Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
Interpretation
True freedom is the ability to think and act independently, especially for those with differing views.
Rosa Luxemburg's quote emphasizes that freedom cannot be selectively applied; it must encompass all individuals, even those who hold contrary opinions. Genuine freedom is defined by the capacity to express and support dissenting thoughts and ideas, as it is this very diversity of thought that allows society to flourish and progress.
In practice
In a debate about social justice, one might cite this quote to emphasize the importance of protecting minority viewpoints.
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.
Work for legal reform takes place only within the framework of the social form created by the last revolution.
Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.
The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us. When the world seems familiar, when one has got used to existence, one has become an adult.
The only proof for the existence of God is that without God you couldn't prove anything.
Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.
Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose.
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