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

— Mikhail Bakunin

I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.

— Mikhail Bakunin

Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.

— Mikhail Bakunin

If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.

— Mikhail Bakunin

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

— Mikhail Bakunin

I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.

— Mikhail Bakunin

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.-- Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy

— Mikhail Bakunin

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

— 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 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