Louise Michel Quotes about Humanity

“As the seed contains the full grown tree, all life from its very beginning contains whatever it will be – whatever, despite everything, it will become.”

“As long as poverty… is combined with prejudice, which makes the unknown fearful and fetters people… ignorance will continue to imprison the world.”

“Knowledge must be presented in a manner that enlarges the horizon instead of restricting it.”

“Everyone has a right to everything there is on earth.”

“I once saw a rotten tree collapse suddenly. When the cloud of dust dispersed, there was only a heap of trash, over which, like headstones in a graveyard, a few green boughs stretched out, the last effort of the old tree dragged down by the dead trunk. In that tree, myriads of insects had lived for centuries, and they too were engulfed in the collapse. Some of them stirred painfully in the dust, and startled and upset they stared at the daylight which was going to kill them, for their kind, born in the shade, could not stand light. Like those insects, we live in an old tree, and we stubbornly believe it still lives, but the least breath of wind will destroy it, and its debris will blow across the earth. No one can escape change.”

“Soon there will be neither cruelty nor exploitation, and science will provide all humanity with enough food, with nourishing food. I dream of a time when science will give everyone enough to eat.”

“With the abundance of nourishing food in that future world, there must be art, too. In that coming era, the arts will be for everyone… they will belong to the whole human race. Genius will be developed, not snuffed out. Ignorance has done enough harm. The privilege of knowledge is worse than the privilege of wealth. The arts are a part of human rights, and everybody needs them.”

“The lone human being is not and cannot be free.”

“If you don’t have a trade I, at least, would rather become a ragpicker than go looking for recommendations to influence publishers. I even feel a kind of pleasure in throwing stanzas and motifs and sketches into the wind.”

“Is there further to go? Of course, because there is always more to come, there is always further to go, always progress to make in light and liberty, in the development of new sensitivities of which we now only have the rudiments. There is a future in which we imprisoned spirits cannot even glimpse.”

“The development of the human race and the development of new sensitivities are thwarted because people take their point of view from the part, not the whole. Only when totality, completeness is seen can each person rummage in his own little corner in harmony with wisdom and the development of the human race.”

“Although books for children and even for grown ups give the illusion that merit is rewarded, merit is rarely recognised in this world… since then I have seen a thousand examples, so I was astonished only the first time I saw it.”

“That something has never happened before certainly does not mean it is impossible.”

“The human race as a whole is blameless if individuals waste away like animals in the struggle for existence.”

“Each of us is capable of all the good or evil in his being.”

“No-one comes into the world with a knife in his hand to stab others, or with a card in her hand to sell herself. No one comes into the world with a club ready to be a cop, and no one comes into the world carrying a minister’s portfolio so that he may be captured by the dizziness of power and drag nations down. No bandit who could not have been an honest man. No honourable man who is not capable of committing crimes.”

“What we taught… was the utility of examining cities and peoples in terms of childhood, youth and decay. That is the real way it happens, although people think that it is a Romanesque approach. The lives of individuals and the history of humanity show a parallel progression. In every individual’s life you can see the same transformations that you can see in our history, in the story of our collective existence that spans the centuries. Nevertheless, however aware a person is of those centuries-long rhythms of change, he still lives inside his own epoch. It is inside his own epoch that he feels, suffers and is happy; and all the love, all the hate, all the harmony, all the power that he possesses – he must throw all this into his surroundings. One person is nothing and yet part of that which is everything – the Revolution.”

“And so here is Louise Michel. She is a menace to society for she has declared a hundred times that everyone should take part in the banquet of life. What would be the pleasure of riches if one were unable to compare one’s own well-fed condition to that of people dying of hunger? Where would the feeling of security come from if one were unable to compare one’s good, solid position to that of people who must work in poverty?”

“Louise Michel is a monster who maintains that men and women are not responsible for their situation and claims it is stupidity which causes the evils around us. She claims that politics is a form of that stupidity and is incapable of ennobling the race.”

“If Louise Michel were the only person saying this, people could say she is a pathological case. But there are thousands like her, millions, none of whom gives a damn about authority. They all repeat the battle cry of the Russian revolutionaries: land and freedom!”

“Art, like science and liberty, must be no less available than food.”

“People always wait for the cup to overflow for the same reason that keeps them from ever being upset by the approach of misfortunes they think they can prevent.”

“People do sense their destinies, as dogs sense a wolf, and sometimes it comes true with a strange precision.”

“It makes no difference how the millstone moves as long as the bread is made.”