Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Alexander Herzen (Russian Revolutionary, Writer)

Aleksandr Ivanovič Herzen (1812–70,) also spelled Hertzen and Gertsen, originally Yakovlev, was a Russian political agitator and author. He established peasant populism, a unique socialist philosophy that was the ideological basis for much of the revolutionary activity in Russia.

Born in Moscow, the illegitimate son of a wealthy aristocrat, Herzen was a witness to the Decembrist Uprising at age 13. In 1829, he entered the University of Moscow to study natural sciences and became the leader of a small group of like-minded students. He was imprisoned in 1834 for his revolutionary socialism and exiled to the provinces. He returned to Moscow in 1842, became a leader of the “Westernizers” who advocated free institutions and secular thought as in Western Europe.

In 1847, Herzen left Russia for Paris and settled in London in 1851. He and the poet Nikolai Ogarev founded the Free Russian Press in London (in Geneva after 1865) printing, among other influential propagandist novels and treatises, two periodicals, The Polar Star (1855–68) and The Bell (1857–67.) Herzen’s publications advocated radical reform and the emancipation of the serfs. They were smuggled into Russia and had a significant impact on the political climate.

Herzen’s most famous writings are his memoirs, which were published in Byloeidumy (1861–67; My Past and Thoughts, 1924–27.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Alexander Herzen

False gods must be repudiated, but that is not all: The reasons for their existence must be sought beneath their masks.
—Alexander Herzen

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
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution, Revolutionaries

Education at school continues what has been done at home: it crystallizes the optical illusion, consolidates it with book learning, theoretically legitimizes the traditional trash and trains the children to know without understanding and to accept denominations for definitions. Astray in his conceptions, entangled in words, man loses the flair for truth, the taste for nature. What a powerful intellect must you possess, to be suspicious of this moral carbon dioxide and with your head swimming already, to hurl yourself out of it into the fresh air, with which, into the bargain, everyone round is trying to scare you!
—Alexander Herzen
Topics: Education

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
Topics: Tradition

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
Topics: Illusion

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
Topics: Parliament

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
Topics: Women

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

Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.
—Alexander Herzen
Topics: Life and Living

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
Topics: Scientists, Science

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.
—Alexander Herzen
Topics: Correction, Reform

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
Topics: Business

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

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.
—Alexander Herzen
Topics: Religion

This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.
—Alexander Herzen
Topics: Socialism, Communism

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.
—Alexander Herzen
Topics: Age

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
Topics: Progress

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
Topics: Expectation, Disillusion

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.
—Alexander Herzen
Topics: Assumptions, Theory

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
Topics: Nationalism, Nationality, Nations, Nation

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
Topics: Passion

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
Topics: Slavery

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
Topics: Liberalism

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *