Utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.
Eric HobsbawmMany years later, another Marxian rephrased this as the choice between socialism and barbarity. Which of these will prevail is a question which the twenty-first century must be left to answer.
Eric HobsbawmHe[Napoleon] had destroyed only one thing: the Jacobin Revolution, the dream of equality, liberty and fraternity, and of the people rising in its majesty to shake off oppression. It was a more powerful myth than his, for after his fall it was this, and not his memory, which inspired the revolutions of the nineteenth century, even in his own country.
Eric Hobsbawm