Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

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.

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

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…

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.

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.

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…

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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…

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

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

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…

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…

How dare I talk to him of American machines, when all that he can raise must be sold to pay rent and taxes?

He needs me to live with him, to help him to become the owner or the free occupier of that land.

They are already ruined--poor as Lazarus--and in a few years they will be made still poorer by a foolish taxation.

And now we are fully in the period of a rapid desiccation, accompanied by the formation of dry prairies and steppes, and man has to find out the means to put a check to that desiccation to which Central Asia already has fallen a victim…

Would not science itself progress in leaps and cause mankind to make strides in production, invention, and social creation, of which we are hardly in a condition now to measure the speed?

The masses want to know: they are willing to learn; they can learn.

Both deeply feel, both meditate, both think; they are ready to widen their knowledge: only give it to them; only give them the means of getting leisure.

This is the direction in which, and these are the kind of people for whom, I must work.

All those sonorous phrases about making mankind progress, while at the same time the progress-makers stand aloof from those whom they pretend to push onwards, are mere sophisms made up by minds anxious to shake off a fretting contradiction.