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I have no reason to suppose that Lenin gained his ideas from my books; but if that were true, I should be not a little proud of having contribute to the intellectual development of a man who seems to me to be at once the greatest theoretician of socialism since Marx and a statesman whose genius recalls that of Peter the Great.

— Georges Sorel

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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)

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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.