If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason.

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible.

I feel myself always the patriot of all oppressed fatherlands. Nationality is a historic, local fact which, like all real and harmless facts, has the right to claim general acceptance. Every people, like every person, is involuntarily that which it is and therefore has a right to be itself. Nationality is not a principle; it is a legitimate fact, just as individuality is. Every nationality, great or small, has the incontestable right to be itself, to live according to its own nature. This right is simply the corollary of the general principal of freedom.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."

I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.