Rosa Luxemburg

“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.”

“The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built.”

“Under the leaden sway of Alexander III's government, the silence of the graveyard prevailed. Russian society, equally discouraged by the collapse of all hopes for peaceful reforms and by the apparent ineffectiveness of the revolutionary movement, was in the grip of a mood of depression and resignation.”

“The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.”

“History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.”

“מי יודע אם היתה רוזה לוקסמבורג מקובלת כל-כך, אילו האריכה ימים עוד שנה-שנתיים והיתה ממשיכה בביקורת שלה על המהפכה הרוסית...”

“כך הגענו בשלום לעקרון הצדק, לסוס מרוץ זקן זה, שנשא עליו זה אלפים בשנים את כל מתקני העולם, מאין אמצעי תחבורה היסטוריים בטוחים; כך הגענו שוב לבהמה דלה זו, שעל גבה הפליגו כל הדון קישוטים של ההיסטוריה לשם תיקון עולם רב, ולבסוף לא הביאו עמם חזרה אלא פצע וחבורה”

“החירות השמורה לנאמני השלטון והמפלגה איננה חירות. החירות היא תמיד חירותו של זה אשר דעותיו שונות, אחרת החירות מאבדת מערכה כאשר היא הופכת לטובת הנאה.”

“מרקסיזם הוא השקפה מהפכנית שחייבת תמיד להיאבק לגילויים חדשים... הוא במיטבו כאשר הוא מתנגח עם ביקורת עצמית.”

“החברה הבורגנית עומדת בצומת דרכים, או מעבר לסוציאליזם או רגרסיה לברבריות.”

“Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party - though they are quite numerous - is no freedom at all.”

“People finally understood that the role of the social-democratic party rests on its conscious leadership of the mass struggle against the existing society, a struggle that must reckon with the vital, necessary conditions of capitalist society.”

“The very action of the proletariat is a determining factor in history. And although we can no more jump over the stages of historical development than a man can jump over his shadow, nevertheless, we can accelerate or retard that development.”

“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.”

“Credit reproduces all the fundamental antagonisms of the capitalist world. It accentuates them. It precipitates their development and thus pushes the capitalist world forward to its own destruction.”

“Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.”

“Though foreign loans are indispensable for the emancipation of the rising capitalist states, they are yet the surest ties by which the old capitalist states maintain their influence, exercise financial control, and exert pressure on the customs, foreign and commercial policy of the young capitalist states.”

“Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.”

“Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port.”

“Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations.”