1. Citations
  2. Auteurs
  3. Pierre Kropotkine

Pierre Kropotkine citations
Page 5

Pierre Alexeïevitch Kropotkine , né le 9 décembre 1842 à Moscou et mort le 8 février 1921 à Dmitrov près de Moscou, est un géographe, explorateur, zoologiste, anthropologue, géologue et théoricien du communisme libertaire,,,,.

Il acquiert une formation scientifique de haut niveau à l’école du corps des pages du tsar Alexandre II. Contre les attentes familiales, il se décide pour un service militaire en Sibérie orientale alors que son rang lui promet une brillante carrière à Moscou. De 1862 à 1866, il accumule plusieurs expériences fondatrices. Anthropologue, il observe l’organisation sociale de petites communautés sibériennes et de peuples reculés, dont l’inventivité institutionnelle et le sens de la coopération, à mille lieues du pouvoir central, le frappent durablement. Géographe et naturaliste, il pratique une expédition en Mandchourie.

À son retour de Sibérie, il se spécialise en géographie, intégrant la Société géographique impériale à Saint-Pétersbourg. En 1871, il en refuse le poste de secrétaire général. Il voyage en Suisse et dans le Jura, où il rencontre des membres de la Fédération jurassienne, et surtout Michel Bakounine. En 1872, il adhère à l’anarchisme : « L’exposé théorique de l’anarchie tel qu’il était présenté alors par la Fédération jurassienne [...] la critique du socialisme d’État [...] et le caractère révolutionnaire de l’agitation, sollicitaient fortement mon attention. Mais les principes égalitaires que je rencontrais dans les montagnes du Jura, l’indépendance de pensée et de langage que je voyais se développer chez les ouvriers [...] tout cela exerçait sur mes sentiments une influence de plus en plus forte ; et quand je quittai ces montagnes, après un séjour de quelques jours au milieu des horlogers, mes opinions sur le socialisme étaient faites : j’étais anarchiste »,.

Revenu en Russie, il prend largement sa part dans la deuxième vague de l’« aller au peuple », ce mouvement par lequel les jeunes intellectuels russes s’efforcent d’influencer les masses travailleuses dans le sens de la révolution sociale. Il est arrêté en 1874 pour ses menées subversives. Commence alors une vie d’exil, où Kropotkine devient l’un des théoriciens, sinon le théoricien le plus respecté du mouvement anarchiste international.

En 1883, arrêté à Lyon, il est impliqué dans le « Procès des 66 », accusé d’être affilié à l’Association internationale des travailleurs alors interdite. Il est condamné à cinq ans de prison mais finalement amnistié en 1886. De son expérience pénitentiaire, il tire l'ouvrage Dans les prisons russes et françaises .

Lors de la Première Guerre mondiale, il est l’un des signataires du Manifeste des seize rassemblant les libertaires partisans de l'Union sacrée face à l'Allemagne.

Il est l'auteur de nombreux ouvrages dont : La Conquête du pain, L’Entraide, un facteur de l’évolution, Autour d'une vie et L’Éthique. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. novembre 1842 – 8. février 1921
Pierre Kropotkine photo
Pierre Kropotkine: 143 citations0 J'aime

Pierre Kropotkine Citations

“Qui dit « État » nécessairement dit « guerre.»”

Pierre Kropotkine livre Paroles d’un révolté

Paroles d’un révolté, 1885

“Dans la pratique de l’entraide, qui remonte jusqu’aux plus lointains débuts de l’évolution, nous trouvons ainsi la source positive et certaine de nos conceptions éthiques; et nous pouvons affirmer que pour le progrès moral de l’homme, le grand facteur fut l’entraide, et non pas la lutte. Et de nos jours encore, c’est dans une plus large extension de l’entraide que nous voyons la meilleure garantie d’une plus haute évolution de notre espèce.”

Pierre Kropotkine livre L'Entraide, un facteur de l'évolution

L'Entraide, un facteur de l'évolution,1902

Pierre Kropotkine: Citations en anglais

“Educated men — "civilized," as Fourier used to say with disdain — tremble at the idea that society might some day be without judges, police, or gaolers.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin

Here Kropotkin seems to be refering to the French philosopher Charles Fourier, and not the French scientist Joseph Fourier.
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

“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 sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary — as is seen in organic life at large — harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin

Kropotkin's entry on "Anarchism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910) http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy.html

“The State is abdicating and appealing in its holy functions to private individuals. Everywhere free organization trespasses on its domain. And yet, the facts we have quoted let us catch only a glimpse of what free agreement has in store for us in the future, when there will be no more State.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Ch 11 : Free Agreement
The Conquest of Bread (1892)

“Accustomed as we are by hereditary prejudices an absolutely unsound education and training to see Government, legislation and magistracy everywhere around, we have come to believe that man would tear his fellow man to pieces like a wild beast the day the police took his eye off him; that chaos would come about if authority were overthrown during a revolution. And with out eyes shut we pass by thousands and thousands of human groupings which form themselves freely, without any intervention of the law, and attain results infinitely superior to those achieved under government tutelage.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Ch 11 : Free Agreement
The Conquest of Bread (1892)

“It is not sufficient to distribute the profits realized by a trade in equal parts, if at the same time thousands of other workers are exploited. It is a case of PRODUCING THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF GOODS NECESSARY TO THE WELL-BEING OF ALL, WITH THE LEAST POSSIBLE WASTE OF HUMAN ENERGY.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 8 : Ways and Means

“It is absolutely incomprehensible to us that intelligent men — and such are not wanting in the collectivist party — can remain partisans of national or municipal parliaments after all the lessons history has given them — in France, in England, in Germany, or in the United States.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 13 : The Collectivist Wages System

“The great harm done by bourgeois society, as we have already mentioned, is not only that capitalists seize a large share of the profits of each industrial and commercial enterprise, thus enabling them to live without working, but that all reduction has taken a wrong direction, as it is not carried on with a view to securing well-being to all. For this reason we condemn it.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 8 : Ways and Means

“The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers — in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 6 : Dwellings

“Collectivism, as we know, does not abolish wages, though it introduces considerable modifications into the existing order of things. It only substitutes the State, that is to say, Representative Government, national or local, for the individual employer of labor. Under Collectivism it is the representatives of the nation, or of the district, and deputies and officials who are to have the control of industry. It is they who reserve to themselves the right of employing the surplus of production — in the interests of all.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 5 : Food, p. 101

“It is evident, as Proudhon has already pointed our, that the smallest attack upon property will bring in its train the complete disorganization of the system based upon private enterprise and wage labor. Society itself will be forced to take production in hand, in its entirety, and to reorganize it to meet the needs of the whole people.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 5 : Food, p. 99

“We must recognize, and loudly proclaim, that every one, whatever his grade in the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or incapable, as, before everything, THE RIGHT TO LIVE, and that society is bound to share amongst all, without exception, the means of existence at its disposal.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 2 : Well-Being for All, p. 71

“Education still remains the privilege of a small minority, for it is idle to talk of education when the workman’s child is forced at the age of thirteen, to go down in to the mine or to help his father on the farm. It is idle to talk of studies to the worker, who comes home in the evening crushed by excessive toil with its brutalizing atmosphere. Society is thus bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in such conditions, freedom is a vain word. The Radical begins by demanding a greater extension of political rights, but he soon sees the at breath of liberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, and then he turns round, changes his opinions, and reverts to repressive legislation and government by the sword.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 60

“In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dog, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 59

“Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of men.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 57

“Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, have laboured to increase knowledge, to dissipate error, and to create that atmosphere of scientific thought, without which the marvels of our century could never appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of poets, of scholars, of inventors, have themselves been supported by the labour of past centuries. They have been upheld and nourished through life, both physically and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen of all sorts. They have drawn their motive force from the environment.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 57

“We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second nature of the civilized man. But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth or cease to exist.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches

“Millions of human beings have labored to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves today. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labor to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches

“The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the wealth of the capitalist comes from the same source.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 4 : Expropriation

“We are beginning to see that government by majorities means abandoning all the affairs of the country to the tide-waiters who make up the majorities in the House and in election committees; to those, in a word, who have no pinion of their own.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 3 : Anarchist Communism, p. 81

“From the cradle to the grave all our actions are guided by this principle. Open any book on sociology or jurisprudence, and you will find there the Government, its organization, its acts, filling so large a place that we ome to believe that there is nothing outside the Government and the world of statesmen.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin livre The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 3 : Anarchist Communism, p. 79

“I of course take a negative attitude about a great deal that is happening, and I have said so directly and frankly to many of those who stand at the head of government. They behave well towards me, and many things I asked were carried out. They even proposed that I should take part in their work, but I refused. As an anarchist, I cannot reconcile myself to any government.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Kropotkin

About the Bolshevik revolution, as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 428

Auteurs similaires

Friedrich Engels photo
Friedrich Engels25
philosophe allemand et théoricien socialiste None
Fedor Dostoïevski photo
Fedor Dostoïevski13
écrivain russe None
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx69
philosophe, sociologue et économiste allemand None
Charles Darwin photo
Charles Darwin14
naturaliste anglais None
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon photo
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon10
polémiste, journaliste, économiste, philosophe et sociologu… None
Arthur Rimbaud photo
Arthur Rimbaud64
poète français None
Jules Verne photo
Jules Verne55
romancier français None
Émile Durkheim photo
Émile Durkheim13
sociologue français None
Hector Berlioz photo
Hector Berlioz12
compositeur et critique musical français None
Alexander von Humboldt photo
Alexander von Humboldt6
naturaliste, géographe et explorateur allemand None