Top 50 Rosa Luxemburg Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

Featured in: Resistance Quotes, Quotes on Liberty

2. “Before a revolution happens, it is perceived as impossible; after it happens, it is seen as having been inevitable.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

3. “There is no democracy without socialism, and no socialism without democracy.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

4. “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

5. “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

6. “We will be victorious if we have not forgotten how to learn.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

7. “Tomorrow the revolution will ‘rise up again, clashing its weapons,’ and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!”

— Rosa Luxemburg

8. “Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

9. “The most revolutionary act is a clear view of the world as it really is.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

10. “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

11. “Capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

12. “Women’s freedom is the sign of social freedom.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

13. “History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

14. “Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

15. “Freiheit, ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

16. “It is in the tiny struggles of individual peoples that the great movements of history are most truly revealed.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

17. “The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

18. “Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

19. “Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

20. “Tomorrow the revolution will already ‘raise itself with a rattle’ and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I will be!”

— Rosa Luxemburg

21. “The high stage of world-industrial development in capitalistic production finds expression in the extraordinary technical development and destructiveness of the instruments of war...”

— Rosa Luxemburg

22. “With the true artist, the social formula that he recommends is a matter of secondary importance; the source of his art, its animating spirit, is decisive.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

23. “What presents itself to us as bourgeois legality is nothing but the violence of the ruling class, a violence raised to an obligatory norm from the outset.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

24. “Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

25. “Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party – though they are quite numerous – is no freedom at all.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

26. “The victory of socialism will not descend like fate from heaven.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

27. “The clergy, no less than the capitalist class, lives on the backs of the people, profits from the degradation, the ignorance and the oppression of the people.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

28. “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.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

29. “Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

30. “Life is singing also in the sand crunching under the slow and heavy steps of the guards, when we know how to listen to it.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

31. “The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

32. “The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

33. “Only to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent does the song of a bird seem always the same.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

34. “Don’t forget, as busy as you may be, to quickly raise your head and cast a glance at those great silver clouds and that silent blue ocean in which they are swimming... take notice of the resplendence and glory that overlie this day... because this day will never, ever come again! This day is a gift to you like a rose in full bloom, lying at your feet, waiting for you to pick it up and press it to your lips.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

35. “And in the darkness I smile at life, as if I were the possessor of charm which would enable me to transform all that is evil and tragical into serenity and happiness. But when I search my mind for the cause of this joy, I find there is no cause, and can only laugh at myself.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

36. “Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

37. “I want to affect people like a clap of thunder, to inflame their minds with the breadth of my vision, the strength of my conviction and the power of my expression.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

38. “Clearly, not uncritical apologetics but penetrating and thoughtful criticism is alone capable of bringing out the treasures of experiences and teachings.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

39. “I want to burden the conscience of the affluent with all the suffering and all the hidden, bitter tears.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

40. “Self-criticism, cruel, unsparing criticism that goes to the very root of the evil, is life and breath for the proletarian movement.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

41. “We stand todaybefore the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

42. “Take notice of the resplendence and glory that overlie this day, because this day will never, ever come again! This day is a gift to you like a rose in full bloom, lying at your feet, waiting for you to pick it up and put it to your lips.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

43. “The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

44. “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.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

45. “Democracy is indispensable to the working class, because only through the exercise of its democratic rights, in the struggle for democracy, can the proletariat become aware of its class interests and its historic task.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

46. “My dear, it is very nice here, every day two or three persons are stabbed by soldiers in the city; there are daily arrests, but apart from these it is pretty gay...”

— Rosa Luxemburg

47. “We have to take everything as it comes and to find beauty in everything. That’s what I manage to do.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

48. “People for the most part pass by the loveliest things in life without paying attention.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

49. “There was no doubt for Marx and Engels about the necessity of having the proletariat conquer political power. It is left to Bernstein to consider the poultry-yard of bourgeois Parliamentarism as the organ by which we are to realize the most formidable social transformation of history, the passage from capitalist society to Socialism.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

50. “Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party – though they are quite numerous – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of justice, but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.”

— Rosa Luxemburg