Mikhail Bakunin

Revolutionary

1814-05-30 – 1876-07-01

Mikhail Bakunin was a Russian revolutionary and political theorist associated with anarchism. He was a major 19th-century critic of authoritarian political structures.

Quotes by Mikhail Bakunin

The passion for destruction is also a creative passion
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The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.
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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 Friends in Italy
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If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
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If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
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The passion for destruction is also a creative passion
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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 Friends in Italy
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The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.
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Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.
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By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.
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The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.
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Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.
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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.
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Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations.
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When the people are beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'The People's Stick'.
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