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I believe in nothing here, except a handful of people, a few ideas, and the fact that one cannot arrest movement.
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
People
Except
Movement
Fact
Facts
Cannot
Ideas
Nothing
Arrest
Believe
Handful
More quotes by Alexander Herzen
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
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
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
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
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
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
Never was Catholicism, never were the ideas of chivalry, impressed on men so deeply, so multifariously, as the bourgeois ideas.
Alexander Herzen
One must open men's eyes, not tear them out.
Alexander Herzen
We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.
Alexander Herzen
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
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
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
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
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
We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death
Alexander Herzen
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
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
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
The world will not know liberty until all that is religious and political is transformed into something simple and human and made susceptible to criticism and denial.
Alexander Herzen
Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.
Alexander Herzen