Alexander Herzen Quotes

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.

Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, "just in case," in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.

I believe in nothing here, except a handful of people, a few ideas, and the fact that one cannot arrest movement.

On what principle are we to awake the sleeper? In the name of what shall the flabby personality, magnetised by trifles, be inspired, be made discontented with its present way of life of railways, telegraphs, newspapers and cheap goods?
Individuals do not step out of the ranks because there is not the occasion. For whom, for what, or against whom are they to come forward? The absence of energetic men is not a cause but a consequence

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.

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.

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.

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.

In general modern man has no solutions

The Russian system of justice and police is so haphazard, so inhuman, so arbitrary and corrupt, that a poor malefactor has more reason to fear his trial than his sentence. He is impatient for the time when he will be sent to Siberia; for his martyrdom comes to an end when his punishment begins.

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?

Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.

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.

One must open men's eyes, not tear them out.

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

To comprehend...the full sanctity, the full breadth and reality of the individual's rights and not to destroy society, not to shatter it into atoms, is the most difficult of tasks. It has never been resolved by any historical systems in the past; for that one needs a great maturity, which mankind has not yet attained.

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, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.

History is the autobiography of a madman.

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.

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.

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former - of the corruption of the will.

[T]he departing world leaves behind ... not an heir, but a pregnant widow.

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

No one is to blame. It is neither their fault nor ours. It is the misfortune of being born when a whole world is dying.

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.

Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned ever more artfully to unite a constant protest against the government with a constant submission to it.

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.

To see oneself in print is one of the strongest artificial passions of an age corrupted by books. But it requires courage, nevertheless, to venture on a public exhibition of one's productions.

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.

There is no universally valid idea from which man has not woven a rope to bind his own feet, and if possible, the feet of others as well, so that the free product of his creativity becomes a punitive power over him; no true, genuine relationship between people which they have not turned into mutual enslavement. Love, friendship, tribal loyalty, and finally even love of freedom have served as inexhaustible sources of moral oppression and servitude.... Humans are eternally on their knees before one or the other - the golden calf or duty imposed from outside.... It doesn't enter their heads that there is also something within them worthy of respect.

We are not the doctors. We are the disease