He objected, though, to indiscriminate reading. 'One must have some question,' he wrote, 'addressed to the book one is going to read.
Peter KropotkinI understand regicide as a means of obtaining vengeance for the ruin of our lives, but regicide as a means of obtaining political freedom I could never understand.
Peter KropotkinWhen we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!
Peter KropotkinBut times and tempers are changed. Rebels are everywhere to be found who no longer wish to obey the law without knowing whence it comes, what are its uses, and whither arises the obligation to submit to it, and the reverence with which it is encompassed. The rebels of our day are criticizing the very foundations of society which have hitherto been held sacred, and first and foremost amongst them that fetish, law.
Peter KropotkinWe take men for what they are worth - and that is why we hate the government of man by man, and that we work with all our might - perhaps not strong enough - to put an end to it.
Peter KropotkinMan is appealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at best tribal, but by his perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can re-trace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support- not mutual struggle- has had the leading part.
Peter Kropotkin