Quotes from Peter Kropotkin

The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.

variety is life; uniformity is death

Sometimes he would advise me to read poetry, and would send me in his letters quantities of verses and whole poems, which he wrote from memory. 'Read poetry,' he wrote: 'poetry makes men better.' How often, in my later life, I realized the truth of this remark of his! Read poetry: it makes men better.

Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none.

Be strong. Overflow with emotional and intellectual energy, and you will spread your intelligence, your love, your energy of action broadcast among others! This is what all moral teaching comes to.

Struggle so that all may live this rich, overflowing life. And be sure that in this struggle you will find a joy greater than anything else can give.

When one has talent, everything contributes to its development.

do not the bewitching power of all studies lie in that they continually open up to us new, unsuspected horizons, not yet understood, which entice us to proceed further and further in the penetration of what appears at first sight only in vague outline?

My brother could not write about trifles. Even in society he became animated only when some serious discussion was engaged in, and he complained of feeling 'a dull pain in the brain'--a physical pain, as he used to say--when he was with people who cared only for small talk.

I understand regicide as a means of obtaining vengeance for the ruin of our lives, but regicide as a means of obtaining political freedom I could never understand.

Idlers do not make history: they suffer it!

Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none.

The hopeless don't revolt, because revolution is an act of hope.

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.

The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.

Struggle so that all may live this rich, overflowing life. And be sure that in this struggle you will find a joy greater than anything else can give.

Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle.

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.

America is just the country that how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime?

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.

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.

Think about the world you want to live and work in. What do you need to know to build the world? Demand that your teachers teach you that.

A national movement, which does not include in its platform the demand for an economical change advantageous to the masses has no chance of success unless supported by foreign aid.