Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkinwas a Russian activist, scientist, and philosopher, who advocated anarchism. Kropotkin was a proponent of a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers. He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops, and his principal scientific offering, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. He also contributed the article on anarchism to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionRevolutionary
Date of Birth9 December 1842
CountryRussian Federation
We take men for what they are worth - and that is why we hate the government of man by man, and that we work with all our might - perhaps not strong enough - to put an end to it.
Revolutions, we must remember, are always made by minorities.
Of all parties I now see only one party- The Anarchist- which respects human life, and loudly insists upon the abolition of capital punishment, prison torture and punishment of man by man altogether.
If you want to know the people of a nation, I am sure you can judge a great deal more about them from their cooking and eating traditions than you can from the words and actions of their public officials.
Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin], your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.
You know how I always believe in the future... Without disorder, the revolution is impossible; knowing that, I did not lose hope, and I do not lose it now.
All this we see, and, therefore, instead of inanely repeating the old formula, Respect the law, we say, Despise law and all its Attributes! In place of the cowardly phrase, Obey the law, our cry, is Revolt against all laws!
But how do European railways manage without them? How do they continue to convey millions of travellers and mountains of luggage across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg-Warsaw Company and that of Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies, consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government?
The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.
War is the usual condition of Europe. A thirty years' supply of causes of war is always on hand.
Poverty, the existence of the poor, was the first cause of riches.
Each individual is a cosmos of organs, each organ is a cosmos of cells, each cell is a cosmos of infinitely small ones; and in this complex world, the well-being of the whole depends entirely on the sum of well-being enjoyed by each of the least microscopic particles of organized matter. A whole revolution is thus produced in the philosophy of life.
When one has talent, everything contributes to its development.
All things for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men worked to produce them in the measure of their strength, and since it is not possible to evaluate everyone's part in the production of the world's wealth... All is for all!