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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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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
Imposed
Bows
Authority
Special
Upon
Reason
Men

More quotes by 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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Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.
Mikhail Bakunin
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Man is only truly free only among equally free men.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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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
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Throw a theory into the fire it only spoils life.
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.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called the People's Stick.
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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Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary.
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.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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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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
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Destroy or be destroyed-there is no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers!
Mikhail Bakunin
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Our first work must be the annihilation of everything as it now exists.
Mikhail Bakunin
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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