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Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

Alexander Herzen

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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
Thinking
Life
Taught
Live
Think

More quotes by Alexander Herzen

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I am truly horrified by modern man. Such absence of feeling, such narrowness of outlook, such lack of passion and information, such feebleness of thought.
Alexander Herzen
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One must open men's eyes, not tear them out.
Alexander Herzen
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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
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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
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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
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Would it be possible to stand still on one spot more majestically -- while simulating a triumphant march forward -- than it is done by the two English Houses of Parliament?
Alexander Herzen
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The people is always expressive of the truth. The life of a people cannot be a lie.
Alexander Herzen
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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
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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
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Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned ever more artfully to unite a constant protest against the government with a constant submission to it.
Alexander Herzen
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To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.
Alexander Herzen
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Never was Catholicism, never were the ideas of chivalry, impressed on men so deeply, so multifariously, as the bourgeois ideas.
Alexander Herzen
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History is the autobiography of a madman.
Alexander Herzen
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I believe what I write to be the truth...every man who is not indifferent to the truth has a weakness for spreading it about.
Alexander Herzen
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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
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Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions of history have based their job security.
Alexander Herzen
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Strong drink stupefies a man and makes it possible for him to forget it gives him an artificial cheeriness, an artificial excitement and the pleasure of this state is increased by the low level of civilization and the narrow empty life to which these men are confined.
Alexander Herzen
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Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men.
Alexander Herzen
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History knocks at a thousand gates at every moment, and the gatekeeper is chance. We shout into the mist for this one or that one to be opened for us, but through every gate are a thousand more. We need wit and courage to make our way while our way is making us.
Alexander Herzen
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I have served one idea, marched under one banner - war against all imposed authority - against every kind of deprivation of freedom, in the name of the absolute independence of the individual.
Alexander Herzen