Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker.
Mikhail Bakunin

Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations.
Mikhail Bakunin

From each according to his faculties; to each according to his needs.
Mikhail Bakunin

He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
Mikhail Bakunin

I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.
Mikhail Bakunin

Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary.
Mikhail Bakunin

But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person.
Mikhail Bakunin

I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds.
Mikhail Bakunin

Look at Christ, my dear friend: His life was divine through and through, full of self-denial, and He did everything for mankind, finding His satisfaction and His delight in the dissolution of His material being.
Mikhail Bakunin

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

Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.
Mikhail Bakunin

Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
Mikhail Bakunin

From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.
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

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

A jealous lover of human liberty, 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

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