History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.
Interpretation
History teaches us valuable lessons, and revolutions serve as practical experiences for the working class.
This quote emphasizes the importance of historical context as a source of learning. It suggests that understanding history is crucial for realizing the struggles and achievements of the proletariat, while revolutions provide practical knowledge and experience, making them the most effective educational forums for those fighting for change.
In practice
During a speech on social justice, mentioning this quote can highlight the importance of learning from past struggles.
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.
It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are.
There's no such thing as knowledge management;_x000D_ _x000D_ there are only knowledgeable people._x000D_ _x000D_ Information only becomes knowledge_x000D_ _x000D_ in the hands of someone_x000D_ _x000D_ who knows what to do with it.
Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.
I don't think that our Founders would believe that America could long prosper if the people were not readers.
If someone has children, the first thing they want is for them to be happy, and then become someone in life and all that. But the educational system, I mean always, not just now, creates competitive, successful people, and does not educate them to be happy. The problem is that success gives money, not happiness. The eternal problem.
I believe in women. I desire . . . to do those things that would advance women in moral and spiritual, as well as educational work.
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