Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.

The leading princes are the most servile tools of English despotism. . . . The native princes are the stronghold of the present abominable English system.

Russia is a name usurped by the Muscovites. They are not Slavs; they do not belong to the Indo-Germanic race at all, they are des intrus [intruders], who must be chased back across the Dnieper, etc.

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

The redeeming feature of war is that it puts a nation to the test. As exposure to the atmosphere reduces all mummies to instant dissolution, so war passes supreme judgment upon social systems that have outlived their vitality.