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.
Interpretation
Collective action and intellectual maturity are essential for societal progress and stability.
This quote by Rosa Luxemburg emphasizes the importance of active participation from the working masses in both urban and rural settings for societal advancement. It suggests that only through the highest levels of intellectual development and unyielding idealism can society navigate challenges and ultimately achieve safety and success.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, one might refer to this quote to emphasize the role of the masses in enacting change.
Our scribblings are usually not lyrics but whirrings, without colour or resonance, like the tone of an engine-wheel. I believe that the cause lies in the fact that when people write, they forget for the most part to dig deeply into themselves and to feel the whole import and truth of what they are writing.
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.
Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only no matter how big its membership may be is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently.
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.
The existing legal constitution is nothing but the product of a revolution. Revolution is the act of political creation in the history of classes, while constitutional legislation is the expression of the continual political vegetation of a society.
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.
Big? Sure. But, he can't catch mice! So for your big tree. No use? Then plant it in the wasteland - in emptiness. Walk idly around it and rest under it's shadow. No axe or saw prepares its end. No one will ever cut it down. Useless? You should worry!.
For many decades - and this was reinforced by the broadcast networks' standards-and-practices department - bad guys on TV had to get their comeuppance, and good guys had to be brave and true and unconflicted. Those were the laws of the business.
Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.
Our destiny is not written for us, but by us.
It is because they have no Oyarsa,' said one of the pupils. It is because everyone of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,' said Augray.
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