Rosa Luxemburg Quotes

De menselijke psyche herbergt, net als Thalatta - de eeuwige zee - alle mogelijkheden in zich: een dodelijke luwte en de razende storm, de ergste lafheid en het wildste heroïsme. De massa is altijd wat zij in overeenstemming met de tijd en de situatie moet zijn, en zij staat altijd gereed de sprong te wagen en iets heel anders te worden dan zij schijnt.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

"I'm not satisfied with the way in which people in the party usually write
articles. They are all so conventional, so wooden, so cut-and-dry....
Our scribblings are usually not lyrics, but whirrings, without color or
resonance, like the tone of an engine wheel. I believe that the cause lies
in the fact that when people write, they forget for the most part to dig
deeply into themselves and to feel the whole import and truth of what
they are writing. I believe that ever time, every day, in every article you
must live through the thing again, you must feel your way tugh it,
and then fresh words-coming fom: the heart and going to the heartwould occur to express the old fmiliar thing. But you get so used to a
truth that you rattle off the deepest and greatest tings as if they were
the "Our Fater" I firmly intend, when I write, never to forget to be enthusiastic about what I write and to commune with myself."

The self-discipline of the Social Democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee. The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the Social Democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility.

"Sonjuschka, Liebste, seien Sie trotz alledem ruhig und heiter. So ist das Leben, und so muß man es nehmen, tapfer, unverzagt und lächelnd – trotz alledem."
(Letters to Sonja Liebknecht)

I feel at home in the entire world, wherever
there are clouds and birds and human tears

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of “justice” but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when “freedom” becomes a special privilege.

Die Friedensfreunde aus bürgerlichen Kreisen glauben, das sich Weltfriede und Abrüstung im Rahmen der heutigen Gesellschaftsordnung verwirklichen lassen, wir aber, die wir auf dem Boden der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung und des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus stehen, sind der Überzeugung, das der Militarismus erst mit dem kapitalistischen Klassenstaate zusammen aus der Welt geschafft werden kann.

I suppose I must be out of sorts to feel everything so deeply. Sometimes, however, it seems to me that i am not really a human being at all, but like a bird or a beast in human form. I feel so much more at home even in a scrap of garden like the one here, and still more in the meadows when the grass is humming with bees than - at one of the our party congresses.

Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.

Just as all roads lead to Rome, so, too, do we logically arrive at the conclusion that the revisionist proposal to slight the final aim of the Socialist movement is really a recommendation to renounce the Socialist movement itself.

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

The friends of peace in bourgeois circles believe that world peace and disarmament can be realised within the frame-work of the present social order, whereas we, who base ourselves on the materialistic conception of history and on scientific socialism, are convinced that militarism can only be abolished from the world with the destruction of the capitalist class state.

Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations. Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.