Theodor Herzl

“ I shall content myself with putting the following questions to the Jews: Is it true that, in countries where we live in perceptible numbers, the position of Jewish lawyers, doctors, men of science, teachers, and officials of all descriptions, becomes daily more intolerable? True, that the Jewish middle classes are seriously threatened? True, that the passions of the mob are incited against our wealthy representatives? True, that our poor endure greater sufferings than any other proletariat? ”

“ But we must first bring enlightenment to men's minds. The idea must make its way into the most distant, miserable holes where our people dwell. They will awaken from gloomy brooding, for into their lives will come a new significance. If every man thinks only of himself, what vast proportions the movements will assume!
And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause!
Therefore I believe that a wonderous generation of Jews will spring into existence. ”

“ Labor without enterprise is the stationary labor of ancient days; and typical of it is the work of the husbandman, who stands now just where his progenitors stood a thousand years ago. All our material welfare has been brought about by men of enterprise. I feel almost ashamed of writing down so trite a remark. Even if we were a nation of promoters—such as absurdly exaggerated accounts make us out to be—we should not require another nation to live on. We do not depend only on the circulation of old commodities, because we produce new ones. ”

“ In vain are we loyal patriots, our loyalty in some places running to extremes; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to increase the fame of our native land in science and art, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In countries where we have lived for centuries we are still cried down as strangers, and often by those whose ancestors were not yet domiciled in the land where Jews had already made experience of suffering. The majority may decide which are the strangers ”

“ Only the most rudimentary scheme of organization was established in 1897, yet it called forth so much enthusiasm that it has been twice revised in accordance with the growing needs of a movement that actually circles the globe, an organization which is at once centripetal and centrifugal, and yet has in each country to correspond with the social customs of the people and keep within the laws that restrict international and even national organization in Eastern Europe. Here alone is a task for a generation, and room for the brains of the most able organizers. ”

“ This century has given the world a wonderful renaissance by means of its technical acquisitions; but at the same time its miraculous improvements have not been employed in the service of humanity. Distance has ceased to be an obstacle, yet we complain of insufficient space. Our great steamships carry us swiftly and surely over hitherto unvisited seas. Our railways carry us safely into a mountain-world heretofore tremblingly scaled on foot. Events occurring in countries undiscovered when Europe confined the Jews in Ghettos, are known to us in the course of an hour. ”

“ The thousand facets of a national movement have sent rays of light, of hope, and of a new sense of security into the lives of an erstwhile broken and dispirited people. In eight short years helpless masses have been so well taught how human effort can accomplish great things that they have rejected the possibilities of immediate aid in favor of the task of striving for independent life. ”

“ I think a democratic monarchy and an aristocratic republic are the two most superior forms of a State, because in them the form of State and the principle of government are opposed to one another, and thus preserve a true balance of power. I am a staunch supporter of monarchical institutions, because these allow of a consistent policy, and represent the interests of a historically famous family born and educated to rule, whose desires are bound up with the preservation of the State. ”

“ The Jews wish to have a State, and they shall have one.
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own home.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. ”

“ The world is provoked by our prosperity, because it has for many centuries been accustomed to consider us as the most contemptible among the poverty-stricken. It forgets, in its ignorance and narrowness of heart, that prosperity weakens our Judaism and extinguishes our peculiarities. It is only pressure that forces us back to the parent stem; it is only hatred encompassing us that makes us strangers once more. ”

“ For we had, curiously enough, developed while in the Ghetto into a bourgeois people, and we stepped out of it only to enter into fierce competition with the middle classes. Hence, our emancipation set us suddenly within this middle-class circle, where we have a double pressure to sustain, from within and from without. The Christian bourgeoisie would not be unwilling to cast us as a sacrifice to Socialism, though that would not greatly improve matters. At the same time, the equal rights of Jews before the law cannot be withdrawn where they have once been conceded. ”

“ Innumerable objections will be based on low grounds, for there are more low men than noble in this world. I have tried to remove some of these narrow-minded notions; and whoever is willing to fall in behind our white flag with its seven golden stars must assist in this campaign of enlightenment. Perhaps we shall have to fight first of all against many an evil-disposed, narrow-hearted, short-sighted member of our own race. ”

“ The living element in a people has forced an old thought upon a new world; and such an element, ever young in its hopes and effort, will continue to force it upon the consciousness of an ever new world, until one generation shall witness the triumph of this idea. Theodor Herzl revived and reorganized the Jewish people. This is his achievement and the message of his book. It caught its echoes from the ages that preceded its writing, and it will ring on into new born days in an ever-accumulating volume of sound; the message is—the union of Israel and Zion. ”

“ We possess slaves of extraordinary strength for work, whose appearance in the world has been fatal to the production of hand-made goods: these slaves are the machines. It is true that workmen are required to set machinery in motion; but for this we have men in plenty, in superabundance. Only those who are ignorant of the condition of Jews in many countries of Eastern Europe would venture to assert that Jews are either unfit or unwilling to perform manual labor. ”

“ The self-volition of the movement checked the assimilative thought and revived the Jewish brotherhood idea; the "bent back" of the Jew grew straight in the presence of the Jewish flag; a new poetry and a new prosody, deep with the feelings that stir a people, have arisen; a school of young artists have given themselves over to the creation of a Jewish art; others have planned an international Jewish university; a cultural movement—combated for the time being by the more orthodox—has spread so strongly as sometimes to shake the main movement from its true centre ”

“ We have not the slightest intention of organizing trade artificially, and we should certainly not attempt to do it in a day. But, though the organization of it may be impossible, the promotion of it is not. And how is commerce to be encouraged? Through the medium of a demand. The demand recognized, the medium created, commerce will establish itself.
If there is a real and earnest demand among Jews for an improvement of their status; if the medium to be created—the Jewish Company—is sufficiently powerful, then commerce will extend itself copiously in the new country. ”

“ An infirmary is one of the crudest charities which our stupid good-nature ever invented. There our old people die out of pure shame and mortification. There they are already buried. But we will leave to those even who stand on the lowest grade of intelligence the consoling illusion of their utility in the world. ”

“ It is true that the Jewish State is conceived as a peculiarly modern structure on unspecified territory. But a State is formed, not by pieces of land, but rather by a number of men united under sovereign rule.
Man is the human, land the objective, groundwork of a State; the human basis being the more important of the two. One supremacy, for example, which has no objective basis at all is perhaps more respected than any in the world, and this is the supremacy of the Pope. ”

“ But we shall give a home to our people. And we shall give it, not by dragging them ruthlessly out of their sustaining soil, but rather by transplanting them carefully to a better ground. Though we are creating new political and economic relations, we shall preserve as sacred all that is dear to our people's hearts. ”

“ In any case, our scientific discoverers, who are the true benefactors of humanity, will continue their labors after the commencement of the emigration of the Jews, and they will discover things as marvellous as those we have already seen, or indeed more wonderful even than these.
The word "impossible" has ceased to exist for our men of science. Were a man who lived in the last century to return to the earth, he would find the life of today full of incomprehensible magic. Wherever we moderns appear with our inventions, we transform the desert into a garden. ”

“ The first official violation of Jewish liberties invariably brings about an economic crisis. Therefore no weapons can be effectually used against us, because these cut the hands that wield them. Meantime hatred grows apace. The rich do not feel it much, but our poor do. Let us ask our poor, who have been more severely persecuted since the last renewal of Anti-Semitism than ever before.
Our prosperous men may say that the pressure is not yet severe enough to justify emigration, and that every forcible expulsion shows how unwilling our people are to depart. ”

“ Let us first settle the point of staying where we are. Can we hope for better days, can we possess our souls in patience, can we wait in pious resignation till the princes and peoples of this earth are more mercifully disposed towards us? I say that we cannot hope for a change in the current of feeling. And why not? Were we as near to the hearts of princes as are their other subjects, even so they could not protect us. They would only feed popular hatred of Jews by showing us too much favor. ”

“ For all these centres together form a single, great, long-sought object, which our people has always longed to attain, for which it has kept itself alive, for which it has been kept alive by external pressure—a free home! ”

“ What is the principle of the labor-test.
The principle is: the furnishing of every necessitous man with easy, unskilled work, such as chopping wood, or cutting faggots used for lighting stoves in Paris households. This is a kind of prison-work before the crime, done without loss of character. It is meant to prevent men from taking to crime out of want, by providing them with work and testing their willingness to do it. Starvation must never be allowed to drive men to suicide; for such suicides are the deepest disgrace to a civilization which allows rich men to throw tit-bits to their dogs. ”

“ We ourselves will use and carry on every new attempt in our Jewish State; we shall introduce the seven-hours day as an experiment for the good of humanity; and we shall proceed in everything else in the same humane spirit, making of the new land a land of experiments and a model State.
The undertakings made by the Jews will remain, after their managers' departure, where they originally were founded. And the Jewish spirit of enterprise will not even fail there where people welcome it. For Jewish capitalists will be glad to invest their funds where they are familiar with surrounding conditions. ”

“ Every nation in whose midst Jews live is, either covertly or openly, Anti-Semitic. The common people have not, and indeed cannot have, any historic comprehension. They do not know that the sins of the Middle Ages are now being visited on the nations of Europe. We are what the Ghetto made us. We have doubtless attained preeminence in finance, because mediæval conditions drove us to it. The same process is now being repeated. Modern conditions force us again into finance, now the stock-exchange, by keeping us out of all other branches of industry. ”

“ Where it is not based on limited physiocratic views it is founded on the childish error that commodities pass from hand to hand in continuous rotation. We need not wake from long slumber, like Rip van Winkle, to realize that the world is considerably altered by the production of new commodities. The technical progress made during this wonderful era enables even a man of most limited intelligence to note with his short-sighted eyes the appearance of innumerable new commodities. The spirit of enterprise has created them. ”