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.
When life is rosy, we may slide by with knowing about Jesus, with imitating him and quoting him and speaking of him. But only in suffering will we know Jesus.
My earliest memory is being in a snow hole, aged two-and-a-half, with my dad somewhere up a mountain in a blizzard. I don't know what my dad saw in me - I was a geeky kid - but he had that philosophy: prepare the kid for the road, not the road for the kid.
There is no official censorship in literature, but I feel a certain fear when I see that a kind of self-censorship is developing in Poland. Authors are somehow afraid of expressing what they really think or feel because they fear political consequences.
The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.
Texas can make it without the United States, but the United States cannot make it without Texas
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
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