76 quotes found
“Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.”
“A sledgehammer breaks glass but forges steel.”
“An ally has to be watched just like an enemy.”
“Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations.”
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”
“Life is not an easy matter. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, ...”
“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”
“As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the sacredness of human life remains a shameful lie...”
“I do not think that a man's rise to power is necessarily the climax of his life or that his loss of office should be equated with his fall.”
“Similar (of course, far from identical) irritations in similar conditions call out similar reflexes; the more powerful the irritation, the sooner it overcomes personal peculiarities. To a tickle, p...”
“Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.”
“The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited ...”
“[Letter to his wife, Natalia Sedova]In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our...”
“By offering the educated a semblance of freedom he made the denial of real freedom even more painful and humiliating. The intelligentsia sought to avenge their betrayed hopes; the Tsar strove to ta...”
“Generally speaking, by the way, that is the moral of the opponents of violence in politics: they renounce violence when it comes to introducing changes in what already exists, but in defense of the...”
“A protest against reality, either conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or pessimistic, always forms part of a really creative piece of work.”
“The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come w...”
“The artist can not serve his struggle for freedom unless he subjectively assimilates the social content, unless he feels in his very nerves its meaning and drama and freely seeks to give his own in...”
“Every historical form of society is in its foundation a form of organization of labor. While every previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests of a minority, which organi...”
“...capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.”
“We seek to uncoverbehind the events changes in the collective consciousness. We reject wholesale references to the spontaneity of the movement, references which in most casesexplain nothing and tea...”
“In reality the mere privations is not enoughto cause an insurrection: if it were the masses would always be in revolt”
