To my utter despair I have discovered, and discover every day anew, that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion.
– Mikhail Bakunin
Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn.
– Mikhail Bakunin
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 of others.
– Mikhail Bakunin
Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie and the workers want no lying.
– Mikhail Bakunin
I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.
– Mikhail Bakunin
I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds.
– Mikhail Bakunin
I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.
– Mikhail Bakunin
From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.
– Mikhail Bakunin
Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations.
– Mikhail Bakunin
But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person.
– Mikhail Bakunin
A jealous lover of human liberty, 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 would be necessary to abolish him.
– Mikhail Bakunin
A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished.