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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

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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
Humans
Transformed
Made
Denial
Something
Criticism
World
Liberty
Religious
Simple
Political
Human
Susceptible

More quotes by 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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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
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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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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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One must open men's eyes, not tear them out.
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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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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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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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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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
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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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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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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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[T]he departing world leaves behind... not an heir, but a pregnant widow.
Alexander Herzen
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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
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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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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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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