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"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."
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Exlpore more Being quotes
"Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins."
"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."
"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down."
"The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions."
"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved."
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
"Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Lets go inland and be killed."
Explore more quotes by Alexander Herzen
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
"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."
"Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood."
"You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas."
"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."
"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."
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