Peter Kropotkin quotes - page 4

Our society seems no longer able to understand that it is possible to exist otherwise than under the reign of law, elaborated by a representative government and administered by a handful of rulers. (Peter Kropotkin)
What if that knowledge - and only that - should become the possession of all? Would not science itself progress in leaps, and cause mankind to make strides in production, invention, and social creation, of which we are hardly in a condition now to measure the speed? View quote
Peter Kropotkin
Governmental Communism, like theocratic Communism, is repugnant to the worker. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
Belief in an ice-cap reaching Middle Europe was at that time rank heresy. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
But a greater evil of the present system becomes more and more marked; namely, that in a system based on private appropriation, all that is necessary to life and to production - land, housing, food and tools - having once passed into the hands of a few, the production of necessities that would give well-being to all is continually hampered. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
The whole aspect of the universe changes with this new conception. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
But side by side with these customs, necessary to the life of societies and the preservation of the race, other desires, other passions, and therefore other habits and customs, are evolved in human association. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
It is evident that no review of evolution can be complete, unless these two dominant currents are analyzed. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
It seeks the most complete development of individuality combined with the highest development of voluntary association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for all imaginable aims. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
This conception and ideal of society is certainly not new. (Peter Kropotkin)
If on the morrow of the revolution, the masses of the people have only phrases at their service, if they do not recognize, by clear and blinding facts, that the situation has been transformed to their advantage, if the overthrow ends only in a change of persons and forumlae, nothing will have been achieved. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
It provokes new acts of revolt, individual and collective, it drives the rebels to heroism; and in rapid succession these acts spread, become general, develop. The revolutionary party is strengthened by elements which up to this time were hostile or indifferent to it. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
The masses have never believed in sophisms taught by economists, uttered more to confirm exploiters in their rights than to convert exploited! View quote
Peter Kropotkin
Relatively speaking, law is a product of modern times. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
What economists call over-production is but a production that is above the purchasing power of the worker, who is reduced to poverty by Capital and State. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
Did not the Parisian press, only two or three years ago, maintain that the whole philosophy of Anarchy consisted in destruction, and that its only argument was violence? View quote
Peter Kropotkin
Take Christian morality: what other teaching could have had more hold on minds than that spoken in the name of a crucified God, and could have acted with all its mystical force, all its poetry of martyrdom, its grandeur in forgiving executioners? And yet the institution was more powerful than the religion. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
The hospitality of primitive peoples, respect for human life, the sense of reciprocal obligation, compassion for the weak, courage, extending even to the sacrifice of self for others which is first learnt for the sake of children and friends, and later for that of members of the same community - all these qualities are developed in man anterior to all law, independently of all religion, as in the case of the social animals. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
I of course take a negative attitude about a great deal that is happening, and I have said so directly and frankly to many of those who stand at the head of government. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. (Peter Kropotkin)
Between these two currents, always manifesting themselves, always at grips with each other - the popular trend and that which thirsts for political and religious domination - we have made our choice. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
Sometimes men have even given themselves trouble to reflect, and at the present moment we have at least gained a point: it is willingly admitted that Anarchists have an ideal. Their ideal is even found too beautiful, too lofty for a society not composed of superior beings. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
Each time, however, that an attempt to return to this old principle was made, its fundamental idea itself was widened. From the clan it was extended to the stem, to the federation of stems, to the nation, and finally - in ideal, at least - to the whole of mankind. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
All that was an element of progress in the past or an instrument of moral and intellectual improvement of the human race is due to the practice of mutual aid, to the customs that recognized the equality of men and brought them to ally, to unite, to associate for the purpose of producing and consuming, to unite for purpose of defence to federate and to recognize no other judges in fighting out their differences than the arbitrators they took from their own midst. View quote
Peter Kropotkin