Skip to content

Existing social conditions favour the production of an infinite number of acts of violence and there has been no hesitation in urging the workers not to refrain from brutality when this might do them service.

— Georges Sorel Reflections on Violence (1908)

Another quote →

More quotes by Georges Sorel

All the future of socialism resides in the autonomous development of workers’ syndicates.

Revolutionary syndicalism keeps alive the desire to strike in the masses and only prospers when important strikes, accompanied by violence, take place.

Reflections on Violence (1908)

And so I am not concerned to justify the perpetrators of violence but to enquire into the function of the violence of the working classes in contemporary socialism.

Reflections on Violence (1908)

We must not always attach too much importance to violent attacks on the bourgeoisie; they may be motivated by the desire to reform and to perfect capitalism.

Reflections on Violence (1908)

Everyone explains that discussions about Socialism are exceedingly obscure; this obscurity is due, to a large extent, to the fact that contemporary socialists use a terminology which no longer corresponds to their ideas.

Reflections on Violence (1908)

All Georges Sorel quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Georges Sorel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.