To comprehend... the full sanctity, the full breadth and reality of the individual’s rights and not to destroy society, not to shatter it into atoms, is the most difficult of tasks. It has never been resolved by any historical systems in the past; for that one needs a great maturity, which mankind has not yet attained.

Together with a monopoly in everything else, the Government in Russia has assumed a monopoly of nonsense; ordering everyone to be silent, it chatters itself without ceasing.

Would it be possible to stand still on one spot more majestically – while simulating a triumphant march forward – than it is done by the two English Houses of Parliament?

To see oneself in print is one of the strongest artificial passions of an age corrupted by books. But it requires courage, nevertheless, to venture on a public exhibition of one’s productions.

If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to another – and always into a better set – things might be easier, but the trouble is that there is no one to prepare the new rooms. The future is worse than the ocean – there is nothing there. It will be what men and circumstances make it.

One must open men’s eyes, not tear them out.

You can awaken people by dreaming their dreams more clearly than they dream themselves.

I have served one idea, marched under one banner – war against all imposed authority – against every kind of deprivation of freedom, in the name of the absolute independence of the individual.

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former – of the corruption of the will.

The Russian system of justice and police is so haphazard, so inhuman, so arbitrary and corrupt, that a poor malefactor has more reason to fear his trial than his sentence. He is impatient for the time when he will be sent to Siberia; for his martyrdom comes to an end when his punishment begins.