Jean Jaurès

“ Well, Socialism poses as an overwhelming revelation, a new gospel, that looks to the future itself for the basis on which to build the future.
"As a matter of fact, all the elements of the problem exist already in our present society and the solution is indicated or even roughly sketched in: the solution of the social problem is wholly comprised in political liberty, the development of popular education, and the right of labour to organise. ”

“ There will be reforms, great reforms even, but they will come to pass without having been given a name, and they will not trouble the calm life of the nation any more than the dropping of ripe fruit troubles the still autumn days. Humanity will raise itself insensibly toward fraternal justice, just as the earth that bears us rises with a silent motion in the starry spaces. ”

“ Human progress has entered upon its silent period, which is not the least productive. Pascal used to say, when he looked at the sky spread out above our heads: 'The eternal silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me.' For me, on the contrary, after these times of election excitement, of newspaper polemics and all our wordy agitation, it has a message of consolation and encouragement. The universe knows how to accomplish its work without any noise ”

“ They were constantly feeling the breath of the future pass in their long hair, and thrill through their long beards. They looked for the man of the future, the society of the future, the science of the future, the art of the future, the religion of the future. ”

“ In the stubble, in the dried-up fields, some poor little creatures are still singing; their music is not insistent and universal as it is in the warm spring nights or the hot summer nights; but they will sing till the end, as long as they are not really frozen by the winter. Fires of dry grass glow in the middle of the fields, and the moonlight envelops and softens their gleam ”

“ There will never be a government acting and legislating in the name of Socialism, because a government has to base its action on existing facts, even when it is reforming the present order or creating a new order. ”

“ The main form of human society, like that of earth itself, is fairly definitely established; there will be transformations, but not any vast metamorphosis. There will not be a social upheaval any more than there will be a geological upheaval. ”

“ Well, political liberty exists, education, and an education always more advanced, is becoming more and more diffused in the labour world, and the workers have the right to organise.
"When they are better educated they will begin by taking part through their imagination and their intelligence in all great human undertakings, and when their personal subjective value has been increased in this way, it will react of its own accord on the social régime by an irresistible action from within outward. ”

“ But I repeat, all this will be accomplished without the aid of any high-sounding formulas, and we shall find that we have arrived at the end of Socialism without ever having come across Socialism on the way. Old sailors make the new hands believe that when they go from one pole to the other they have to pass over the line of the equator, stretched taut and firm on the surface of the sea. ”

“ Yes, above and below, our present social order produces nothing but slaves, because those men are not free who have neither the time nor the strength to follow the noblest instincts of their minds and their souls. ”

“ A lovelorn owl hoots plaintively in the chestnut grove; the ripe chestnuts fall with a thud and roll down the little valleys. A small green frog is croaking near the fountain; the heavens shine and the earth sings. Come, let the universe be; it contains joy for all. It is Socialistic after its own fashion. ”

“ They have no seat in the councils that decide on new undertakings and direct them; these are entirely in the hands of a limited class which knows all the joys of intellectual activity and hardy initiative, just as it possesses all the pleasures of wealth, and which would be happy if it were permitted to man to be happy apart from human solidarity. ”

“ Men spend their days struggling to take from one another the joys of life by fraud, by the arts of bitter greed, the oppression of the weak, and all the violent methods of unlimited competition. Even among those who are called happy there are few who are really happy, because the brutal conditions of life hold them in their grip; they hardly have the right to be just and kind under pain of ruin. ”

“ While we are dreaming of the future and arguing, everything that lives, everything that exists is giving itself up to the joy of the passing moment, to the instant sweetness of the serene night. The peasants are going in groups to the meeting-place of the farm to gather in the corn, and as they go they are singing in a full chorus ”

“ There are millions of labourers who are reduced to an inert and mechanical existence. And, terrifying as the idea is, if to-morrow machines could be substituted for them, nothing would be changed in human existence. ”

“ Neither have they any right over the machine they tend, no share of ownership in the immense tool that humanity has bit by bit created for itself; they are strangers in the organised power of the world ”

“ Moreover, when they understand the mechanism of production and exchange better, when they know exactly what conditions obtain in manufacture generally and in their industry in particular, what its markets are, what capital is invested in it and how much more capital could be profitably employed in its development, then these men, free, organised, and well educated as they will be, will by the very nature of things begin to be admitted as members of the boards of directors of the great corporations, and afterwards, little by little, to the management of ordinary business concerns. ”

“ In the mines, the canals, the railroads, the ports, the prodigious applications of steam and electricity and all the great enterprises that develop the power and the pride of man, they have no part, no part at all, except that of inert instruments. ”

“ For instance, if all the children of the lower classes acquire the taste and the need for reading, if their education has been vital and effective enough to bring about this result, it is impossible that this universal need will not in the end insure to the workers some hours of leisure for the pleasures of the mind, by a more economical regulation of the work. ”

“ And if you look at the lower grades, what poverty you see, I don't say in the means of life, but in life itself! Look at the millions of labourers; they work in the factories and in the workshops, yet they have no right whatever in those factories and workshops ”

“ It is the name of a small, but very vehement or rather violent sect, which is, moreover, divided against itself: it is not a serious force making for progress. Possibly the solutions which the Socialists propose will be gradually adopted, but their triumph will not be due to the Socialists. ”

“ I was walking the other evening in the country, and talking with a young friend who had just graduated among the first of his class at the École Polytechnique after having done very good work in literature, and who is as broad-minded as he is keen. ”