Quote

There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it.

Alexander Herzen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Herzen
Age: 57 †
Born: 1812
Born: March 25
Died: 1870
Died: January 9
Autobiographer
Journalist
Literary Critic
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Politician
Prosaist
Teacher
Writer
Moscow
Russian SFSR
A. H.
Gertsen
Alexander Herzen
Tradition
Pieces
Cannot
Nothing
Corpse
World
Corpses
Knock
Stubborn
Convince

More quotes by Alexander Herzen

Image
The people is always expressive of the truth. The life of a people cannot be a lie.
Alexander Herzen
Image
We could hardly believe that after so many ordeals, after all the trials of modern skepticism, there was still so much left in our souls to destroy.
Alexander Herzen
Image
All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former - of the corruption of the will.
Alexander Herzen
Image
It must not be thought that the cowardly feeling of caution and uneasy self-preservation is innate in the English character. It is the consequence of a corpulence derived from wealth and of the training of all thoughts and passions for acquisitiveness.
Alexander Herzen
Image
Compassionate love may be strong. It sobs, it burns, then it wipes away its tears – and it does nothing.
Alexander Herzen
Image
It is possible to lead astray an entire generation, to strike it blind, to drive it insane, to direct it towards a false goal. Napoleon proved this.
Alexander Herzen
Image
If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to another -- and always into a better set -- things might be easier, but the trouble is that there is no one to prepare the new rooms. The future is worse than the ocean -- there is nothing there. It will be what men and circumstances make it.
Alexander Herzen
Image
What breadth, what beauty and power of human nature and development there must be in a woman to get over all the palisades, all the fences, within which she is held captive!
Alexander Herzen
Image
Human development is a form of chronological unfairness, since late-comers are able to profit by the labors of their predecessors without paying the same price.
Alexander Herzen
Image
Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.
Alexander Herzen
Image
A generation which has passed through the shop has absorbed standards and ambitions which are not of those of spaciousness, and cannot get away from them. Everything with them is done as though for sale, and they naturally have in view the greatest possible benefit, profit and that end of the stuff that will make the best show.
Alexander Herzen
Image
The liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop.
Alexander Herzen
Image
Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.
Alexander Herzen
Image
I believe in nothing here, except a handful of people, a few ideas, and the fact that one cannot arrest movement.
Alexander Herzen
Image
One must open men's eyes, not tear them out.
Alexander Herzen
Image
History is the autobiography of a madman.
Alexander Herzen
Image
[T]he departing world leaves behind... not an heir, but a pregnant widow.
Alexander Herzen
Image
Never was Catholicism, never were the ideas of chivalry, impressed on men so deeply, so multifariously, as the bourgeois ideas.
Alexander Herzen
Image
Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.
Alexander Herzen
Image
Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others.
Alexander Herzen