Executed People

"The dangerous persons for the socialist movement are not the intellectuals, but those who are not convinced of socialism. And all those who call themselves socialists without knowing why they are socialists."

"The new society cannot get out of the involucrum of the old society, except by smashing it to pieces; two conceptions, two classes, two worlds will contend for primacy, and only force will compel the weaker to disappear. For this reason, we socialists of the first school, Marxist and catastrophic, if you wish, explain to ourselves the partial violence of to-day and the violence of to-morrow… Do not call us prophets of massacre if we present the possibility that the socialist revolution will have insurrectional episodes. It is puerile to think that such a radical displacement of interests, such a profound transformation of habits can be accomplished without violent conflicts."

"It is blood which moves the wheels of history."

"Do not believe, even for a moment, that by stripping me of my membership card you do the same to my Socialist beliefs, nor that you would restrain me of continuing to work in favor of Socialism and of the Revolution."

"You cannot get rid of me because I am and always will be a socialist. You hate me because you still love me."

"The root of our psychological weakness was this: We socialists have never examined the problems of nations. The International was never concerned with it. The International is dead, paralyzed by events. Ten million proletarians are today on the battlefield."

"What does it matter to the proletarian to understand socialism as one understands a theorem? And is socialism perhaps reducible to a theorem? We want to believe in it; we must believe in it. Humanity needs a credo. It is faith that moves mountains because it gives the illusion that mountains move. Illusion is perhaps the only reality of life."

"The law of socialism is that of the desert: a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. Socialism is a rude and bitter truth, which was born in the conflict of opposing forces and in violence. Socialism is war, and woe to those who are cowardly in war. They will be defeated."

"Socialism has to remain a terrifying and a majestic thing. If we follow this line, we shall be able to face our enemies."

"Socialism is not Arcadian and peaceful. We do not believe in the sacredness of human life."

"The rapacious property-owning American bourgeoisie admits no limits, possesses no scruples and does not share the fears and the cowardice of our bourgeoisie. [They are] violent, absolute criminal. When they feel the need, they simply stain their hands with proletarian blood. They lack any human sense. They are only interested in exploitation."

"For us the national flag is a rag to be planted on a dunghill. There are only two fatherlands in the world: that of the exploited and that of the exploiters."

""Religious man" is an abnormality and "religion" is the certain cause of epidemic diseases of the mind which require the care of alienists."

"The faculty by which man is differentiated from the lower animals is his reasoning power. But the devout believer renounces reason, refuses to explain the things which surround him, the innumerable natural phenomena, because his religious faith is enough for him. The brain loses the habit of thinking; and this religious sottishness hurls mankind back into animalism."

"If today the Middle Ages are retiring into the thick shadows of convents, it is due to triumphant skepticism; and if the epidemic disease of religion no longer appears with the terrible intensity of former times, it is due to the diminution of the political power of the Church."

"The history of many saints, beatified by the church, is repugnant. It shows nothing more than a profound aberration of the human spirit in search of ultra-terrestrial chimeras."

"Religion is a psychic disease of the brain."

"Religious morality shows the original stigmata of authoritarianism precisely because it pretends to be the revelation of divine authority."

"The Bible and morals called Christian are two cadavers."

"How can the idea of a creator be reconciled with the existence of dwarfed and atrophied organs, with anomalies and monstrosities, with the existence of pain, perpetual and universal, with the struggle and the inequalities among human beings?"

"With each new discovery of chemistry, physics, biology, the anthropological sciences, of the practical application of sound principles, dogma collapses. It is a part of that old edifice of religion which crumbles and falls in ruins."

"When we claim that "God does not exist," we mean to deny by this declaration the personal God of theology, the God worshiped in various ways and divers modes by believers the world over, that God who from nothing created the universe, from chaos matter, that God of absurd attributes who is an affront to human reason."

"The struggle against the religious absurdity is more than ever a necessity today."

"Militarism! Here is the monstrous leech that is incessantly sucking the blood of the people and its best energy! Here is the target for our attacks! We must put an end to barbarism, proclaim that the army is now a highly organized school of crime and that it exists solely to protect bourgeois capital and profits. We must not be deterred from proclaiming ourselves international socialists. We recognize no borders and no flags, we hate all steel, every institution that exist to kill men, waste energy, strangle the advance of the workers."

"Marx was the greatest of all theorists of socialism."

"Science is now in the process of destroying religious dogma. The dogma of the divine creation is recognized as absurd."

"Religion is a species of mental disease. It has always had a pathological reaction on mankind."

"Citoyens, il est à craindre que la révolution, comme Saturne, ne dévore successivement tous ses enfants et n’engendre enfin le despotisme avec les calamités qui l’accompagnent."

"Thou knewest this life unfit for thy greatnesse, and thou wert not borne for thy selfe but thy Countrie, thou knewest the Sea, wherein every great soule should wander."

"Ralegh was, though not the first, yet the centre of the whole group which carried out the most persistent attack upon the great colonial question — England's share in the opening-up of the New World. Oxford in our time was right to name its first Empire club after Ralegh, for he was the most conscious and determined of the makers of Empire. To have destined North America for the dominion of English-speaking people can hardly be regarded as the work of one whose career was a failure."

"Most of his contemporaries regarded the Spanish empire as something to be robbed: Raleigh thought of it as something to be replaced by an English empire... What he did do in this respect was to introduce the concept of tropical imperialism into English colonial thinking... It was the social dynamics of the England of the late Tudor and early Stuart period which made English overseas colonization possible, but Raleigh's ideas and experiments helped in its realization. That is his principal claim to an important position in the making of an English overseas empire."

"In the history of the formative period of English overseas expansion, Raleigh occupies an enduring place. He does so, not because of his long protagonism of English as against Spanish imperialism, nor from any lasting achievement in the establishment of English authority overseas. His contribution was made rather to English colonial theory. In the first place, he did as much as any other individual of his age to place American colonization in the public mind as a fixed and continuing objective. Only Richard Hakluyt the younger can stand at his side in this respect, and only his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, can claim any importance among the other Elizabethan colonial enthusiasts."

"The design and style of Ralegh's ‘History of the World’ are instinct with a magnanimity which places the book among the noblest of literary enterprises. Throughout it breathes a serious moral purpose. It illustrates the sureness with which ruin overtakes ‘great conquerors and other troublers of the world’ who neglect law, whether human or divine, and it appropriately closes with an apostrophe to death of rarely paralleled sublimity. Ralegh did not approach a study of history in a critical spirit, and his massive accumulations of facts have long been superannuated. But he showed an enlightened appreciation of the need of studying geography together with history, and of chronological accuracy. His portraits of historical personages—Queen Jezebel, Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Epaminondas—are painted to the life; and the frequent digressions in which he deals with events of his own day, or with philosophic questions of perennial interest, such as the origin of law, preserve for the work much of its original freshness. Remarks on the tactics of the armada, the capture of Fayal, the courage of Englishmen, the tenacity of Spaniards, England's relations with Ireland, emerge in the most unlikely surroundings, and are always couched in judicial and dignified language. His style, although often involved, is free from conceits."

"The high position Ralegh had occupied, the greatness of his downfall, the general feeling that the sentence pronounced in 1603 was unjust, and that the carrying of it into execution in 1618 was base, all contributed to exalt the popular appreciation of his character. His enemies had denounced him as proud, covetous, and unscrupulous, and much evidence is extant in support of the unfavourable judgment. But the circumstances of his death concentrated men's attention on his bold exploits against his country's enemies, and to him was long attributed an importance in affairs of state or in conduct of war which the recital of his acts fails to justify. He was regarded as the typical champion of English interests against Spanish aggression... Physical courage, patriotism, resourcefulness may be ungrudgingly ascribed to him. But he had small regard for truth, and reckless daring was the main characteristic of his stirring adventures as politician, soldier, sailor, and traveller. Ralegh acquired, however, a less ambiguous reputation in the pacific sphere of literature, and his mental calibre cannot be fairly judged, nor his versatility fully realised, until his achievements in poetry, in history, and political philosophy have been taken into account. However impetuous and rash was he in action, he surveyed life in his writings with wisdom and insight, and recorded his observations with dignity and judicial calmness."

"Recreate yourself with Sir Walter Raleigh's History: it's a Body of History; and will add much more to your understanding than fragments of Story."

"If your lordships will look back to a period of the English history, in which the circumstances are reversed, in which the Spaniards were the complainants, you will see how differently they succeeded: you will see one of the ablest men, one of the bravest officers this or any other country ever produced (it is hardly necessary to mention the name of sir Walter Raleigh) sacrificed by the meanest prince that ever sat upon the throne, to the vindictive jealousy of that haughty court. James the First was base enough, at the instance of Gondomar, to suffer a sentence against sir Walter Raleigh, for another supposed offence, to be carried into execution almost twelve years after it had been passed. This was the pretence. His real crime was, that he had mortally offended the Spaniards, while he acted by the King's express orders, and under his commission."

"Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are? Be she fairer than the day, Or the flow'ry meads in May, If she think not well of me, What care I how fair she be?"

"Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!"

"Fame's but a hollow echo; gold, pure clay; Honour, the darling but of one short day, Beauty—th' eye's idol—but a damasked skin; State, but a golden prison to live in And torture free-born minds."

"Shall I, like an hermit, dwell On a rock or in a cell?"

"Even such is time, that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust!"

"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay."

"Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not; I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not."

"Silence in love bewrays more woe Than words, though ne’er so witty: A beggar that is dumb, you know, May challenge double pity."

"Cowards fear to die; but courage stout, Rather than live in snuff, will be put out."

"Our passions are most like to floods and streams; The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb."

"For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself."

"What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!"

"So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies."

"The world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution."