Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.
Those who don't move don't notice their chains.
Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
We will be victorious if we have not forgotten how to learn.
The victory of socialism will not descend like fate from heaven.
The most revolutionary act is a clear view of the world as it really is.
There is no democracy without socialism, and no socialism without democracy.
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations.
History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.
The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.
The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.
The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process.
Only to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent does the song of a bird seem always the same.
Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.
Work for legal reform takes place only within the framework of the social form created by the last revolution.
The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built.
Before a revolution happens, it is perceived as impossible; after it happens, it is seen as having been inevitable.
Life is singing also in the sand crunching under the slow and heavy steps of the guards, when we know how to listen to it.
Self-criticism, cruel, unsparing criticism that goes to the very root of the evil, is life and breath for the proletarian movement.
Tomorrow the revolution will already 'raise itself with a rattle' and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I will be!
In the Imperialist Era, the foreign loan played an outstanding part as a means for young capitalist countries to acquire independence.
Revolutionary tactics cannot be invented by leaders; they must develop spontaneously-history comes first, leaders' consciousness second.
Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party - though they are quite numerous - is no freedom at all.
Capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible.
Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud.
Tomorrow the revolution will 'rise up again, clashing its weapons,' and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!
[Geology] opens up such wide intellectual vistas and supplies a more perfectly unified and more comprehensive conception of nature than any other science.
With the true artist, the social formula that he recommends is a matter of secondary importance; the source of his art, its animating spirit, is decisive.
The clergy, no less than the capitalist class, lives on the backs of the people, profits from the degradation, the ignorance and the oppression of the people.
Social democracy.. is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh.
Social democracy... is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh.
Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.
The high stage of world-industrial development in capitalistic production finds expression in the extraordinary technical development and destructiveness of the instruments of war.
Credit reproduces all the fundamental antagonisms of the capitalist world. It accentuates them. It precipitates their development and thus pushes the capitalist world forward to its own destruction.
Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only no matter how big its membership may be is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently.
Democracy is indispensable, not because it renders superfluous the conquest of political power by the proletariat, but, on the contrary, because it makes this seizure of power both necessary and possible.
Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.
Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.
Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.
We stand todaybefore the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism.
The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.
The very action of the proletariat is a determining factor in history. And although we can no more jump over the stages of historical development than a man can jump over his shadow, nevertheless, we can accelerate or retard that development.
People finally understood that the role of the social-democratic party rests on its conscious leadership of the mass struggle against the existing society, a struggle that must reckon with the vital, necessary conditions of capitalist society.
The existing legal constitution is nothing but the product of a revolution. Revolution is the act of political creation in the history of classes, while constitutional legislation is the expression of the continual political vegetation of a society.
Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port.
Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.
Under the leaden sway of Alexander III's government, the silence of the graveyard prevailed. Russian society, equally discouraged by the collapse of all hopes for peaceful reforms and by the apparent ineffectiveness of the revolutionary movement, was in the grip of a mood of depression and resignation.
Though foreign loans are indispensable for the emancipation of the rising capitalist states, they are yet the surest ties by which the old capitalist states maintain their influence, exercise financial control, and exert pressure on the customs, foreign and commercial policy of the young capitalist states.
Our scribblings are usually not lyrics but whirrings, without colour or resonance, like the tone of an engine-wheel. I believe that the cause lies in the fact that when people write, they forget for the most part to dig deeply into themselves and to feel the whole import and truth of what they are writing.