Rosa Luxemburg Quotes

Capitalist development modifies essentially the nature of the State, widening its sphere of action, constantly imposing on it new functions (especially those affecting economic life), making more and more necessary its intervention and control in society.

The production relations of capitalist society approach more and more the production relations of Socialist society. But on the other hand, its political and juridicial relations establish between capitalist society and Socialist society a steadily rising wall. This wall is not overthrown, but is on the contrary strengthened and consolidated by the development of social reforms and the course of democracy. Only the hammer blow of revolution, that is to say, the conquest of political power by the proletariat can break down this wall.

All the errors of this school rest precisely on the conception that mistakes the phenomena of competition, as seen from the angle of the isolated capitalist, for the phenomena of the whole of capitalist economy.

So ist das Leben und so muß man es nehmen, tapfer, unverzagt und lächelnd – trotz alledem.

Geschändet, entehrt, im Blute watend, von Schmutz triefend – so steht die bürgerliche Gesellschaft da, so ist sie. Nicht wenn sie, geleckt und sittsam, Kultur, Philosophie und Ethik, Ordnung, Frieden und Rechtsstaat mimt – als reißende Bestie, als Hexensabbat der Anarchie, als Pesthauch für Kultur und Menschheit –, so zeigt sie sich in ihrer wahren, nackten Gestalt.

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.

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.

Those who do not move, do not feel their chains.

Quien no se mueve no siente sus cadenas

Por um mundo onde sejamos socialmente iguais, humanamente diferentes e totalmente livres.

"No coarser insult, no baser aspersion, can be thrown against the workers than the remark: "Theoretic controversies are only for academicians.

"Der "Bolschewismus" ist das Stichwort für den praktischen revolutionären Sozialismus, für alle Bestrebungen der Arbeiterklasse zur Machteroberung geworden."

After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting energy alive in every political interval; it forms, so to speak, the permanent fresh reservoir of the strength of the proletarian classes, from which the political fight every renews its strength, and at the same time leads the indefatigable economic sappers of the proletariat at all times, now here and now there, to isolated sharp conflicts, out of which public conflicts on a large scale unexpectedly explode.

"A word spoken in Polish has quite a different effect than when spoken in that "foreign" tongue, German."

Instead of comforting the people, who are full of cares and wearied by their hard lives, who go to church with faith in Christianity, the priests fulminate against the workers who are on strike, and against the opponents of the government; further, they exhort them to bear poverty and oppression with humility and patience. They turn the church and the pulpit into a place of political propaganda.