Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

But what is the use of talking to this peasant about American machines, when he has barely enough bread to live upon from one crop to the next; when the rent which he has to pay for that boulder clay grows heavier and heavier in proportion…

I saw what an immense amount of labour the Finnish peasant spends in clearing the land and in breaking up the hard boulder clay, and I said to myself, ‘I will write, let me say, the physical geography of this part of Russia, and tell the…

Life goes, and there is no time left to think, no time to consider the direction that one’s life is taking.

But I also thought a great deal during this journey about social matters, and these thoughts had a decisive influence upon my subsequent development.

In fact, it was the seal-hunters who opened the new era of Arctic enthusiasm which culminated in Nordenskjöld’s circumnavigation of Asia, in the permanent establishment of the north-eastern passage to Siberia, in Peary’s discovery of North…

Always to be straightforward towards them, and never to deceive them--not even in the most trifling matters--not even for scientific purposes--was his ethics.

Very few cartographers could say now whence all these changes in the map of Asia have come; but in science it is better that new ideas should make their way independently of any name attached to them.

The generalization gains in strength and extent; its foundations grow in width and solidity; while in the distance, through the far-off mist on the horizon, the eye detects the outlines of new and still wider generalizations.

What has seemed for years so chaotic, so contradictory, and so problematic takes at once its proper position within an harmonious whole.

There are not many joys in human life equal to the joy of the sudden birth of a generalization, illuminating the mind after a long period of patient research.

This preparatory work took me more than two years; and then followed months of intense thought, in order to find out what the bewildering chaos of scattered observations meant, until one day, all of a sudden, the whole became clear and…

To discover the true leading principles in the disposition of the mountains of Asia--the harmony of mountain formation--now became a question which for years absorbed my attention.

The journeys that I had made in Siberia had convinced me that the mountains which at that time were drawn on the maps of Northern Asia were mostly fantastic, and gave no idea whatever of the structure of the country.

What I had so longed for five years before was accomplished: I could study; and, acting upon the idea that a thorough training in mathematics is the only solid basis for all subsequent scientific work and thought, I joined the…

We realized what it meant to belong in any way to the army.

For my brother and myself this insurrection was a great lesson.

Petersburg came four weeks later, by post: the Governor was left to act ‘according to the best of his understanding.’ In the meantime five brave men had been shot.

He had promised us not to execute them, but after having waited several days for the reply, he ordered the sentence to be carried out secretly early in the morning.

Now, the logic of the Siberian military authorities was that as a Russian officer had been killed several Poles had to be executed.

They evidently had no chance of success--they revolted nevertheless.

The Poles, on the contrary--this must be said to their honour--were never so submissive as that, and this time they broke into open revolt.

Several batches of Russian political exiles had been sent during the last century to Siberia, but, with the submissiveness to fate which is characteristic of the Russians, they never revolted; they allowed themselves to be killed inch by…

I wish that all framers of plans of State discipline could pass through the school of real life before they begin to frame their State Utopias: we should then hear far less than at present of schemes of military and pyramidal organization…

Men of initiative are required everywhere; but once the impulse has been given, the enterprise must be conducted, especially in Russia, not in military fashion, but in a sort of communal way, by means of common understanding.

Although I did not then formulate my observations in terms borrowed from party struggles, I may say now that I lost in Siberia whatever faith in State discipline I had cherished before.