BOOK

The Kingdom of God Is Within You

• Creator: Leo Tolstoy
• Published: 1893
• Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)
• Date added: 4 September 2026

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Selected Quotes and Highlights

man is not stationary in regard to truth, but every individual man as he passes through life, and humanity as a whole in the same way, is continually learning to know a greater and greater degree of truth, and growing more and more free from error

The liberty of man does not consist in the power of acting independently of the progress of life and the influences arising from it, but in the capacity for recognizing and acknowledging the truth revealed to him, and becoming the free and joyful participator in the eternal and infinite work of God, the life of the world

the horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be dragged with it. And so it is with man.

Men need only understand this, they need only cease to trouble themselves about the general external conditions in which they are not free, and devote one-hundredth part of the energy they waste on those material things to that in which they are free, to the recognition and realization of the truth which is before them, and to the liberation of themselves and others from deception and hypocrisy, and, without effort or conflict, there would be an end at once of the false organization of life which makes men miserable, and threatens them with worse calamities in the future. And then the kingdom of God would be realized

Will not harm come if, being wholly in the power of a master, I carry out, in the workshop erected and directed by him, the orders he gives me, strange though they may seem to me who do not know the Master's final aims

Share all that you have with others, do not heap up riches, do not steal, do not cause suffering, do not kill, do not unto others what you would not they should do unto you, all that has been said not eighteen hundred, but five thousand years ago, and there could be no doubt of the truth of this law if it were not for hypocrisy

the one aim of your life ought to be to purify yourself from falsehood and to confess the truth

"The kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke xvii. 20, 21.)

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.

Not without good reason was Christ's only harsh and threatening reproof directed against hypocrites and hypocrisy.

these people have so entered into their part that they seriously believe that they really are what they pretend to be

The state is so organized that wherever a man is placed in the social scale, his irresponsibility is the same

we need only each live with all the light that is in us, to bring about at once the promised kingdom of God to which every man's heart is yearning

nowadays the wealthy class and men at the head of government do not constitute, as they did in former days, the élite of society; on the contrary, they are inferior to the middle class

The conditions of the new order of life cannot be known by us because we have to create them by our own labors. That is all that life is, to learn the unknown, and to adapt our actions to this new knowledge.

we do know by prolonged experience that neither enemies nor criminals have been successfully suppressed by force

Public opinion arises spontaneously and spreads for hundreds and thousands of years, but it has the power of working on men by infection, and with great rapidity gains a hold on great numbers of men

Power selects and attracts the worst elements of society, transforms them, improves and softens them, and returns them to society

The seductions of power, and all the wealth, honor, and luxury it gives, seem a sufficient aim for men's efforts only so long as they are unattained

The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must love power. And love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but quite consistent with the very opposite qualities—pride, cunning, cruelty

I know that I do not need to attack and slaughter other nations or to defend myself from them with arms, and therefore I can take no part in wars or preparations for wars

But no honest and serious-minded man of our day can help seeing the incompatibility of true Christianity—the doctrine of meekness, forgiveness of injuries, and love—with government, with its pomp, acts of violence, executions, and wars

The whole History of Humanity is the History of the Forcible Appropriation of Power by the Wicked and their Oppression of the Good

The Christian says: I know nothing about the form of government, I don't know whether it is good or bad, and I don't want to overturn it precisely because I don't know whether it's good or bad, but for the very same reason I don't want to support it either. And I not only don't want to, but I can't, because what it demands of me is against my conscience.

the whole authority of the state is based on the compliance with these unchristian demands

Every man of the present day is under the necessity of taking part in the cruelties of pagan life, or of refusing all participation in them

the freedom of all men will be brought about only through the freedom of individual persons

punishments do not reform, but only deprave those on whom they are inflicted

Freedom is an inalienable possession of the Christian

Everything is ready for the new life, but still the new life does not come

As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond

Intimidation, corruption, and hypnotizing bring people into a condition in which they are willing to be soldiers

the longer men lived in the world and the more complex their relations became, the more evident it was that to resist by force what each regarded as evil was irrational, that conflict was in no way lessened thereby, and that no human definitions can succeed in making what some regard as evil be accepted as such by others

The Christian religion is not a legal system which, being imposed by violence, may transform men's lives

The advantages of the man who refuses to obey will consist in preserving his dignity as a man, gaining the approbation of good men, and above all knowing that he is doing the work of God, and so undoubtedly doing good to his fellow-men.

The power of the state, far from being a security against the attacks of our neighbors, exposes us, on the contrary, to much greater danger of such attacks

In our day governments not only fail to encourage, but directly hinder every movement by which people try to work out new forms of life for themselves

If the laborer has no land, if he cannot use the natural right of every man to derive subsistence for himself and his family out of the land, that is not because the people wish it to be so, but because a certain set of men, the land-owners, have appropriated the right of giving or refusing admittance to the land to the laborers

It is generally supposed that governments strengthen their forces only to defend the state from other states, in oblivion of the fact that armies are necessary, before all things, for the defense of governments from their own oppressed and enslaved subjects

People have believed, as though it were something fully proved, and so needing no proof, that since all nations have hitherto developed in the form of states, that form of organization is an indispensable condition of the development of humanity

The object of authority and the justification for its existence lie in the restraint of those who aim at attaining their personal interests to the detriment of the interests of society

If men submit to authority, it is only because they are liable to these punishments in case of non-submission.

The man who is controlled by moral influence acts in accordance with his own desires. Authority, in the sense in which the word is ordinarily understood, is a means of forcing a man to act in opposition to his desires. The man who submits to authority does not do as he chooses but as he is obliged by authority

Universal military service is only the internal inconsistency inherent in the social conception of life, carried to its furthest limits, and becoming evident when a certain stage of material development is reached

so long as there are two men, and bread, money and a woman—there will be war

If the people understood that, if they themselves passed judgment on murderous governments, if they refused to let themselves be killed for nothing, if they would only turn their arms against those who have given them to them for massacre, on that day war would be no more. But that day will never come."

government is in its essence always a force acting in violation of justice

a government is only a government so long as it can make itself obeyed, and therefore it always strives for that and will never willingly abandon its power

To suggest to governments that they should not have recourse to violence, but should decide their misunderstandings in accordance with equity, is inviting them to abolish themselves as rulers, and that no government can ever consent to do

Not only Christians, but pagans, thousands of years ago, all recognized the evil of war and the blessing of peace

And strange and terrible to say, the cultivated men of our day, the leaders of thought, are in reality with their subtle reasoning drawing society back, not to paganism even, but to a state of primitive barbarism.

A man may cease to do what he regards as wrong, but he cannot cease to consider wrong what is wrong

The antagonism between life and the conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience

If there were no external means of dulling their sensibilities, half of mankind would shoot themselves without delay, for to live in opposition to one's reason is the most intolerable condition.

the permanently armed condition of Europe together with its profession of Christianity is alone enough to drive any man to despair

True peace is based on mutual confidence, while these huge armaments show open and utter lack of confidence, if not concealed hostility, between states

Until our warriors are disarmed and our armies disbanded, we have not the right to call ourselves a Christian nation

Nations cannot endure the constant increase of armies for long, and sooner or later they will prefer war to all the disadvantages of their present position and the constant menace of war.

We are all brothers—and yet every morning a brother or a sister must empty the bedroom slops for me. We are all brothers, but every morning I must have a cigar, a sweetmeat, an ice, and such things, which my brothers and sisters have been wasting their health in manufacturing, and I enjoy these things and demand them

The sufferings of the working classes, springing from the contradiction between what is and what ought to be, are increased tenfold by the envy and hatred engendered by their consciousness of it.

with our whole heart we know and cannot escape knowing the fundamental truth of the Christian doctrine, that we are all sons of one Father, wherever we may live and whatever language we may speak; we are all brothers and are subject to the same law of love implanted by our common Father in our hearts

The time will come—it is already coming—when the Christian principles of equality and fraternity, community of property, non-resistance of evil by force, will appear just as natural and simple as the principles of family or social life seem to us now

the object of this love is not found outside self in societies of individuals, nor in the external world, but within self, in the divine self whose essence is that very love, which the animal self is brought to feel the need of through its consciousness of its own perishable nature.

Christianity recognizes love of self, of family, of nation, and of humanity, and not only of humanity, but of everything living, everything existing; it recognizes the necessity of an infinite extension of the sphere of love

Christian love is the result only of the Christian conception of life, in which the aim of life is to love and serve God.

The ideal is to love the enemies who hate us

The ideal is never for any purpose to use force

The ideal is to take no thought for the future, to live in the present moment

The ideal is perfect chastity, even in thought

The ideal is not to desire to do ill to anyone, not to provoke ill will, to love all men

Life according to Christ's teaching consists of nothing but this setting free of the Son of God, existing in every man, from the animal, and in bringing him closer to the Father.

The true, the rational life is only possible for man according to the measure in which he can participate, not in the family or the state, but in the source of life—the Father

These three views of life are as follows: First, embracing the individual, or the animal view of life; second, embracing the society, or the pagan view of life; third, embracing the whole world, or the divine view of life.

The chief peculiarity which distinguished Christ's teaching from previous religions consisted in the fact that those who accepted it strove ever more and more to comprehend and realize its teaching

The greater or less blessedness of a man depends, according to this doctrine, not on the degree of perfection to which he has attained, but on the greater or less swiftness with which he is pursuing it.

The significance of the Gospel is hidden from believers by the Church, from unbelievers by Science

There can only be two solutions: either to find a real unquestionable criterion of what is evil or not to resist evil by force

In what way are we to decide men's disputes, when some men consider evil what others consider good, and vice versa?

Christ's teaching is useless because, if it were carried into practice, life could not go on as at present

the principle of non-resistance to evil by force has been attacked by two opposing camps: the conservatives, because this principle would hinder their activity in resistance to evil as applied to the revolutionists, in persecution and punishment of them; the revolutionists, too, because this principle would hinder their resistance to evil as applied to the conservatives and the overthrowing of them

they find themselves between belief in the divinity of their Master and disbelief in his clearest utterances, and they want to escape from this contradiction

the kingdom of God would come if all men kept these five commandments of Christ, viz.: 1. Live in peace with all men. 2. Be pure. 3. Take no oaths. 4. Resist not evil. 5. Renounce national distinctions.

If you believe that Christ forbade murder, pay no heed to the arguments nor to the commands of those who call on you to bear a hand in it

we consider it the duty of every man who thinks war inconsistent with Christianity, meekly but firmly to refuse to serve in the army

Satan can never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot be vanquished by evil

One man may not kill. If he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government or a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be murder, but a great and noble action

the establishment of universal peace can only be founded on the open profession of the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by violence (Matt. v. 39)

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