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False gods must be repudiated, but that is not all: The reasons for their existence must be sought beneath their masks.

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
Reasons
Existence
Repudiated
Reason
Masks
Must
Sought
Beneath
Mask
Gods
False

More quotes by 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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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
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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
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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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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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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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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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The people is always expressive of the truth. The life of a people cannot be a lie.
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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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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Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.
Alexander Herzen
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You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.
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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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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Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.
Alexander Herzen
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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
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[T]he departing world leaves behind... not an heir, but a pregnant widow.
Alexander Herzen
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People who have realized that this is a dream imagine that it is easy to wake up, and are angry with those who continue sleeping, not considering that the whole world that environs them does not permit them to wake. Life proceeds as a series of optical illusions, artificial needs and imaginary sensations.
Alexander Herzen
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History is the autobiography of a madman.
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