Peter Kropotkin Quotes
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian geographer, naturalist, and anarchist philosopher and one of the founders of anarcho-communism. After early fieldwork in Siberia that shaped his evolutionary views, he renounced his title and committed himself to the revolutionary movement, spending decades in exile in Western Europe. The quotes below are attributed to Peter Kropotkin, organized by topic.
Browse Peter Kropotkin by topic
Peter Kropotkin on Death
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“Variant translation: Whoever holds dear the future of communism cannot embark upon such measures. It is possible that no one has explained what a hostage really is? A hostage is imprisoned not as punishment for some crime. He is held in order to blackmail the enemy with his death. As translated in Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution (1970) edited and translated by Martin A. Miller”
Vladimir Ilyich, your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold. Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? … If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle
Peter Kropotkin on Freedom
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“America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society. The peoples of the world are becoming profoundly dissatisfied and are not appeased by the promise of the social-democrats to patch up the State into a new engine of oppression.”
Speech (26 September 1891); as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 269
Peter Kropotkin on Knowledge
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“America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society. The peoples of the world are becoming profoundly dissatisfied and are not appeased by the promise of the social-democrats to patch up the State into a new engin”
Speech (26 September 1891); as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 269 -
“Kropotkin's entry on "Anarchism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910)”
ANARCHISM (from the Gr. ἅν , and άρχη , contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sa -
“The best exponent of anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was Zeno (342-267 or 270 B.C.), from Crete , the founder of the Stoic philosophy, who distinctly opposed his conception of a free community without government to the state-Utopia of Plato . He repudiated the omnipotence of the State, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual — re”
Anarchism" article in Encyclopedia Britannica (1910) "The Historical Development of Anarchism", as quoted in Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings (1927), p. 288 -
“Vladimir Ilyich, your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold. Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? … If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle ”
Letter to Vladimir Lenin (21 December 1920); as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 426 -
“You know how I always believe in the future … Without disorder, the revolution is impossible; knowing that, I did not lose hope, and I do not lose it now.”
Letter to a friend (November 1920), as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 428
Peter Kropotkin on Nature
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“Mutual aid is a factor of evolution.”
A soon as we study animals — not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest and prairie, in the steppe and in the mountains — we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid , and -
Attributed to Peter Kropotkin:
“Cooperation, not competition, is the law of life.”
Peter Kropotkin on Politics
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Attributed to Peter Kropotkin:
“Anarchy is the rejection of all rule, of all authority not consented to.”
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Attributed to Peter Kropotkin:
“Bread for all is the foundation of every human society.”
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Attributed to Peter Kropotkin:
“The state is the organized destruction of mutual aid.”
Peter Kropotkin on Time
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“Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none. He is a madman, an immolator, wishful of burning, and slaughter, and sacrificing.”
As quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 407
Peter Kropotkin on Virtue
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“Anarchist Morality (1890)”
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested — rulers, lawyers, clerics — have carefully enwound her. She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness
Things actually not said by Peter Kropotkin
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Peter Kropotkin but are in fact from someone else. Did Peter Kropotkin say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Peter Kropotkin say this? No.
“Unless Socialists are prepared openly and avowedly to profess that the satisfaction of the needs of each individual must be their very first aim; unless they have prepared public opinion to establish itself firmly at this standpoint, the people in their next attempt to free themselves will once more suffer a defeat.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This appeared in "The First Work of the Revolution" an article by an unidentified author in Freedom , Vol. 1, No. (11 August 1887), where another article had been written by Kropotkin.