I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.
Mikhail BakuninRead
The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the concept of God as a hindrance to human freedom and rational thought.
Mikhail Bakunin argues that the belief in God undermines human reason and justice, leading to the oppression of humanity. He suggests that the idea of a divine authority removes individual liberties and promotes a form of enslavement, both conceptually and in practice, implying that reliance on God stifles human potential and rational thought.
Themes
GodHuman ReasonLibertyEnslavementPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a debate on religion and ethics, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of reason over divine authority.
More from Mikhail Bakunin
All quotes →We must overthrow the material and moral conditions of our present-day life. . . . We must first purify our atmosphere and completely transform the milieu in which we live; for it corrupts our instinct and our will, and constricts our heart and our intelligence
Mikhail BakuninRead
The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.
Mikhail BakuninRead
By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.
Mikhail BakuninRead
By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible.
Mikhail BakuninRead
This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.
Mikhail BakuninRead
Similar quotes
I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity.
Oliver CromwellRead
Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.
EpictetusRead
Certainly there is no contending against the Will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining, and applying it, to particular cases.
Abraham LincolnRead
Because every portion of the body, mind, and spirit yearns for the integration of yin and yang, angelic intercourse is led by the spirit rather than the sexual organs. . . . Where ordinary intercourse unites sex organs with sex organs, angelic cultivation unites spirit with spirit, mind with mind, and every cell of one body with every cell of the other body.
LaoziRead
I soon began to sense a fundamental perceptual difficulty among male scholars (and some female ones) for which 'sexism' is too facile a term. It is really an intellectual defect, which might be termed 'patrivincialism' or patrochialism': the assumption that women are a subgroup, that men's culture is the 'real' world, that patriarchy is equivalent to culture and culture to patriarchy, that the 'great' or 'liberalizing' periods of history have been the same for women as for men.
Adrienne RichRead
Those religions that are oppressive to women are also against democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression.
Taslima NasrinRead