Quote

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

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
Individual
Absolutes
War
Absolute
Ideas
Independence
Every
Authority
Marched
Kind
Name
Deprivation
Names
Banner
Freedom
Imposed
Idea
Served

More quotes by Alexander Herzen

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
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
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
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
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
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
History is the autobiography of a madman.
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
Image
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
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
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
Image
Never was Catholicism, never were the ideas of chivalry, impressed on men so deeply, so multifariously, as the bourgeois ideas.
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
One must open men's eyes, not tear them out.
Alexander Herzen
Image
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
Image
The Death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. Yet what is frightening is that the departing world leaves behind it not an heir, but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass.
Alexander Herzen
Image
Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.
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