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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.

— Peter Kropotkin The Conquest of Bread (1892)

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Society

More quotes by Peter Kropotkin

Vladimir Ilyich, your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.

Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.

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.

Anarchist Morality (1890)

She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.

Anarchist Morality (1890)

The whole aspect of the universe changes with this new conception.

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Peter Kropotkin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.