Top 100 Johann Most Quotes
#1. The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#2. Fortunately, no country was ever more suited for anarchist agitation than present-day America.
Johann Most
#4. Do not believe that a book is good, if in reading it thou dost not become more contented with thy existence, if it does not rouse up in thee most generous feelings.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#5. So then the year is repeating its old story again. We are come once more, thank God! to its most charming chapter. The violets and the Mayflowers are as its inscriptions or vignettes. It always makes a pleasant impression on us, when we open again at these pages of the book of life.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#7. The procrastinator is not only indolent and weak, but commonly, false, too; most of the weak are false.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#8. The god of the Christians, as we have seen, is the god who makes promises only to break them; who sends them pestilence and disease in order to heal them; a god who demoralizes mankind in order to improve it.
Johann Most
#9. The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.
Isaiah Berlin
#10. Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#11. The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#12. The most difficult thing is what is thought to be the simplest; to really see the things which are before your eyes.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#13. It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell - 'voluntarily' sell - himself every day and hour to the 'beast of property.'
Johann Most
#14. ONE HUNDRED TIMES have I been on the point of embracing
her. Heavens! what a torment it is to see so much loveliness
passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold
of it! And laying hold is the most natural of human instincts.
Do not children touch everything they see?
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#15. Gambling houses are temples where the most sordid and turbulent passions contend; there no spectator can be indifferent. A card or a small square of ivory interests more than the loss of an empire, or the ruin of an unoffending group of infants, and their nearest relatives.
Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann
#16. Jesus Christ is, in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity.
Johann Gottfried Herder
#17. Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#18. The most privileged position, in life as in society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough warriors, at any rate, remain true to their character, and as great strength is usually the cover for good nature, we get on with them at need.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#19. The human race is but a monotonous affair. Most ofthemlabour the greater part oftheir time for mere subsistence; and the scanty portion of freedomwhich remains to themso troubles themthat they use every exertion to get rid ofit.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#21. Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate; they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color ...
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#22. Anarchists prepare for social revolution and use every means- speech, writing, or deed, whichever is more to the point - to accelerate revolutionary development.
Johann Most
#23. What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#24. One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.
Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann
#25. He, who cannot forgive a trespass of malice to his enemy, has never yet tasted the most sublime enjoyment of love.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#26. The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognising a truth which has already been recognised by others.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#27. Old age is never honored among us, but only indulged, as childhood is; and old men lose one of the most precious rights of man,
that of being judged by their peers.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#28. Some of our weaknesses are born in us, others are the result of education; it is a question which of the two gives us most trouble.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#29. Above all, what socialist, without flushing with shame, maintains he is not a revolutionary? We say: none!.
Johann Most
#30. Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#31. All our most honest toil succeeds only in unconscious moments. For how would the rose blossom if it were aware of the splendor of the sun!
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#32. The dignity of art probably appears most eminently with music since it does not have any material that needs to be discounted. Music is all form and content and elevates and ennobles everything that it expresses.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#33. When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would the native roses on your cheek.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#34. He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#35. The aims of anarchists and true communists are identical.
Johann Most
#36. It is better to be doing the most insignificant thing than to reckon even a half-hour insignificant.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#37. While we have entertained the contention that a deed may make more propaganda than hundreds of speeches, thousands of articles, and tens of thousands of pamphlets, we have held that an arbitrary act of violence will not necessarily have such an effect.
Johann Most
#38. The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#39. Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it!
Johann Most
#41. The existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion.
Johann Most
#43. Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#44. One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#45. Among all mental diseases that have been systematically inoculated into the human cranium, the religious pest is the most abominable.
Johann Most
#46. Man is a central creature between the animals, that is to say, the most perfect form, which unites the traits of all in the most complete epitome.
Johann Gottfried Herder
#48. The true friend of truth and good loves them under all forms, but he loves them most under the most simple form.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#50. Grant me one hour on love's most sacred shores
To clasp the bosom that my soul adores,
Lie heart to heart and merge my soul with yours.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#51. The most fortunate of men, Be he a king or commoner, is he Whose welfare is assured in his own home.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#52. As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#53. Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#54. The anarchists, on behalf of the proletariat, therefore consider it necessary to show the proletariat that it will have to win a gigantic battle before it realizes its goals.
Johann Most
#55. Those that embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part love nothing, but their narrow selves.
Johann Gottfried Herder
#57. It is the most foolish of all errors for young people of good intelligence to imagine that they will forfeit their originality if they acknowledge truth already acknowledged by others.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#58. Fools and wise-folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#59. Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost.
Johann Most
#60. The human race is a monotonous thing. Most people work most of the time in order to live, and the little freedom they have left over frightens them so, that they will do anything to get rid of it. Oh, the regimentation of mankind!
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#61. Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal ... It is the most perpetual people of the earth ...
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#62. Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#64. Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#65. The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good; but, alas, most of our artists are nothing else.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#66. The first impression is readily received. We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to efface them.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#68. He who negates present society, and seeks social conditions based on the sharing of property, is a revolutionary whether he calls himself an anarchist or a communist.
Johann Most
#69. Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#70. Anarchists are socialists because they want the improvement of society, and they are communists because they are convinced that such a transformation of society can only result from the establishment of a commonwealth of property.
Johann Most
#71. They make revolutionary propaganda because they know the privileged class can never be overturned peacefully.
Johann Most
#74. Our home joys are the most delightful earth affords, and the joy of parents in their children is the most holy joy of humanity.
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
#75. If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation.
Johann Most
#76. Every one has his peculiarities and cannot get rid of them; and yet many a one is destroyed by his peculiarities, and those too of the most innocent kind.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#77. 'God' - as revealed in his book of edicts and narratives is practically an idiot. He has nothing to say that any sensible person should want to listen to.
Johann Most
#78. Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#79. Whoever looks at America will see: the ship is powered by stupidity, corruption, or prejudice.
Johann Most
#81. A great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#82. We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#84. As set forth by theologians, the idea of 'God' is an argument that assumes its own conclusions, and proves nothing.
Johann Most
#85. Such is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#86. We need do no more than repeat: only under communism does the individual become himself and lead his own life.
Johann Most
#88. The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#90. We can most safely achieve truly universal tolerance when we respect that which is characteristic in the individual and in nations, clinging, though, to the conviction that the truly meritorious is unique by belonging to all of mankind.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#96. The people need a master only as long as they have no understanding of their own. The more it acquires understanding, the more the government is bound to change its methods and to disappear. The most noble end of government is to become dispensable, so that everyone must govern himself.
Johann Gottfried Herder
#97. For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people's behavior.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#98. The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#100. Our principle is: to prevent all command over man by his fellowmen, to, make state, government, laws, or whatsoever form of compulsion existing, a thing of the past, to establish full freedom for all. Anarchism means first and foremost freedom from all government.
Johann Most
