Bakunin

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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The urge for destruction is also a creative urge!
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
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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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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.
-- Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
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The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
  -- 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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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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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
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Human nature is so constituted that the propensity for evil is always intensified by external circumstances, and the morality of the individual depends much more on the conditions of his existence and the environment in which he lives than on his own will. 
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Real humanity presents a mixture of all that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most monstrous in the world.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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From each according to his faculties; to each according to his needs
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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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
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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 supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle  a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak  and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States  it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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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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The idea of humanity becomes more and more of a power in the civilized world, and, owing to the expansion and increasing speed of means of communication, and also owing to the influence, still more material than moral, of civilization upon barbarous peoples, this idea of humanity begins to take hold even of the minds of uncivilized nations. This idea is the invisible power of our century, with which the present powers  the States  must reckon. They cannot submit to it of their own free will because such submission on their part would be equivalent to suicide, since the triumph of humanity can be realized only through the destruction of the States. But the States can no longer deny this idea nor openly rebel against it, for having now grown too strong, it may finally destroy them.

In the face of this fainful alternative there remains only one way out: and that is hypocrisy. The States pay their outward respects to this idea of humanity; they speak and apparently act only in the name of it, but they violate it every day. This, however, should not be held against the States. They cannot act otherwise, their position having become such that they can hold their own only by lying. Diplomacy has no other mission.

Therefore what do we see? Every time a State wants to declare war upon another State, it starts off by launching a manifesto addressed not only to its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it declares that right and justice are on its side, and it endeavors to prove that it is actuated only by love of peace and humanity and that, imbued with generous and peaceful sentiments, it suffered for a long time in silence until the mounting iniquity of its enemy forced it to bare its sword. At the same time it vows that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any increase in territory, it will put and end to this war as soon as justice is reestablished. And its antagonist answers with a similar manifesto, in which naturally right, justice, humanity, and all the generous sentiments are to be found respectively on its side.

Those mutually opposed manifestos are written with the same eloquence, they breathe the same virtuous indignation, and one is just as sincere as the other; that is to say both of them are equally brazen in their lies, and it is only fools who are deceived by them. Sensible persons, all those who have had some political experience, do not even take the trouble of reading such manifestos. On the contrary, they seek ways to uncover the interests driving both adversaries into this war, and to weigh the respective power of each of them in order to guess the outcome of the struggle. Which only goes to prove that moral issues are not at stake in such wars.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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It should be added that, in general, it is the character of every metaphysical and theological argument to seek to explain one absurdity by another.
 Michael Bakunin, Unknown Book 9062488
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A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts with his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and loose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as wellin other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy
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The passion for destruction is also a creative passion
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Every command slaps liberty in the face.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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We revolutionary anarchists are the enemies of all forms of State and State organisations ... we
think that all State rule, all governments being by their very nature placed outside the mass of the
people, must necessarily seek to subject it to customs and purposes entirely foreign to it. We
therefore declare ourselves to be foes ... of all State organisations as such, and believe that the
people can only be happy and free, when, organised from below by means of its own autonomous
and completely free associations, without the supervision of any guardians, it will create its own
life.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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I am a passionate seeker after Truth and a not less passionate enemy of the malignant fictions used
by the "Party of Order", the official representatives of all turpitudes, religious, metaphysical,
political, judicial, economic, and social, present and past, to brutalise and enslave the world; I am a
fanatical lover of Liberty; considering it as the only medium in which can develop intelligence,
dignity, and the happiness of man;
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom and the State
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A jealous lover of human liberty, and 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, God and the State
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My personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of all, extends to infinity.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, Man, Society, and Freedom
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En el fondo, la conquista no slo es el origen, es tambin el fin supremo de todos los Estados grandes o pequeos, poderosos o dbiles, despticos o liberales, monrquicos o aristocrticos, democrticos y socialistas tambin, suponiendo que el ideal de los socialistas alemanes, el de un gran Estado comunista, se realice alguna vez.

Que ella fue el punto de partida de todos los Estados, antiguos y modernos, no podr ser puesto en duda por nadie, puesto que cada pgina de la historia universal lo prueba suficientemente. Nadie negar tampoco que los grandes Estados actuales tienen por objeto, ms o menos confesado, la conquista. Pero los Estados medianos y sobre todo los pequeos, se dir, no piensan ms que en defenderse y sera ridculo por su parte soar en la conquista.

Todo lo ridculo que se quiera, pero sin embargo es su sueo, como el sueo del ms pequeo campesino propietario es redondear sus tierras en detrimento del vecino; redondearse, crecer, conquistar a cualquier precio y siempre, es una tendencia fatalmente inherente a todo Estado, cualquiera que sea su extensin, su debilidad o su fuerza, porque es una necesidad de su naturaleza. Qu es el Estado si no es la organizacin del poder? Pero est en la naturaleza de todo poder la imposibilidad de soportar un superior o un igual, pues el poder no tiene otro objeto que la dominacin, y la dominacin no es real ms que cuando le est sometido todo lo que la obstaculiza; ningn poder tolera otro ms que cuando est obligado a ello, es decir, cuando se siente impotente para destruirlo o derribarlo. El solo hecho de un poder igual es una negacin de su principio y una amenaza perpetua contra su existencia; porque es una manifestacin y una prueba de su impotencia. Por consiguiente, entre todos los Estados que existen uno junto al otro, la guerra es permanente y su paz no es ms que una tregua.

Est en la naturaleza del Estado el presentarse tanto con relacin a s mismo como frente a sus sbditos, como el objeto absoluto. Servir a su prosperidad, a su grandeza, a su poder, esa es la virtud suprema del patriotismo. El Estado no reconoce otra, todo lo que le sirve es bueno, todo lo que es contrario a sus intereses es declarado criminal; tal es la moral de los Estados.

Es por eso que la moral poltica ha sido en todo tiempo, no slo extraa, sino absolutamente contraria a la moral humana. Esa contradiccin es una consecuencia inevitable de su principio: no siendo el Estado ms que una parte, se coloca y se impone como el todo; ignora el derecho de todo lo que, no siendo l mismo, se encuentra fuera de l, y cuando puede, sin peligro, lo viola. El Estado es la negacin de la humanidad.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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Thus, as I have already observed, materialism starts from animality to establish humanity; idealism starts from divinity to establish slavery and condemn the masses to an endless animality. Materialism denies free will and ends in the establishment of liberty; idealism, in the name of human dignity, proclaims free will, and on the ruins of every liberty founds authority. Materialism rejects the principle of authority, because it rightly considers it as the corollary of animality, and because, on the contrary, the triumph of humanity, the object and chief significance of history, can be realised only through liberty. In a word, you will always find the idealists in the very act of practical materialism, while you will see the materialists pursuing and realising the most grandly ideal aspirations and thoughts.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
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El hombre, en tanto que individuo animal, como los animales de todas las otras especies, desde el principio y desde que comienza a respirar, tiene el sentimiento inmediato de su existencia individual; pero no adquiere la conciencia reflexiva de si, conciencia que constituye propiamente su personalidad, ms que por medio de la inteligencia, y por consiguiente slo en la sociedad. Vuestra personalidad ms ntima, la conciencia que tenis de vosotros mismos en vuestro fuero interno, no es en cierto modo ms que el reflejo de vuestra propia imagen, repercutida y enviada de nuevo como por otros tantos espejos por la conciencia tanto colectiva como individual de todos los seres humanos que componen vuestro mundo social. Cada hombre que conocis y con el cual os hallis en relaciones, sean directas sean indirectas, determina ms o menos vuestro ser ms ntimo, contribuye a haceros lo que sois, a constituir vuestra personalidad. Por consiguiente, si estis rodeados de esclavos, aunque seis su amo, no dejis de ser un esclavo, pues la conciencia de los esclavos no puede enviaros sino vuestra imagen envilecida. La imbecilidad de todos os imbeciliza, mientras que la inteligencia de todos os ilumina, os eleva; los vicios de vuestro medio social son vuestros vicios y no podrais ser hombres realmente libres sin estar rodeados de hombres igualmente libres, pues la existencia de un solo esclavo basta para aminorar vuestra libertad. En la inmortal declaracin de los derechos del hombre, hecha por la Convencin nacional, encontramos expresada claramente esa verdad sublime, que la esclavitud de un solo ser humano es la esclavitud de todos.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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Si Dieu est, l'homme est esclave ; or l'homme peut, doit tre libre, donc Dieu n'existe pas. Je dfie qui que ce soit de sortir de ce cercle; et maintenant, qu'on choisisse.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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If there is an undeniable fact, attested to a thousand times by experience, it is the corrupting effect produced by authority on those who manipulate it It is absolutely impossible for a man who wields power to remain a moral man....
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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The glory and grandeur of a nation lie only in the
development of its humanity. Its strength and inner vitality are measured by the degree of its liberty.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Human labor, in general, is still divided into two exclusive categories: the firstsolely intellectual and managerialincludes the scientists, artists, engineers, inventors, accountants, educators, governmental officials, and their subordinate elites who enforce labor discipline The second group consists of the great mass of workers, people prevented from applying creative ideas or intelligence, who blindly and mechanically carry out the orders of the intellectual-managerial elite This economic and social division of labor has disastrous consequences for members of the privileged classes, the masses of the people, and for the prosperity, as well as the moral and intellectual development, of society as a whole.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on Earth.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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La Biblia, que es un libro muy interesante y a veces muy profundo cuando se lo considera como una de las ms antiguas manifestaciones de la sabidura y de la fantasa humanas que han llegado hasta nosotros, expresa esta verdad de una manera muy ingenua en su mito del pecado original. Jehov, que de todos los buenos dioses que han sido adorados por los hombres es ciertamente el ms envidioso, el ms vanidoso, el ms feroz, el ms injusto, el ms sanguinario, el ms dspota y el ms enemigo de la dignidad y de la libertad humanas, que cre a Adn y a Eva por no s qu capricho (sin duda para engaar su hasto que deba de ser terrible en su eternamente egosta soledad, para procurarse nuevos esclavos), haba puesto generosamente a su disposicin toda la Tierra, con todos sus frutos y todos los animales, y no haba puesto a ese goce completo ms que un lmite. Les haba prohibido expresamente que tocaran los frutos del rbol de la ciencia. Quera que el hombre, privado de toda conciencia de s mismo, permaneciese un eterno animal, siempre de cuatro patas ante el Dios eterno, su creador su amo. Pero he aqu que llega Satans, el eterno rebelde, el primer librepensador y el emancipador de los mundos. Avergenza al hombre de su ignorancia de su obediencia animales; lo emancipa e imprime sobre su frente el sello de la libertad y de la humanidad, impulsndolo a desobedecer y a comer del fruto de la ciencia.

Se sabe lo dems. El buen Dios, cuya ciencia innata constituye una de las facultades divinas, habra debido advertir lo que sucedera; sin embargo, se enfureci terrible y ridculamente: maldijo a Satans, al hombre y al mundo creados por l, hirindose, por decirlo as, en su propia creacin, como hacen los nios cuando se encolerizan; y no contento con alcanzar a nuestros antepasados en el presente, los maldijo en todas las generaciones del porvenir, inocentes del crimen cometido por aquellos. (...)
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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The real school for the people and for all grown men is life.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
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The general idea is always an abstraction and, for that very reason, in some sort a negation of real life. And every time that scientific men, emerging from their abstract world, mingle with living creation in the real world, all that they propose or create is poor, ridiculously abstract, bloodless and lifeless, still-born, like the homunculus created by Wagner, the pedantic disciple of the immortal Doctor Faust.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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To organize society in such a manner that every individual, man or woman, should find, upon entering life, approximately equal means for the development of his or her diverse faculties and their utilization in his or her work. And to organize such a society that, rendering impossible the exploitation of anyone's labor, will enable every individual to enjoy the social wealth, which in reality is produced only by collective labor, but to enjoy it only in so far as he contributes directly toward the creation of that wealth.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Ser livre na liberdade dos outros, eis todo meu credo.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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There will be a qualitative transformation, a new living, life-giving revelation, a new heaven and a new earth, a young and mighty world in which all our present dissonances will be resolved into a harmonious whole.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Bloody revolutions are often necessary, thanks to human stupidity; yet they are always an evil, a monstrous evil and a great disaster, not only with regard to the victims, but also for the sake of the purity and perfection of the purpose in whose name they take place.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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All our philosophy starts from a false base; it begins always by considering man as an individual, and not as he should be consideredthat is, as a being belonging to a collectivity; most of the philosophical (and mistaken) views stemming from this false premise either are led to the conception of a happiness m the clouds, or to a pessimism like that of Schopenhauer and Hartmann.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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It is not true that the freedom of one man is limited by that of other men. Man is really free to the extent that his freedom, fully acknowledged and mirrored by the free consent of his fellowmen, finds confirmation and expansion in their liberty. Man is truly free only among equally free men; the slavery of even one human being violates humanity and negates the freedom of all.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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The freedom of each is therefore realizable only in the
equality of all. The realization of freedom through equality, in principle and in fact, is justice.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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A country bent on conquest is necessarily a country internally enslaved.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Equality and justice demand only a society so organized that every single human being willfrom birth through adolescence and maturityfind therein equal means, first for maintenance and education, and later, for the exercise of all his natural capacities and aptitudes.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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May we not suppose that all men are equally inspired by God? Then, surely, there is no further use for mediators. But this supposition is impossible, because it is too clearly contradicted by the facts. It would compel us to attribute to divine inspiration all the absurdities and errors which appear, and all the horrors, follies, base deeds, and cowardly actions which are committed, in the world.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
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Improve working conditions, render to labor what is justly due to labor, and thereby give the people security, comfort, and leisure Then, believe me, they will educate themselves; they will create a larger, saner, higher civilization than this.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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One might rejoin that the State, representing as it does the public welfare or the common interest of all, curtails a part of the liberty of each only for the sake of assuring to him all the remainder. But this remainder may be a form of security; it is never liberty Liberty is indivisible; one cannot curtail a part of it without killing all of it. This little part you are curtailing is the very essence of my liberty; it is all of it. Through a natural, necessary, and irresistible movement, all of my liberty is concentrated precisely m the part, small as it may be, which you curtail.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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We have already observed that by excluding the immense majority of the human species from its midst, by keeping this majority outside the reciprocal engagements and duties of morality, of justice, and of right, the State denies humanity and, using that sonorous word patriotism, imposes injustice and cruelty as a supreme duty upon all its subjects. It restricts, it mutilates, it kills humanity in them, so that by ceasing to be men, they may be solely citizensor rather, and more specifically, that through the historic connection and succession of facts, they may never rise above the citizen to the height of being man We have also seen that every state, under pain of destruction and fearing to be devoured by its neighbor states, must reach out toward omnipotence, and, having become powerful, must conquer. Who speaks of conquest speaks of peoples conquered, subjugated, reduced to slavery in whatever form or denomination. Slavery, therefore, is the necessary consequence of the very existence of the State.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Beware of shearers, for where there is a flock there necessarily must be shepherds also to shear and devour it.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
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Slavery may change its form or its nameits essence remains the same. Its essence may be expressed in these words: to be a slave is to he forced to work for someone else, just as to he a master is to live on someone else's work In antiquity, just as in Asia and in Africa today, as well as even in a part of America, slaves were, in all honesty, called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of serfs: nowadays they are called wage earners. The position of tins latter group has a great deal more dignity attached to it, and it is less hard than that of slaves, but they are nonetheless forced, by hunger as well as by political and social institutions, to maintain other people in complete or relative idleness, through their own exceedingly hard labor. Consequently they arc slaves. And in general, no state, ancient or modern, has ever managed or will ever manage to get along without the forced labor of the masses, either wage earners or slaves, as a principal and absolutely necessary foundation for the leisure, the liberty, and the civilization of the political classthe citizens.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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The masses, on admitting their own incapacity to govern themselves, have elected me as their head By doing so, they have clearly proclaimed their own inferiority and my superiority. In this great crowd of men, among whom I hardly find any who are my equals, I alone am capable of administering public affairs. The people need me; they cannot get along without my services, while I am sufficient unto myself. They must therefore obey me for their own good, and I, by deigning to command them, create their happiness and well-being." There is enough here to turn anyone's head and corrupt the heart and make one swell with pride, isn't there? That is how power and the habit of commanding become a source of aberration, both intellectual and moral, even for the most intelligent and most virtuous of men.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Que no se objete que el cristianismo ordena a los nios a amar a sus padres, a los padres a amar a sus hijos, a los esposos a feccionarse mutuamente. S, les manda eso, pero no les permite amarlo inmediata, naturalmente y por s mismos, sino slo en dios y por dios; no admite todas esas relaciones actuales ms que a condicin de que dios se encuentre como tercero, y ese terrible tercero mata las uniones. El amor divino aniquila el amor humano. El cristianismo ordena, es verdad, amar a nuestro prjimo tanto como a nosotros mismos, pero nos ordena al mismo tiempo amar a dios ms que a nosotros mismos y por consiguiente tambin ms que al prjimo, es decir sacrificarle el prjimo por nuestra salvacin, porque al fin de cuentas el cristiano no adora a dios ms que por la salvacin de su alma.

Aceptando a dios, todo eso es rigurosamente consecuente: dios es lo infinito, lo absoluto, lo eterno, lo omnipotente; el hombre es lo finito, lo impotente. En comparacin con dios, bajo todos los aspectos, no es nada. Slo lo divino es justo, verdadero, dichoso y bueno, y todo lo que es humano en el hombre debe ser por eso mismo declarado falso, inicuo, detestable y miserable. El contacto de la divinidad con esa pobre humanidad debe devorar, pues, necesariamente, consumir, aniquilar todo lo que queda de humano en los hombres.

La intervencin divina en los asuntos humanos no ha dejado nunca de producir efectos excesivamente desastrosos. Pervierte todas las relaciones de los hombres entre s y reemplaza su solidaridad natural por la prctica hipcrita y malsana de las comunidades religiosas, en las que bajo las apariencias de la caridad, cada cual piensa slo en la salvacin de su alma, haciendo as, bajo el pretexto del amor divino, egosmo humano excesivamente refinado, lleno de ternura para s y de indiferencia, de malevolencia y hasta de crueldad para el prjimo. Eso explica la alianza ntima que ha existido siempre entre el verdugo y el sacerdote, alianza francamente confesada por el clebre campen del ultramontanismo, Joseph de Maistre, cuya pluma elocuente, despus de haber divinizado al papa, no dej de rehabilitar al verdugo; uno era en efecto el complemento del otro.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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El que desea, no la Libertad, sino el Estado no debe jurar la revolucion.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy
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The people are committed to ruinous policies, all without noticing. They have neither the experience nor the time to study all these laws and so they leave everything to their elected representatives. These naturally promote the interests of their class rather than the prosperity of the people, and their greatest talent is to sugarcoat their bitter measures, to render them more palatable to the populace. Representative government is a system of hypocrisy and perpetual falsehood. Its success rests on the stupidity of the people and the corruption of the public mind.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer For such special knowledge I apply to such a "savant." But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the "savant" to impose his authority on me. 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. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions and choose that which seems to me soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even m special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. 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, the tool of other people's will and interests.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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There is not, there cannot be, a State without religion. Take the freest States in the worldthe United States of America or the Swiss Confederation, for instanceand see what an important part is played in all official discourses by divine Providence, that supreme sanction of all States.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
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The authority of society is imposed not arbitrarily or officially, but naturally. And it is because of this fact that its effect on the individual is incomparably much more powerful than that of the State. It creates and molds all individuals in its midst. It passes on to them, slowly, from the day of birth to death, all its material, intellectual, and moral characteristics. Society, so to speak, individualizes itself in every individual.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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I am a convinced advocate of economic and social equality because I know that, without it, liberty, justice, human dignity, morality, and the well-being of individuals, as well as the prosperity of nations, will never amount to more than a pack of lies. But since I stand for liberty as the primary condition of mankind, I believe that equality must be established in the world by the spontaneous organization of labor and the collective ownership of property by freely organized producers' associations, and by the equally spontaneous federation of communes, to replace the domineering paternalistic State.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Que no parezca mal a los metafsicos y a los idealistas religiosos, filsofos, polticos o poetas: la idea de Dios implica la abdicacin de la razn humana y de la justicia humana, es la negacin ms decisiva de la libertad humana y lleva necesariamente a la esclavitud de los hombres, tanto en la teora como en la prctica.

A menos de querer la esclavitud y el envilecimiento de los hombres, como lo quieren los jesuitas, como lo quieren los monjes, los pietistas o los metodistas protestantes, no podemos, no debemos hacer la menor concesin ni al dios de la teologa ni al de la metafsica porque en ese alfabeto mstico, el que comienza por decir A deber fatalmente acabar diciendo Z, y el que quiere adorar a Dios debe, sin hacerse ilusiones pueriles, renunciar bravamente a su libertad y a su humanidad.

Si Dios existe, el hombre es esclavo; ahora bien, el hombre puede y debe ser libre: por consiguiente, Dios no existe.

Desafo a quienquiera que sea a salir de ese crculo, y ahora, escojamos.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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La contradiccin es sta: quieren a Dios y quieren a la humanidad. Se obstinan en poner juntos esos dos trminos, que, una vez separados, no pueden encontrarse de nuevo ms que para destruirse recprocamente. Dicen de un tirn: Dios y la libertad del hombre; Dios y la dignidad, la justicia, la igualdad, la fraternidad y la prosperidad de los hombres, sin preocuparse de la lgica fatal conforme a la cual, si Dios existe todo queda condenado a la no-existencia. Porque si Dios existe es necesariamente el amo eterno, supremo, absoluto, y si amo existe el hombre es esclavo; pero si es esclavo, no hay para l ni justicia ni igualdad ni fraternidad ni prosperidad posibles. Podrn, contrariamente al buen sentido y a todas las experiencias de la historia, reventarse a su Dios animado del ms tierno amor por la libertad humana: un amo, haga lo que quiera y por liberal que quiera mostrarse, no deja de ser un amo y su existencia implica necesariamente la esclavitud de todo lo que se encuentra por debajo de l.

Por consiguiente, si Dios existiese, no habra para l ms que un solo medio de servir a la libertad humana: dejar de existir.

Como celoso amante de la libertad humana y considerndolo como la condicin absoluta de todo lo que adoramos y respetamos en la humanidad, doy vuelta a la frase de Voltaire y digo: si Dios existiese realmente, habra que hacerlo desaparecer.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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Henos aqu de nuevo en la iglesia y en el Estado. Es verdad que en esa organizacin nueva, establecida, como todas las organizaciones polticas antiguas, por la gracia de Dios, pero apoyada esta vez, al menos en la forma, a guisa de concesin necesaria al espritu moderno, y como en los prembulos de los decretos imperiales de Napolen III, sobre la voluntad (ficticia) del pueblo; la iglesia no se llamar ya iglesia, se llamar escuela. Pero sobre los bancos de esa escuela no se sentarn solamente los nios: estar el menor eterno, el escolar reconocido incapaz para siempre de sufrir sus exmenes, de elevarse a la ciencia de sus maestros y de pasarse sin su disciplina: el pueblo. El Estado no se llamar ya monarqua, se llamar repblica, pero no dejar de ser Estado, es decir, una tutela oficial y relarmente establecida por una minora de hombres competentes, de hombres de genio o de talento, virtuosos, para vigilar y para dirigir la conducta de ese gran incorregible y nio terrible: el Pueblo. Los profesores de la escuela y los funcionarios del Estado se harn republicanos; pero no sern por eso menos tutores, pastores, y el pueblo permanecer siendo lo que ha sido eternamente hasta aqu: un rebao. Cuidado entonces con los esquiladores; porque all donde hay un rebao, habr necesariamente tambin esquiladores y aprovechadores del rebao.

El pueblo, en ese sistema, ser el escolar y el pupilo eterno. A pesar de su soberana completamente ficticia, continuar sirviendo de instrumento a pensamientos, a voluntades y por consiguiente tambin a intereses que no sern los suyos. Entre esta situacin y la que llamamos de libertad, de verdadera libertad, hay un abismo. Habr, bajo formas nuevas, la antigua opresin y la antigua esclavitud, y all donde existe la esclavitud, estn la miseria, el embrutecimiento, la verdadera materializacin de la sociedad, tanto de las clases privilegiadas, como de las masas.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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He who is given power will inevitably become an oppressor and exploiter of society.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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unless it be done deliberately, as sometimes in the case of the Jews of Russia and Poland, who get baptised three or four times in order to receive each time the remuneration allowed them
  -- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
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Representative democracy, however, harmonizes marvelously with the capitalist economic system. This new statist system, basing itself on the alleged sovereignty of the so-called will of the people, as supposedly expressed by their alleged representatives in mock popular assemblies, incorporates the two principal and necessary conditions for the progress of capitalism: state centralization, and the actual submission of the sovereign people to the intellectual governing minority, who, while claiming to represent the people, unfailingly exploits them.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Prima revolt este mpotriva tiraniei supreme a teologiei, a fantomei lui Dumnezeu. Ct timp avem un stpn n rai, vom fi sclavi pe pmnt.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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If there is a State, there must be the domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable - and this is why we are the enemies of the State.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Amar  querer a liberdade, a completa independncia do outro, o primeiro ato do verdadeiro amor,  a emancipao completa do objeto que se ama; no se pode verdadeiramente amar seno a um ser perfeitamente livre, independente no somente de todos os outros, mas mesmo e sobretudo daquele pelo qual  amado e que ele prprio ama.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin
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Hay una categora de gentes que, si no cree, debe menos aparentar que cree. Son todos los atormentadores, todos los opresores y todos los explotadores de la humanidad. Sacerdotes, monarcas, hombres de Estado, hombres de guerra, financistas pblicos y privados, funcionarios de todas las especies, policas, carceleros y verdugos, monopolizadores, capitalistas, empresarios y propietarios, abogados, economistas, polticos de todos los colores, hasta el ltimo comerciante, todos repetirn al unsono estas palabras de Voltaire: "Si Dios no existiese habra que inventario." Porque, comprenderis, es precisa una religin para el pueblo. Es la vlvula de seguridad.

Existe, en fin, una categora bastante numerosa de almas honestas, pero dbiles, que, demasiado inteligentes para tomar en serio los dogmas cristianos, los rechazan en detalle, pero no tienen ni el valor, ni la fuerza, ni la resolucin necesarios para rechazarlos totalmente. Dejan a vuestra crtica todos los absurdos particulares de la religin, se burlan de todos los milagros, pero se aferran con desesperacin al absurdo principal, fuente de todos los dems, al milagro que explica y legitima todos los otros milagros: a la existencia de Dios. Su Dios no es el ser vigoroso y potente, el Dios brutalmente positivo de la teologa. Es un ser nebuloso, difano, ilusorio, de tal modo ilusorio que cuando se cree palparle se transforma en Nada; es un milagro, un ignis fatuus que ni calienta ni ilumina. Y, sin embargo, sostienen y creen que si desapareciese, desaparecera todo con l. Son almas inciertas, enfermizas, desorientadas en la civilizacin actual, que no pertenecen ni al presente ni al porvenir, plidos fantasmas eternamente suspendidos entre el cielo y la tierra, y que ocupan entre la poltica burguesa y el socialismo del proletariado absolutamente la misma posicin. No se sienten con fuerza ni para pensar hasta el fin, ni para querer, ni para resolver, y pierden su tiempo y su labor esforzndose siempre por conciliar lo inconciliable. En la vida pblica se llaman socialistas burgueses.

Ninguna discusin con ellos ni contra ellos es posible. Estn demasiado enfermos.
 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State
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