Alexander Herzen Quotes

42 quotes in 747 categories

• 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.
• Science even more than the Gospel teaches us humility. She cannot look down on anything, she does not know what superiority means, she despises nothing,…
• 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…
• Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.
• 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…
• 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…
• Compassionate love may be strong. It sobs, it burns, then it wipes away its tears – and it does nothing.
• I believe in nothing here, except a handful of people, a few ideas, and the fact that one cannot arrest movement.
• History is the autobiography of a madman.
• 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,…
• 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…
• If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to another -- and always into a better set -- things might be easier, but…
• Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned ever more artfully to unite a constant protest against the government with a constant submission to it.
• 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…
• 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.
• False gods must be repudiated, but that is not all: The reasons for their existence must be sought beneath their masks.
• Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations,…
• 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…
• 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…
• Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.

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