Rosa Luxemburg Quotes

Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.

We tried many times before to speed on the social revolution in Spain; attempted to stir up the feelings of the people and to raise the banner of Libertarian Communism.

For in the first place the American people could not have been swept too fast and too far in this movement without enough alarms being sounded to be heard and heeded.

No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle.

Fire in the lake: The image of revolution.

Revolution is the duty of the worker and the peasant masses and not of just a few heroes, hence the necessity to organize these masses and draw them into the struggle.

The Revolution has not yet succeeded. Comrades, you must carry on!

You cannot change the psychology of a people by a coup d'etat, or by some quick process of political chemistry convert an idle nobleman into a serious worker, or a medical student into a full-blown statesman.

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

We now have a literary movement. it is not very important; it will be followed by a political movement, that will not be very important; then must come a military movement, that will be important indeed

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

Let us not be so naive as to think that revolution is just a matter of social or economic discontent.

None of us is designed for the role we must assume in a revolutionary society, although Cubans had the privilege of Jose Marti's example.

This uprising of 1976-77 was, of course, the historic watershed... Within a short period of time, it propelled into the forefront of our struggle millions of young people.

Social revolutions are never simple.

A lot of times, losing a fight is tough. In your darkest hours, I guess your true colors show.

The struggle for your own character is the struggle for the nation's character.

This independent Negro movement is able to intervene with terrific force upon the general social and political life of the nation, despite the fact that it is waged under the banner of democratic rights ... [and] is able to exercise a powerful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat, that it has got a great contribution to make to the development of the proletariat in the United States, and that it is in itself a constituent part of the struggle for socialism.

Historically, if you look back at the struggle to end slavery, the struggle to gain womens' right to vote, the labor movement - these were big social transitions in which there was a movement on the ground in which a lot of people died, but it also took an independent political party.

The movement for equality and justice can only be a success if it has both a mass and militant character; the barriers to be overcome require both.

You will have to go through 15, 20, 50 years of civil wars and national struggles not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power.

We Communists must be able to integrate ourselves with the masses in all things. If our Party members spend their whole lives sitting indoors and never go out to face the world and brave the storm, what good will they be to the Chinese people? None at all, and we do not need such people as Party members. We Communists ought to face the world and brave the storm the great world of mass struggle and the mighty storm of mass struggle.

The point is change can come about, but it only comes about when millions of people are actively involved in political struggle, the billionaires may have the money, but we have the people.

This is a movement like nobody's ever seen in this country before. Even our enemies admit that. We're going to make history together.

The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles...Social democracy...is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh. Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.