The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.
Peter KropotkinRead
It is only by the abolition of the State, by the conquest of perfect liberty by the individual, by free agreement, association, and absolute free federation that we can reach Communism — the possession in common of our social inheritance, and the production in common of all riches.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True socialism is achieved through individual liberty and voluntary cooperation rather than state control.
Peter Kropotkin's quote emphasizes the belief that true communism, characterized by the common ownership of resources and wealth, can only be achieved by dismantling the state and allowing individuals to freely associate, communicate, and collaborate. He suggests that the path to social equity and shared prosperity lies not in centralized authority, but in the liberation of individuals to work together for the common good.
Themes
CommunismLibertyFreedomIndividualismCooperationSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a political debate about state control vs. individual freedoms, this quote can highlight the need for personal liberty.
More from Peter Kropotkin
All quotes →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?
Peter KropotkinRead
Man is appealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at best tribal, but by his perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can re-trace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support- not mutual struggle- has had the leading part.
Peter KropotkinRead
When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!
Peter KropotkinRead
Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor.
Peter KropotkinRead
No evolution is accomplished in nature without revolution. Periods of very slow changes are succeeded by periods of violent changes. Revolutions are as necessary for evolution as the slow changes which prepare them and succeed them.
Peter KropotkinRead
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But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had-power.
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The Yogi conquers the body by the practice of asanas, making the body a fit vehicle for the spirit. The Yogi knows that it is a necessary vehicle for the spirit, for a soul without a body is like a bird deprived of its power to fly.
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