Quotes from Victor Serge

...and it is a serious matter to destroy a man's faith without replacing it.

Writing should be testimony to the vast flow of life through us.

I followed his argument with the blank uneasiness which one might feel in the presence of a logical lunatic.

You never depend only on yourself, you never live only for yourself, and you have to realize that our most intimate thought, that we most own, is bound by a thousand bonds to that of the world. And he who speaks, he who writes is essentially someone speaking for all those who are voiceless.

In the conflicts between capital and labour, the army has often intervened against labour - never against capital. In court the defense of the poor is nothing short of impossible, because of the cost of any judicial action; in effect, a worker can neither bring a case nor defend one. The overwhelming majority of crimes are directly caused by poverty and come into the category of attacks on property. The overwhelming majority of prison inmates are from the poor.

I paid the watchman fifty kopeks so that I could stay after closing time until the stars came out. And I thought: What is man on this earth? A wretched speck of dust which thinks, works, and suffers. What does he leave behind him?

The moon, plump as a merchant's wife, swam behind clouds, wearying of the chase.

The so-called dictatorship of the proletariat is really the dictatorship over the proletariat by the party and even by individual persons.

Did the primitive Ancestor have any inkling of voluntary death? Or is that an attainment of the higher civilizations, which offer no other means of escape? Let's

Tout le mal vient de ce que l'on pense, ou plutôt de ce qu'il y a en vous un être qui pense à votre insu puis tout à coup émet dans le silence du cerveau un petite phrase acide, insupportable, après laquelle on ne peut plus vivre comme auparavant

Erchov atteignait le sommet de sa vie et il avait peur

Le suicide n'est qu'une solution individuelle; pas socialiste par conséquent.

Kiril Roublev glissa, à longues enjambées sur ses skis, jusqu'à a la station suivante, le long de bois silencieux où l'obscurité semblait naître à ras de terre ainsi qu'une brume insaisissable. Un mince croissant de lune bleu terriblement effilé, épousant la forme d'une gorge idéale, monta dans la nuit. Roublev pensa: Vilaine lune. La peur vient tout à fait comme la nuit.

Méfie-toi, Artémitch, du confort bureaucratique, C'est de la vase; on s'y noie.

J'ai eu ensuite une crise de doute, à quoi étais-je bonne se je ne pouvais pas écarter les balles autour de toi...

Pitoyable, celui qui ne songe qu'à sa propre vie, à sa propre mort, il n'a rien compris... et qu'il s'en aille alors, c'est le mieux qu'il puisse faire, qu'il s'en aille avec notre pitié...

L'univers et l'homme sont faits d'étoiles

Nous sommes à la veille d'un nouveau cycle d'ouragans et c'est ce qui obscurcit les consciences. La boussole s'affole à l'approche des orages magnétiques...

what is terrible when you seek the truth is that you find it..

Carelessness on the part of revolutionaries has always been the best aid the police have.

He who does not cry out the truth when he knows the truth becomes the accomplice of the liars and falsifiers.

To steal from a rich man has always been a greater crime than to kill a poor man.

We have conquered everything, and everything has slipped out of our grasp.

Why survive if it is not for those who do not?