Alexander Herzen Quotes

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.

Compassionate Love May Be Strong. It Sobs, It Burns, Then It Wipes Away Its Tears – And It Does Nothing.

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.

Never Was Catholicism, Never Were The Ideas Of Chivalry, Impressed On Men So Deeply, So Multifariously, As The Bourgeois Ideas.

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 Of This State Is Increased By The Low Level Of Civilization And The Narrow Empty Life To Which These Men Are Confined.

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.

It Seems To Me That You Are Solving A Problem Which Goes Beyond The Limits Of Physiology In Too Simple A Way. Physiology Has Realized Its Problem With Fortitude, Breaking Man Down Into Endless Actions And Counteractions And Reducing Him To A Crossing, A Vortex Of Reflex Acts. Let It Now Permit Sociology To Restore Him As A Whole. Sociology Will Wrest Man From The Anatomical Theatre And Return Him To History.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.