Victor Serge > Quotes

“what is terrible when you seek the truth is that you find it..”
― Victor Serge

“Carelessness on the part of revolutionaries has always been the best aid the police have.”
― Victor Serge

“I give myself credit for having seen clearly in a number of important situations. In itself, this is not so difficult to achieve, and yet it is rather unusual. To my mind, it is less a question of an exalted or shrewd intelligence, than of good sense, goodwill, and a certain sort of courage to enable one to rise above both the pressures of one's environment and the natural inclination to close one's eyes to facts, a temptation that arises from our immediate interests and from the fear which problems inspire in us. A French essayist has said: 'What is terrible when you seek the truth, is that you find it.' You find it, and then you are no longer free to follow the biases of your personal circle, or to accept fashionable clichés.”
― Victor Serge

“Early on, I learnt from the Russian intelligentsia that the only meaning of life lies in conscious participation in the making of history. The more I think of that, the more deeply true it seems to be. It follows that one must range oneself actively against everything that diminishes man, and involve oneself in all struggles which tend to liberate and enlarge him. This categorical imperative is by no way lessened by the fact that such an involvement is inevitably soiled by error: it is a worse error merely to live for oneself, caught within traditions which are soiled by inhumanity.”
― Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

“The necessity of starting life afresh on new foundations. That these foundations must be of social justice, of rational organization, of respect for the individual, of liberty, is for me an obvious fact which, little by little, is asserting itself out of the very inhumanity of the present time. The future seems to me, despite the clouds on the horizon, to be full of possibilities vaster than any we have glimpsed in the past. The passion, the experience, and even the errors of my fighting generation may perhaps help illumine the way forward, but on one condition, which has become an absolute imperative: never give up the defense of man against systems whose plans crush the individual.”
― Victor Serge

“He who does not cry out the truth when he knows the truth becomes the accomplice of the liars and falsifiers.”
― Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin

“It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning’. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is that very sensible?”
― Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin

“A French essayist has said: 'What is terrible when you seek the truth, is that you find it.' You find it, and then you are no longer free to follow the biases of your personal circle, or to accept fashionable clichés. I immediately discerned within the Russian Revolution the seeds of such serious evils as intolerance and the drive towards the persecution of dissent. These evils originated in an absolute sense of possession of the truth, grafted upon doctrinal rigidity. What followed was contempt for the man who was different, of his arguments and way of life. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest problems which each of us has to solve in the realm of practice is that of accepting the necessity to maintain, in the midst of intransigence which comes from steadfast beliefs, a critical spirit towards these same beliefs and a respect for the belief that differs. In the struggle, it is the problem of combining the greatest practical efficiency with respect for the man in the enemy - in a word, of war without hate.”
― Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

“To steal from a rich man has always been a greater crime than to kill a poor man.”
― Victor Serge

“Perhaps it is a very good thing that we cannot wholly rule our minds and that they force on us ideas and images which we would ignobly prefer to dismiss; thus truth makes its way in spite of egotism and unconsciousness.”
― Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev

“We have conquered everything, and everything has slipped out of our grasp.”
― Victor Serge, Conquered City

“[Seeing clearly] is not so difficult to achieve, and yet it is rather unusual. To my mind, it is less a question of an exalted or shrewd intelligence than of good sense, goodwill and a certain sort of courage to enable one to rise above both the pressures of one's environment and the natural inclination to close one's eyes to facts, a temptation that arises from our immediate interests and from the fear which problems inspire in us. A French essayist has said: 'What is terrible when you seek the truth, is that you find it.' You find it, and then you are no longer free to follow the biases of your personal circle, or to accept fashionable cliches.”
― Victor Serge

“It has been observed that I show hardly any interest in talking about myself. It is hard for me to disentangle my own person from the social processes, the ideas and activities in which it has shared, which matter more than it does and which give it value. I do not think of myself as at all an individualist: rather as a 'personalist', in that I view human personality as a supreme value, only integrated in society and history. The experience and thought of one man have no significance that deserves to last, except in this sense.”
― Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

“What with the political monopoly, the Cheka and the Red Army, all that now existed of the 'Commune-State' of our dreams was a theoretical myth. The war, the internal measures against counterrevolution, and the famine (which had created a bureaucratic rationing apparatus) had killed off Soviet democracy. How could it revive, and when? The Party lived in the certain knowledge that the slightest relaxation of its authority would give day to reaction.”
― Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

“What will become of us in twenty years’ time?” we asked ourselves one evening. Thirty years have passed now. Raymond was guillotined: “Anarchist gangster” (so the newspapers). I came across Jean again in Brussels, a worker and a trade-union organizer, still a fighter for liberty after ten years in jail. Luce has died of tuberculosis, naturally. For my part, I have undergone a little over ten years of various forms of captivity, agitated in seven countries, and written twenty books. I own nothing. On several occasions a Press with a vast circulation has hurled filth at me because I spoke the truth. Behind us lies a victorious revolution gone astray, several abortive attempts at revolution, and massacres in so great a number as to inspire a certain dizziness. And to think that it is not over yet.”
― Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

“Why survive if it is not for those who do not?”
― Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

“Tamo, u prizemlju, Balkanci: soba puna Grka, protivnika Venizelosa; Makedonaca što samo žele da budu svoji i da ih ne svrstavaju u Grke, Srbe ili Bugare; izbeglice i komite, godinama su izdržavali u planinama uprkos svim okolnostima.”
― Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power

“In the conflicts between capital and labour, the army has often intervened against labour - never against capital. In court the defense of the poor is nothing short of impossible, because of the cost of any judicial action; in effect, a worker can neither bring a case nor defend one. The overwhelming majority of crimes are directly caused by poverty and come into the category of attacks on property. The overwhelming majority of prison inmates are from the poor.”
― Victor Serge, What Every Radical Should Know About State Repression: A Guide For Activists

“He aquí la muerte, fin de un universo.”
― Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev

“With his worn-out lungs, his obstinate self-effacement, his bookish timidity, Broux is nonetheless a strong man; by means of his awareness of how impossible it is to live, he raises himself precisely to a higher possibility of living, to an endurance which is more sure of itself because it believes it has nothing more to lose. From his weakness he was able to create a strength; from his despair, an acquiescence; from his acquiescence, a hope...”
― Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power

“It is a serious matter to destroy a man's faith without replacing it.”
― Victor Serge

“But he did not think....thoughts formed in him and dissolved without control, almost like a reverie. And since he had got through life in that fashion, he did not know that it is possible to think better, more accurately, more clearly.”
― Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev

“... after all, there is such a thing as truth.”
― Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev

“The revolution died a self-inflicted death in 1918 with the establishment of the Cheka.”
― Victor Serge

“Suicide is often an act of vitality, and even — if it is not the result of neurosis — the act of a person who is powerfully attached to life.”
― Victor Serge, Unforgiving Years

“Écoute Annie, il n'y a pas plus d'une cinquantaine d'hommes sur la terre qui comprennent Einstein: si on les fusillait tous dans la même nuit, ce serait fini pour une siècle ou deux - ou trois, qu'en savons nous? Toute une vision de l'univers s'évanouirait dans le néant...”
― Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev

“Mi Rusi smo se držali zahvaljujući solidarnosti. Fond za hitne slučajeve nam je kupio taman dovoljno dodatnih namirnica da se održi plamen života i među onima od nas sa najmanje sreće, makar i kao ugarak. Nismo dozvolili da bilo ko od naših završi u Mrtvačnici dok su ostali izbacivali bolesnike iz svojih soba čim bi dobili šansu.
Legali smo u krevete, jedan za drugim, škljocali zubima, dok su oporavljeni ili oni pošteđeni pazili na bolesne. Nastavili smo da se borimo, da razmišljamo. Drugu umotanom u posteljinu kome je glava gorela na jastuku prekrivena starom krpom za sudove, donosili smo vesti dana – dopise sa fronta: „džep” kod Chateau-Thierry-a, poslednji veliki pokušaj proboja Centralnih sila ka Parizu; dopise iz Rusije: teror, podvizi Čehoslovaka, „varvarizam Kineza i letonskih pretorijanaca iz garde Narodnih komesara”, negiranje glasina o ubistvu Trockog, Lenjinov oporavak, nacionalizacija teške industruje – I bolesni čovek bi se nasmejao, promislio stvari, poželeo da raspravlja, a to bi označilo pobedu života u njemu.”
― Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power

“Već smo posetili 6-7 institucija, prepešačili milje kroz sneg, praznih stomaka, išli utihnulim ulicama gde su se retko mogli videti prolaznici kako vuku noge, neki noseći džakove, drugi halapljivo proždirući slabašan obrok iz masnih činija. Kroz samo par sati smo naučili više o revoluciji nego što smo to mogli kroz duge razgovore i razmišljanja. Realnost nam se javljala u drugačijim aspektima od onih koje nam je u svest prizivala mašta, oblikovana legendom i istorijom, a istorija ni sama nije daleko od legende.

Nekada smo sanjarili o trgovima preobraćenim u užarene govornice, o vatrenim debatama po klubovima kao 1792, o cvetanju slobodne štampe, gde svaki list nudi svoje rešenje, svoj sistem, svoje fantazije. Mislili smo na velike dane Sovjeta, na kongrese. U sveprisutnom jeziku, u sloganima izlepljenim svuda, u samo dva štampana lista, među ljudima, nalazili smo ogromnu uniformnost jednog načina mišljenja, mišljenja koje je skoro despotski vladalo. Međutim, ono je bilo prihvaćeno i nadmoćno, užasno istinito i otelovljeno u svakom tenutku kroz dela ljudi.

Nismo otkrili mase u zanosu kako marširaju pod zastavama u nove svakodnevne borbe kroz tragičnu i plodonosnu konfuziju, već neku vrstu ogromne administracije, armiju, mašinu. Tu su se najvreliji zanosi i najbistriji uvidi sjedinjavali u hladnu odlučnost i taj aparat je izvršavao svoje zadatke bez zastoja.”
― Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power

“You never depend only on yourself, you never live only for yourself, and you have to realize that our most intimate thought, that we most own, is bound by a thousand bonds to that of the world. And he who speaks, he who writes is essentially someone speaking for all those who are voiceless.”
― Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

“Les longues nuits semblaient ne s'écarter qu'à regret de la ville, pour quelques heures. Une grise lumière d'aube ou de crépuscule filtrant à travers le plafond de nuées d'un blanc sale se répandait alors sur les choses comme le reflet appauvri d'un lointain glacier. La neige même, qui continuait à tomber, était sans lumière. Cet ensevelissement blanc, léger et silencieux s'étendait à l'infini dans l'espace et le temps. Il fallait déjà allumer les veilleuses vers trois heures. Le soir épaississait sur la neige des tons de cendre, des bleus opaques, des gris tenaces de vieilles pierres. La nuit s'imposait, inexorable et calmante : irréelle. Le delta reprenait dans ces ténèbres sa configuration géographique. De noires falaises de pierre, cassées en angles droits, bordaient les canaux figés. Une sorte de phosphorescence sombre émanait du large fleuve de glace.

Parfois les vents du nord, venus du Spitzberg et de plus loin encore, du Groenland peut-être, peut-être du pôle par l'Océan arctique, la Norvège, la mer Blanche, poussaient leurs rafales sur l'estuaire morne de la Neva. Le froid mordait
tout à coup le granit, les lourdes brumes venues du sud par la Baltique s'évanouissaient tout à coup et les pierres, la terre, les arbres dénudés se couvraient instantanément de cristaux de givre dont chacun était une merveille à peine visible, faite de nombres, de lignes de force et de blancheur. La nuit changeait de face, dépouillant ses voiles d'irréalité. L'étoile polaire apparaissait, les constellations ouvraient l'immensité du monde. Le lendemain, les cavaliers de bronze sur leurs socles de pierre, couverts d'une poudre d'argent, semblaient sortir d'une étrange fête ; les hautes colonnes de granit de la cathédrale Saint-Isaac, son fronton peuplé de saints et jusqu'à sa massive coupole dorée, tout était givré. Les façades et les quais de granit rouge prenaient, sous ce revêtement magnifique, des teintes de cendre rose et blanche. Les jardins, avec les filigranes purs de leurs ■ branchages, paraissaient enchantés. Cette fantasmagorie ravissait les yeux des gens sortis de leurs demeures étouffantes ainsi qu'il y a des millénaires, les hommes vêtus de fourrures sortaient peureusement l'hiver des chaudes cavernes pleines d'une bonne puanteur animale.

Pas une lumière dans des quartiers entiers. Des ténèbres préhistoriques.”
― Victor Serge