Mikhail Bakunin Quotes

Whoever says State necessarily says domination, and, consequently, slavery; a State without slavery, open or concealed, is inconceivable: that is why we are enemies of the State.

If there is a State, then there is domination, and in turn, there is slavery.

We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism.

So many able writers have shown that the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government we cannot help but believe that were every law, every title deed, every court, and every police officer or soldier abolished tomorrow with one sweep, we would be better off than now.

Anarchy is a word that comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, "without government": the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a movement (which has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word "anarchy" was used universally in the sense of disorder and confusion, and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth.

Lords of the land and the lash

A revolution [is] not a single act, but rather a chain of collisions and conflicts with the ruling class, which is never ready to submit itself to the will of a democratic majority, but rather defends its predominant position with all means at its disposal, with the help of the powers which the state has built up—the army, the police, the courts and the church

Barbarians are by nature slaves rather than subjects.

The primary object of every elite, or ruling class, is to maintain its own power and privilege.

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.

Slavery is the cause of treason and sustains it everywhere it exists.

The natural course of power is to make the many slaves to the few.

Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.

Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?

Whether the institution to be defended is slavery, political absolutism, or the absolutism of the head of a family, we are always expected to judge of it from its best instances; and we are presented with pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other

All oppressing classes of every description need two social functions to safeguard their domination: the function of a hangman and the function of a priest. The hangman is to quell the protest ... the priest reconciles them to class domination, weans them away from revolutionary actions.

Brothers, this is our present situation-thus have many of the king's counselors and servants dealt with us. If we submit, or comply with their demands, you can easily perceive to what state we will be reduced. If our people labor on the field, they will not know who shall enjoy the crop. If they hunt in the woods, it will be uncertain who shall taste of the meat or have the skins.-If they build houses, they will not know whether they may sit round the fire, with their wives and children. They cannot be sure whether they shall be permitted to eat, drink, and wear the fruits of their own labor and industry.

It is as much in the order of nature that men should enslave each other as that animals should prey upon each other.

Communism was not only defined as the things that Marx and Lenin had advocated, but included anything that had the potential for change in the society.

The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

Every organism, every human being, must conquer or serve.

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four.

In the beginning, all men were alike and they lived in peace and they shared among them what they had. But now there are two kinds of men, the master and the slave. But there are more of us than there are of you, many more. And we are stronger than you, better than you. All that is good in mankind belongs to us.