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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.

Mikhail Bakunin

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Mikhail Bakunin
Age: 62 †
Born: 1814
Born: May 30
Died: 1876
Died: July 1
Anarchist
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Michael Bakunin
Michail Alexandrovich Bakunin
A. M. Bakunin
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin
General
Crush
Crushes
Feet
Intensity
Worm
Animal
Relative
Anarchist
Turns
Libertarian
Revolt
Natural
Foot
Worms
Even
Tendencies
Vitality
Life
Instinct
Measured
Dignity
Tendency

More quotes by Mikhail Bakunin

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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.
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Man is only truly free only among equally free men.
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Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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.
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Theology is the science of the divine lie.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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...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
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As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason.
Mikhail Bakunin
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Everything that lives, does so under the categorical condition of decisively interfering in the life of someone else.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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Intellectual slavery, of whatever nature it may be, will always have as a natural result both political and social slavery.
Mikhail Bakunin