"I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition
under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop and grow;
not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the
State, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the
privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest; not the
individualistic, egoistic, shabby, and fictitious liberty extolled by the
School of J.-J. Rousseau and other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which
considers the would-be rights of all men, represented by the State which
limits the rights of each -- an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction
of the rights of each to zero. No, I mean the only kind of liberty that is
worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all
the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person;
liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the
laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as
restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator
beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis
of our material, intellectual and moral being -- they do not limit us but
are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom".
Mikhail Bakunin.
