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
Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain. – Mikhail Bakunin
Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness. – 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
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. – Mikhail Bakunin
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty – by ceasing to exist. – Mikhail Bakunin
The privilege of ruling would be in the hands of the skilled and the learned, with a wide scope left for profitable crooked deals carried on by the Jews, who would be attracted by the enormous extension of the international speculations of the national banks. – 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 conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. – Mikhail Bakunin
He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity. – Mikhail Bakunin
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
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. – Mikhail Bakunin
Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying. – Mikhail Bakunin
