The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.
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.
Interpretation
Evolution involves both gradual progress and sudden, radical shifts necessary for growth.
Peter Kropotkin’s quote emphasizes that evolution in nature is not a linear process; rather, it is characterized by cycles of gradual changes followed by sudden revolutions. He argues that these revolutions are crucial for significant developmental leaps, indicating that both slow and rapid changes play integral roles in the broader process of evolution, both in nature and potentially in human societies.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about environmental changes and the necessity of abrupt actions to combat climate change.
The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.
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?
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.
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.
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!
Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor.
Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.
We look in our own backyard and say, 'How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?'
True transformation only comes from sustainable strategies.
No, we are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already ... He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.
Want to change the world? Upset the status quo? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to make people dream the same dream that you do.
During past years, like frightened children, we were afraid to eat the strong meat of human rights and instead sucked the milk of civil rights from the breasts of white liberals, black Uncle Toms, and Aunt Jemimas.
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