Luxemburg Quotes & Sayings

Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud. — Rosa Luxemburg

Life is singing also in the sand crunching under the slow and heavy steps of the guards, when we know how to listen to it. — Rosa Luxemburg

What presents itself to us as bourgeois legality is nothing but the violence of the ruling class, a violence raised to an obligatory norm from the outset. — Rosa Luxemburg

This particular May morning begins with the appearance of a procession on the corner of Pancake and Rosa Luxemburg Streets. The procession is evidently religious: it consists of eight clerical personages, well known to the entire town. But instead of censers, the clerical personages are swinging brooms, which transfers the entire action from the plane of religion to the plane of revolution. These personages are now simply unproductive elements of society performing their labor duty for the benefit of the people. Instead of prayers, golden clouds of dust rise to the heavens. ("X") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

We stand todaybefore the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism. — Rosa Luxemburg

I know thy works, that thou are neither cold nor hot; I would that thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. — Rosa Luxemburg

Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. — Rosa Luxemburg

Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port. — Rosa Luxemburg

Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently. — Rosa Luxemburg

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. — Rosa Luxemburg

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party - though they are quite numerous - is no freedom at all. — Rosa Luxemburg

The sorry existence to which this mental tendency was condemned in recent decades by the powerful development of social democracy in Germany may, to a certain extent, be explained by the exclusive domination and long duration of the parliamentary period. A — Rosa Luxemburg

My dear, it is very nice here, every day two or three persons are stabbed by soldiers in the city; there are daily arrests, but apart from these it is pretty gay.. — Rosa Luxemburg

Revolutionary tactics cannot be invented by leaders; they must develop spontaneously-history comes first, leaders' consciousness second. — Rosa Luxemburg

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains. — Rosa Luxemburg

Only to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent does the song of a bird seem always the same. — Rosa Luxemburg

Those who don't move don't notice their chains. — Rosa Luxemburg

Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only no matter how big its membership may be is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently. — Rosa Luxemburg

With the true artist, the social formula that he recommends is a matter of secondary importance; the source of his art, its animating spirit, is decisive. — Rosa Luxemburg

Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter — Rosa Luxemburg

The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built. — Rosa Luxemburg

These passages on effective demand are problematic in certain respects, and Rosa Luxemburg provides a compelling challenge to Marx on this point, arguing that imperialism directed against noncapitalist social formations provided a partial answer to the effective demand problem.4 There has been debate over these issues ever since. — David Harvey

Rosa Luxemburg maintained that the capitalist system can keep up its rate of investment (and therefore its profits) only so long as it is expanding geographically. — Joan Robinson

Freedom only for 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. — Rosa Luxemburg

Ever since he repented of religion and shaved off his clerical beard and mustache, he has had the constant feeling that he has taken off his trousers, and that his nose protrudes altogether indecently and must at all cost be covered. It's sheer torment!
With one hand over his nose, the deacon knocks again and again. No one responds. And yet Martha is home; the gate is locked from within. And that means - what? It means that she is with someone else ... The deacon punctuates the scene inwardly with the three dots we have graphically depicted just above, and, tripping over them at every second step, he proceeds to Rosa Luxemburg Street. ("X") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

The most revolutionary act is a clear view of the world as it really is. — Rosa Luxemburg

Although they are often called cabarets, and occasionally there is even strip-dancing involved, you shouldn't associate them with merrymaking or extravaganza... — Lola Smirnova

Tomorrow the revolution will already 'raise itself with a rattle' and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I will be! — Rosa Luxemburg

On the one hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal, located outside of existing society. On one hand we have the day-to-day struggle; on the other, the socialist revolution ... It follows that this movement can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers ... One is the loss of its mass character, the other the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back to the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of bourgeois social reform. — Rosa Luxemburg

The clergy, no less than the capitalist class, lives on the backs of the people, profits from the degradation, the ignorance and the oppression of the people. — Rosa Luxemburg

The victory of socialism will not descend like fate from heaven. — Rosa Luxemburg

We will be victorious if we have not forgotten how to learn. — Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa reports the engagement of her niece in 1912 to a nice young man without a name. It may therefore be that the last descendants of the Luxemburg family are living somewhere in England. — John Peter Nettl

What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball ... I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears. — Rosa Luxemburg

Self-criticism, cruel, unsparing criticism that goes to the very root of the evil, is life and breath for the proletarian movement. — Rosa Luxemburg

Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone. — Rosa Luxemburg

Before a revolution happens, it is perceived as impossible; after it happens, it is seen as having been inevitable. — Rosa Luxemburg

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. — Rosa Luxemburg

History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat. — Rosa Luxemburg

The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening. — Rosa Luxemburg

The notes for Rosa Luxemburg were found next to his body. — Wallace Steadman Watson

Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dry, rustling night of Western summer. Dexter watched from the veranda of the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the little wind, silver molasses under the harvest-moon. Then the moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear pool, pale and quiet. Dexter put on his bathing-suit and swam out to the farthest raft, where he stretched dripping on the wet canvas of the springboard. There was a fish jumping and a star shining and the lights around the lake were gleaming. Over on a dark peninsula a piano was playing the songs of last summer and of summers before that - songs from "Chin-Chin" and "The Count of Luxemburg" and "The Chocolate Soldier" - and because the sound of a piano over a stretch of water had always seemed beautiful to Dexter he lay perfectly quiet and listened. — F Scott Fitzgerald

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. — Rosa Luxemburg

Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations. — Rosa Luxemburg

During the night two delegates of the railwaymen were arrested. The strikers immediately demanded their release, and as this was not conceded, they decided not to allow trains leave the town. At the station all the strikers with their wives and families sat down on the railway track-a sea of human beings. They were threatened with rifles salvoes. The workers bared their breast and cried, "Shoot!" A salvo was fired into the defenceless seated crowd, and 30 to 40 corpses, among them women and children, remained on the ground. On this becoming known the whole town of Kiev went to strike on the same day. The corpses of the murdered workers were raised on high by the crowd and carried round in mass demonstration. — Rosa Luxemburg

The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process. — Rosa Luxemburg

Women's freedom is the sign of social freedom. Rosa Luxemburg — Rosa Luxemburg

[Geology] opens up such wide intellectual vistas and supplies a more perfectly unified and more comprehensive conception of nature than any other science. — Rosa Luxemburg

If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are disturbed as to how, by, and against whom wealth and political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wanting to act with others, to "do something," you have much in common with the writers of the three essays in Manifesto. — Adrienne Rich

Order prevails in Berlin!" You foolish lackeys! Your "order" is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will "rise up again, clashing its weapons," and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing:
I was, I am, I shall be! — Rosa Luxemburg

Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat. — Rosa Luxemburg

The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles. — Rosa Luxemburg

Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. — Rosa Luxemburg

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. — Rosa Luxemburg

It is in the tiny struggles of individual peoples that the great movements of history are most truly revealed. — Rosa Luxemburg

There is no democracy without socialism, and no socialism without democracy. — Rosa Luxemburg

Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism. — Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg was - still is for me - a great personal and intellectual heroine. Her analysis of Leninism and capitalism and social democracy are all worth reading. I wouldn't consider anyone truly politically literate if they hadn't given her work at least some study. — Christopher Hitchens

Capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible. — Rosa Luxemburg

The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands. — Rosa Luxemburg

The domestic NSA-led Surveillance State which Frank Church so stridently warned about has obviously come to fruition. The way to avoid its grip is simply to acquiesce to the nation's most powerful factions, to obediently remain within the permitted boundaries of political discourse and activism. Accepting that bargain enables one to maintain the delusion of freedom - "he who does not move does not notice his chains," observed Rosa Luxemburg - but the true measure of political liberty is whether one is free to make a different choice. — Glenn Greenwald