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I have a sincere pity for any nation where old heads grow on young shoulders; youth is a matter, not only of years, but of temperament.

— Alexander Herzen My Past and Thoughts (1852)

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More quotes by Alexander Herzen

Socialism and rationalism are to this day the touchstones of humanity, the rocks which lie in the course of revolution and science.

My Past and Thoughts (1852)

The peasants will be emancipated if there is a future for Rus and for the Slavic world.

An empire that cannot distance itself from such a gruesome sin that so deeply affects its internal structure does not have the right to education, to future development and participation in history.

Without equality there can be no real marriage. The wife who is excluded from all the interests that occupy her husband, who is alien to them and does not share them, may be a concubine, a housekeeper, a nurse, but not a wife in the full, honourable sense of the word.

My Past and Thoughts (1852)

A religion of life had come to replace a religion of penance and emaciation, of fasting and prayer. The crucified body had risen in its turn and was no longer abashed Man had reached a harmonious unity: he had discovered that he is a single being not made, like a pendulum, of two different metals,= that check each other; he realised that the foe in his members had ceased to exist.

My Past and Thoughts (1852)

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