Quotes About Herzen

What is remarkable is that Herzen, in the earlier years of Alexander II's reign (1855–81), combined this "Russian socialism," as it came to be called, with the theory of progressive autocracy. He called upon Alexander to be a "crowned revolutionary," and a "tsar of the land," and to continue Peter the Great's cause of reform by breaking with the Petersburg period as resolutely as Peter had broken with the Moscow period.

Berlin stressed the farsightedness of his perception of the destructive power of ideological abstractions over human lives: "Herzen's sense of reality, in particular of the need for, and the price of, revolution, is unique in his own, and perhaps in any age.

Herzen declared that there were "no solutions": history, like nature, was an improvisation, subject to the play of chance.

Kein Argument bringt mich so aus der Fessung, als wenn einer mit einem unbedeutenden Gemeinspruche angezogen kommt, wenn ich aus ganzem Herzen rede.

I first came to Russia because of the culture, literature and music... and my interest in the 19th-century revolutionary spirit of Herzen, Bakunin and Kropotkin. Russia is a wonderful place to bring new clowns because Russians give back a wonderful response.

Belinsky: 'Who is this Moloch that eats his children?' Herzen: 'It's the Ginger Cat.