Creative Quotations from Alexander Herzen (1812-1870)

Creative Quotations from . . .

Alexander Herzen
(1812-1870) born on Apr 06

Russian author. He distrusted governments, was sceptical of western democratic forms, and had great faith in the power of peasants and other ordinary people to organise themselves.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Never was Catholicism, never were the ideas of chivalry, impressed on men so deeply, so multifariously, as the bourgeois ideas.

Published Sources for the above Quotations:
F:	My Past and Thoughts, vol. 3, pt. 8, "Miscellaneous Pieces: Beyond the Alps" (1921; tr. by Constance Garnett 1924 --27).
R:	My Past and Thoughts, vol. 3, pt. 6, "England" (1921; tr. by Constance Garnett, 1924 --27), on the power of history.
A:	From the Other Shore, "Consolatio" (1855).
N:	From the Other Shore, "Epilogue 1849" (1855), of the failure of the revolutionary movements in Europe after 1848.
K:	My Past and Thoughts, vol. 2, pt. 5, ch. 38, "Post Scriptum" (1921; tr. by Constance Garnett, 1924-27).