is freer than I, then I shall necessarily become his slave. If I am freer than any other, then he will become my slave. Therefore equality is an absolutely necessary condition of freedom. — Mikhail Bakunin

Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary. — Mikhail Bakunin

Those mutually opposed manifestos are written with the same eloquence, they breathe the same virtuous indignation, and one is just as sincere as the other; that is to say both of them are equally brazen in their lies, and it is only fools who are deceived by them. Sensible persons, all those who have had some political experience, do not even take the trouble of reading such manifestos. — Mikhail Bakunin

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. — Mikhail Bakunin

The urge to destroy is a creative urge. — Mikhail Bakunin

They maintain that only a dictatorship - their dictatorship, of course - can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up. — 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

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

Life Lessons by Mikhail Bakunin

1. Mikhail Bakunin's life teaches us that it is important to stand up for what we believe in, no matter what the cost.
2. He also shows us that it is important to think critically and challenge the status quo, even if it is unpopular.
3. Finally, Bakunin's life demonstrates that it is possible to make a difference in the world, even when the odds seem insurmountable.