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

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.
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

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

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

The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
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

The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.
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

The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.
Mikhail Bakunin

Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn.
Mikhail Bakunin

Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty - by ceasing to exist.
Mikhail Bakunin

This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.
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

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

Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.
Mikhail Bakunin