Social democracy… is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh.
Category Archive: March 5
I remember how beautiful the Merrimac looked to me in childhood, the first true river I ever knew; it opened upon my sight and wound its way through my heart like a dream realized; its harebells, its rocks, and its rapids, are far more fixed in my memory than anything about the sea.
A journal of the ‘subjective’ kind I have always thought foolish, as nurturing a morbid self -consciousness in the writer; and yet, alone so much as I am, it is well to have some sort of a ventilator from the interior.
What is the meaning of ‘gossip?’ Doesn’t it originate with sympathy, an interest in one’s neighbor, degenerating into idle curiosity and love of tattling? Which is worse, this habit, or keeping one’s self so absorbed intellectually as to forget the sufferings and cares of others, to lose sympathy through having too much to think about?
Girls especially are fond of exchanging confidences with those whom they think they can trust; it is one of the most charming traits of a simple, earnest-hearted girlhood, and they are the happiest women who never lose it entirely.
History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.
Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
It is one of the most beautiful facts in this human existence of ours, that we remember the earliest and freshest part of it most vividly. Doubtless it was meant that our childhood should live on in us forever.
The enemy resembles us. Therefore, he needs to be approached not as an assembly of ‘targets’ to be destroyed one by one; but as a living, intelligent entity capable of acting and reacting.
My main quarrel with liberalism is not that liberalism places great emphasis on individual rights – I believe rights are very important and need to be respected. The issue is whether it is possible to define and justify our rights without taking a stand on the moral and even sometimes religious convictions that citizens bring to public life.