"The hopeless don't revolt, because revolution is an act of hope. "
"Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor. "
"It is only those who do nothing who makes no mistake. "
"Freedom of the press, freedom of association, the inviolability of domicile, and all the rest of the rights of man are respected so long as no one tries to use them against the privileged class. On the day they are launched against the privileged they are overthrown. "
"Poverty, the existence of the poor, was the first cause of riches. "
"You reason like the king, who, being sent across the frontier, called out, 'What will become of my poor subjects without me?' "
"Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none. "
"Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin], your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold. "
"But what right had I to these highest joys, when all around me was nothing but misery and struggle for a moldy bit of bread; when whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live in that world of higher emotions must needs be taken from the very mouths of those who grew the wheat and had not bread enough for their children? "
"But how do European railways manage without them? How do they continue to convey millions of travellers and mountains of luggage across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg-Warsaw Company and that of Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies, consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government? "
- Petr Kropotkin, the man who refused to be prince
