Georges Sorel Zitate

„Die Armee ist die klarste, die greifbarste und am engsten an die Ursprünge gebundene Manifestation, die es von Staate gibt.“

Réflexions sur la violence, Vorwort

„Die Gesetzbücher treffen so viele Vorkehrungen gegen die Gewalt, und unsere Erziehung ist dermaßen in der Absicht geleitet, unsere Tendenzen zur Gewaltsamkeit abzuschwächen, dass wir instinktiv zu dem Gedanken geführt werden, dass jede Handlung der Gewalt die Kundgebung eines Rückschritts zur Barbarei sei.“

Réflexions sur la violence, III, 4

„Wir wissen vollkommen, dass die Geschichtsschreiber der Zukunft unfehlbar finden werden, dass unser Denken voller Einbildungen gewesen ist: weil sie eine vollendete Welt hinter sich sehen werden.“

Réflexions sur la violence, 6, 1

“Mussolini is a man no less extraordinary than Lenin. He, too, is a political genius, of a greater reach than all the statesmen of the day, with the only exception of Lenin…”

Réflexions sur la violence, 4, 3

Georges Sorel: Zitate auf Englisch

“It is very difficult to understand proletarian violence as long as we try to think in terms of the ideas disseminated by bourgeois philosophy; according to this philosophy, violence is a relic of barbarism which is bound to disappear under the progress of enlightenment.”

As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century, Jacob L. Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 451. Sorel’s March 1921 conversations with Jean Variot, published in Variot’s Propos de Georges Sorel, (1935) Paris, pp. 53-57, 66-86 passim

“Lenin may be proud of what his comrades are doing; the Russian workers are acquiring immortal glory in attempting the realization of what hitherto had been only an abstract idea…..”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 65

“Mussolini is not an ordinary socialist. You will perhaps see him one day as a leader of a consecrated battalion, saluting the flags of Italy with his sword. He is an Italian of the fifteenth century, a condottiere. He is the only man with the strength to correct the weakness of the government.”

“For Lenin,” Soviet Russia, Official Organ of The Russian Soviet Government Bureau, Vol. II, New York: NY, January-June 1920 (April 10, 1920), p. 356

“I have no reason to suppose that Lenin gained his ideas from my books; but if that were true, I should be not a little proud of having contribute to the intellectual development of a man who seems to me to be at once the greatest theoretician of socialism since Marx and a statesman whose genius recalls that of Peter the Great.”

As quoted in The Genesis of Georges Sorel, James H. Meisel, Ann Arbor, Wahr (1951), p. 220, n.21

“As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions that abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State that should abolish capitalism.”

“For Lenin,” Soviet Russia, Official Organ of The Russian Soviet Government Bureau, Vol. II, New York: NY, January-June 1920 (April 10, 1920), p. 356

“Revolutionary syndicalism keeps alive the desire to strike in the masses and only prospers when important strikes, accompanied by violence, take place.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 170

“We have the right to conclude from this that syndicalist violence, perpetrated in the course of strikes by proletarians who desire the overthrow of the State, must not be confused with the acts of savagery which the superstition of the State suggested to the revolutionaries of [17]93 when they had power in their hands and were able to oppress the conquered – following the principles which they had received from the Church and from the monarchy.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 39

“And so I am not concerned to justify the perpetrators of violence but to enquire into the function of the violence of the working classes in contemporary socialism.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 108

“Existing social conditions favour the production of an infinite number of acts of violence and there has been no hesitation in urging the workers not to refrain from brutality when this might do them service.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 42

“Proletarian violence, carried on as a pure and simple manifestation of the sentiment of class struggle, appears thus as a very fine and heroic thing; it is at the service of the immemorial interests of civilization; it is not perhaps the most appropriate method of obtaining immediate material advantages, but it may save the world from barbarism.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 183

“We must not always attach too much importance to violent attacks on the bourgeoisie; they may be motivated by the desire to reform and to perfect capitalism.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 85

“Thus proletarian violence has become an essential factor in Marxism. Let us add once more that, if properly conducted, it will have the result of suppressing parliamentary socialism, which will no longer be able to pose as the leader of the working classes and as the guardian of order.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 125

“[Myths] are not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act… A myth cannot be refuted since it is, at bottom, identical with the convictions of a group, being the expression of these convictions in the language of movement.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 79

“It seems that it was the Jews who had entered the has not been a happy one.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 28-29 (Letter to Daniel Halevy)

“Everyone explains that discussions about Socialism are exceedingly obscure; this obscurity is due, to a large extent, to the fact that contemporary socialists use a terminology which no longer corresponds to their ideas.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 290

“Engels feared that the Socialists, in order to gain adherents in the electoral struggles rapidly, would make promises which were contrary to Marxist doctrine. The antisemites told the peasants and the small shopkeepers that they would protect them from the development of capitalism. Engels thought that an imitation of this procedure would be dangerous, since, in his opinion, the social revolution could only be realised when capitalism had almost completely destroyed the small proprietors and small industries; if the Socialists, then, endeavoured to hinder this evolution, they would ultimately compromise their own cause.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Quelle: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 47

“All the future of socialism resides in the autonomous development of workers’ syndicates.”

Georges Sorel buch Reflections on Violence

Reflections on Violence, London: UK, George Allen & Unwin, (reprinted in Saxony 1925) p. 180

“It seems that it was the Jews who had entered the revolutionary movement who are primarily responsible for the terroristic measures blamed upon the bolsheviks.”

As quoted in Essays in Political Philosophy, Vidya Dhar Mahajan, Doaba House, Lahore, 1943 p. 41