Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

“ The only reason we fail to see the full horror of the life we lead, so contrary to human nature, is because all the horrors in the midst of which we quietly live have crept in so gradually that we have failed to notice them. It befell me in the course of my life to see a neglected old man in the most dreadful state: his body was teeming with worms, he could not move a single limb without suffering, yet he did not realize the full horror of his predicament because it had crept upon him so imperceptibly. ”

“ Just understand this and dedicate your life to this joyous work; only begin to do this and you will instantly realize that it is this, and only this, which can lead to that improvement of life for all, for which you strive so vainly and along such mistaken paths. Realize that man’s welfare lies only in unity and that unity cannot be attained through violent means. Unity will only be achieved when, without thinking about unity, each person thinks only of fulfilling the law of life. And it is only the SUPREME law of life, one and the same for us all, that unites people. ”

“ If the men of our world could only be free of the deceit of the Church doctrine, which distorts the Christian teaching, and from the justification and exaltation of a political structure based on this doctrine, which is incompatible with Christianity, then, not only for all Christians, but for all the world, the chief obstacle to religious awareness of the supreme law of love, permitting no exception and no violence, which was revealed to humanity 1900 years ago, and which now alone satisfies the demands of the human conscience, will disappear from men’s souls of its own accord. ”

“ With the same inhuman cruelty the revolutionary leaders demand and desire the death of the government, and the revolutionary workers and peasants demand the death of the capitalists and landowners.
These people know that they are not behaving as men should behave, they are afraid, and tell lies and try to bring evil upon themselves in order not to see the truth. They stifle the truth that exists within them and which appeals to them, and they suffer, unceasingly, from the most cruel of all torments: the sufferings of the soul. ”

“ One can see why those in power say that without employing violence there can be no order, or decent life, meaning by the word ‘order’, that structure of life wherein the minority can indulge in excess through the labor of others, and by ‘decent life’, the lack of any impediment to leading such a life. However unjust what they say is, one can see that they are able to speak thus because the suppression of violence would not only deprive them of the possibility of living in the way they do, but would expose all the age-old injustice and cruelty of their life. ”

“ People are already recognizing the pitiful degradation of a spy, or executioner, and are starting to feel the same about the police force, police agents, and even to some extent about the army; but they have not yet begun to feel this about judges, senators, ministers, political leaders and revolutionaries. And yet the work of the senator, the minister, the monarch, and the leaders of political parties is just as base, vile and alien to human nature and, perhaps, even worse than the task of the executioner or spy, since it is just the same, but covered in hypocrisy. ”

“ A free man is only master of what he can master without impediment. And the only thing we are entirely free to master without impediment is ourselves. Therefore, if you see a person wishing to control not himself but others, you know that he is not free: he has become a slave of his desire to dominate people.’ (Epictetus)
But what can the hundreds, thousands, let us say hundreds of thousands of insignificant, powerless, isolated people do against the vast number of men who are bound to the State and equipped with all the powerful weapons of violence? ”

“ It is love, true love, which comprises the essence of man’s soul; that love which is revealed in Christ’s teaching, and excludes even the suggestion of any kind of violence.
Whether the employment of violence or the endurance of evil will be useful or harmful I do not know, and no one knows. But I do know, as every person knows, that love is well-being; the love of others for me is a blessing and still more is my love for others. The supreme bliss is my love for others, and not only for those who love me, but as Christ said, for those who hate me, offend me, and commit evil against me. ”

“ Today, not even the most powerful men are convinced that they are behaving well and justly by exerting violence over others. This delusion is being destroyed for both rulers and their opponents. Both parties, although influenced by their position, try through every kind of argument to convince themselves that violence is useful and necessary, while knowing in the depth of their hearts that their acts of cruelty only achieve a semblance of what they want – and that only a temporary one which, in reality, distances them from their aims rather than drawing them closer. ”

“ The essence of the mistake of all political doctrines, from the most conservative to the most advanced, which has led people to this unfortunate situation, lies in the fact that the people of this world have considered, and still consider, that it is possible, through violence, to unite people in such a way that everyone submits, without resistance, to the same structure of life and guidance for conduct that results from it. It is understandable that people, yielding to passion, might employ forcible methods in order to make opposing people do what they want. ”

“ Others, as much as they try to hide it from themselves, know that what they are doing is unnatural to man and against human nature, and is something from which humanity is continually withdrawing. They know that what they do creates suffering for the individual, for the collectivity and most of all for the person who is doing it. On the one hand is awareness of lack of freedom, fear and reticence; on the other freedom, peace and honesty. On the one hand, lack of faith, on the other, faith; on the one hand lies, on the other the truth; on the one hand hatred, on the other, love ”

“ And the means of realizing it lie in inner perfection and non-participation in violence.
‘But how can we live without a government, and without authority? People have never lived this way,’ is the retort to this.
People are so accustomed to the political structure in which they live that to them it seems an unavoidable, everlasting form of human existence. But it only seems so: people have lived, and do live, outside the political structure. All the primitive peoples who have not yet reached what we call civilization have lived and still live in this way. ”

“ The man who has not yet awoken to the truth sees political power as various sacred institutions, like the organs of a living body forming the essential conditions of life. For the man who has awakened to the truth, these people appear very mistaken, for they have attributed to themselves some kind of fantastic significance without any rational justification for it, and they fulfill their desires through violence. The awoken person also regards the lost and for the most part bribed people doing violence to other people just as highway robbers, who grab people on the road and violate them. ”

“ Even if Marcus Aurelius could, despite his gentleness and wisdom, conduct wars and condemn people to death with a clear conscience, the people of today’s Christian world can no longer do so without an inner awareness of their guilt. No matter what hypocritical and stupid Hague conferences and conditional punishments are invented, all these superficial absurdities not only fail to conceal their crimes, but on the contrary, point to the fact that these men already know themselves that what they are doing is wrong. ”

“ The condition of our European humanity, with its private landowners, taxes, clergy, prisons, guillotines, fortresses, cannons, dynamite, millionaires and beggars, looks truly terrible. But it only appears so. In truth, all these things, all these horrors that are happening now, as well as those we await, are things that we do and are prepared to do ourselves. And this must cease. In order to conform to human consciousness this must not be so. For power does not lie in the forms of life but in human consciousness. ”

“ Cease participating in the various organizations whose aim is supposedly to further the welfare of the masses, and seek only that one thing that is always necessary and within the reach of us all, and which gives the greatest well-being to ourselves, and is the most likely thing to enhance the welfare of our neighbours. Seek this one thing within yourselves: an increase of love through eradicating all the mistakes, sins and passions which hinder its manifestation and you will further the well-being of the people in the most effective way. ”

“ For it is only necessary to be free of the superstition condoning violence in order to be horrified by all those crimes that have been, and are, committed by some nations against others, and to feel still more horrified by the moral torpor of the people that results from that superstition and enables English, Russians, Germans and Americans to speak (in the face of the most dreadful crimes they have committed and continue to commit in India, Indochina, Poland, Manchuria and Algeria) not just of the dangers of the violence threatening them, but of the necessity of protecting themselves from it. ”

“ People who stand in exclusively privileged positions, as a result of the existing political structure, impose an opinion that people without government would be in tremendous strife and that everyone would be at war with everyone else. It is just as if they were speaking of the co-existence not of animals (animals live peacefully without any political coercion) but of some dreadful creatures whose behaviour is governed by nothing except hatred and madness. ”

“ Society’s awareness has already rejected the former way of life and has long been ready to adopt the new one. Everyone alike knows and feels this. But the inertia of the past and timidity of the future can sometimes create a situation whereby what has long been consciously known takes a while to be put into practice. At such moments one word is sometimes enough for consciousness to be consolidated: that all important force in human life – public opinion – may suddenly turn the existing order inside out without struggle or violence... ”

“ The dreadful superstition that it is possible to foresee the future shape of society serves to justify all kinds of violence in the name of that structure. It is enough for a person to free his thoughts, even temporarily, of this superstition and to look sincerely and seriously at the life of the nation for it to become clear to him that acceptance of the need to oppose evil with violence is nothing other than the justification people give to their habitual and favourite vices: vengeance, avarice, envy, ambition, pride, cowardice and spite. ”

“ There are a great many widely differing lies, but there is no guidance, no moral guidance, stemming from a religious outlook on the world. And the people of the Christian world live like animals, guided in life by nothing other than personal interests and mutual strife; and they are only differentiated from animals by the fact that since time immemorial animals have kept the same stomachs, claws and fangs, while humanity moves, ever more rapidly, from dirt roads to railroads, from horses to steam, from spoken sermons and letters to the printing press, telegraph and telephone ”

“ The serious-minded Russian people can now no longer help feeling towards all the new forms of government that have been introduced, as an adult would feel if he were given a new toy, that he had not possessed as a child. However new and interesting the toy may be, he does not need it and can only regard it with amusement. This is how it is with us in Russia; it is the attitude all thinking men, as well as the vast masses of the population, have towards our constitution, the Duma, the various revolutionary parties and unions. ”

“ This lie is now so firmly rooted in the nation that those very people who only suffer from the use of violence justify it and even demand it as if it were something essential to them, and they inflict it on one another. The result of this habit of deception, now become second nature, is the astonishing human delusion whereby the people who suffer the most from the deception are the ones who support it. ”

“ I wanted to say that we have now reached a situation in which we can no longer remain, and that whether we like it or not, we must enter a new path of existence and, in order for us to do that, we do not need to invent either a new faith, or new scientific theories, that might explain the meaning of life and guide it. And, above all, we do not need any particular kind of activity, except to free ourselves from the superstitions, of false Christianity and political structures alike. ”

“ So that if thousands are executed, how many tens of thousands, who have in one way or another taken part in these deeds, have been perverted by this participation and deprived of the last remnants of their religious and moral principles? Have they not been made ready, if not yet to hate, then to despise those who force them to perform these evil deeds, and to commit against them the very same deeds at the first opportunity? ”

“ One must hope, however, that a humanity better than ours will manage to free itself from this dreadful crime. But what will this superior humanity think of the so-called refined civilization which we are so proud of? Almost the same as we think of the tribes of ancient Mexico with their cannibalism, who are at once war-like, pious, and bestial.’ (Letourneau)
‘War will only be annihilated when people cease to have any share in violence, and are prepared to suffer all the persecutions they will bring upon themselves for doing so. ”

“ The violence of the rulers is upheld in the only way the violence of the minority over the majority can be: by the fraud which cunning, quick-witted people established long ago, as a consequence of which people, for the sake of small but instant gain, deprive themselves not only of greater profits but of freedom, and expose themselves to the most cruel sufferings. ”

“ Therefore, to the question of what life would be like without government and authorities, the answer can only be that there would certainly not be all the evil which government creates. There would be no private landownership, no taxes spent on things needless to people, no division of nations, no enslavement of some by others, no more wastage of the best human resources on war preparation, no more fear of the bombs on the one hand, of the gallows on the other ”