39 Quotes by Pyotr Kropotkin

Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor.

Take heed that if you deceive, lie, intrigue, cheat, you thereby demean yourself. belittle yourself, confess your own weakness beforehand, play the part of the slave of the harem who feels himself the inferior of his master. Do this if it so pleases you, but know that humanity will regard you as petty, contemptible and feeble, and treat you as such. Having no evidence of your strength, it will act towards you as one worthy of pity — and pity only.

But today the united city has ceased to exist; there is no more communion of ideas. The town is a chance agglomeration of people who do not know one another, who have no common interest, save that of enriching themselves at the expense of one another.

If all the men and women in the countryside had their daily bread assured, and their daily needs already satisfied, who would work for our capitalist at a wage of half a crown a day, while the commodities one produces in a day sell in the market for a crown or more?

If the present situation should continue much longer, the very word 'socialism' will turn into a curse, as did the slogan of 'equality' for forty years after the rule of the Jacobins.—letter to Lenin, March 1920

Struggle! To struggle is to live, and the fiercer the struggle the intenser the life. Then you will have lived; and a few hours of such life are worth years spent vegetating.

مع عقولنا التي ضاقت بالفعل في شبابنا، المستعبدة بالماضي في سن بلوغنا وحتى وصولنا للقبر، نحن بالكاد نجرؤ على التفكير. نستشير كتب تعفنت وعمرها مئة سنة لمعرفة ما يعتقده السادة القدماء حول هذا الموضوع.

Letters and science will only take their proper place in the work of human development when, freed from all mercenary bondage, they will be exclusively cultivated by those who love them, and for those who love them.

The most important economy, the only reasonable one, is to make life pleasant for all, because the man who is satisfied with his life produces infinitely more than the man who curses his surroundings.