Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

The International Workingmen’s Association inaugurated a new method of solving the problems of practical sociology by appealing to the workers themselves.

We did not pretend to evolve an ideal commonwealth out of our theoretical views as to what a society ought to be, but we invited the workers to investigate the causes of the present evils, and in their discussions and congresses to…

The structure of the society which we longed for was thus worked out, in theory and practice, from beneath, and the Jura Federation took a large part in that elaboration of the anarchist ideal.

I saw that it must be treated by the same methods as natural sciences; not, however, on the slippery ground of mere analogies, such as Herbert Spencer accepts, but on the solid basis of induction applied to human institutions.

What an amount of wasted force, of bitter words exchanged and efforts divided, simply because those who have adopted the formula of ‘conquest of power within the existing states’ do not understand that activity in this direction cannot…

When a reaction has gained the upper hand, all visible traces of a movement disappear.

If by his ‘Sportsman’s Notebook’ he rendered to Russia the immense service of throwing odium upon serfdom (I did not know at that time that he took a leading part in Hérzen’s powerful ‘Bell’), he has rendered no less service through his…

He has shown what the Russian woman is, what treasuries of mind and heart she possesses, what she may be as an inspirer of men; and he has taught us how men who have a real claim to superiority look upon women, how they love.

Upon me, and upon thousands of my contemporaries, this part of his teaching made an indelible impression, far more powerful than the best articles upon women’s rights.

There is a real chasm indeed between the conceptions which prevail in Russia upon marriage relations and those which prevail in France: amongst the workers as well as in the middle classes; and upon many other points there is almost the…

They search, they fall, but they rise again, and find it--and by right, too.

Yet, although Hamlet is a sceptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil.

The Russian political prisoners bore without murmuring all hardships inflicted upon them in Siberia, or through hard labour, but they were firmly decided not to tolerate corporal punishment.

It was moderate in tone, but revolutionary in substance, and I did my best to write it in such a style that complicated historical and economical questions should be comprehensible to every intelligent worker.

Socialist newspapers have often a tendency to become mere annals of complaints about existing conditions.

To counterbalance that effect, the editor has to rely chiefly upon burning words, by means of which he tries to inspire his readers with energy and faith.

I thought, on the contrary, that a revolutionary paper must be, above all, a record of those symptoms which everywhere announce the coming of a new era, the germination of new forms of social life, the growing revolt against antiquated…

These symptoms should be watched, brought together in their intimate connection, and so grouped as to show to the hesitating minds of the greater number the invisible and often unconscious support which advanced ideas find everywhere, when…

To make one feel in sympathy with the throbbing of the human heart all over the world, with its revolt against age-long injustice, with its attempts at working out new forms of life--this should be the chief duty of a revolutionary paper.

It is hope, not despair, which makes successful revolutions.

The greatest social philosophers have only caught the indications of coming changes, have understood their inner relations, and, aided by induction and intuition, have foretold what was to occur.

A correct social forecast cannot be made unless one keeps an eye on the thousands of signs of the new life, separating the occasional facts from those which are organically essential, and building the generalization upon that basis.

This was the method of thought with which I endeavoured to familiarize our readers--using plain comprehensible words, so as to accustom the most modest of them to judge for himself whereunto society is moving, and himself to correct the…

As to the criticism of what exists, I went into it only to disentangle the roots of the evils, and to show that a deep-seated and carefully-nurtured fetishism with regard to the antiquated survivals of past phases of human development, and…

His appreciations of current events and men were so remarkable for their uncommon good sense that they were often prophetic.