the freedom of man and of nations — could never have been the origin of two world wars. These latter were brought about by fate, which exercises its power owing to the weakness and decline of freedom and of the creative spirit of man. Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.
Source: Political Testament (1949), p. 32
“We see now that infringement of freedom is necessary with regard to the opponents of the revolution. At a time of revolution we cannot allow freedom for the enemies of the people and of the revolution. That is a surely clear, irrefutable conclusion.”
Programme of the World Revolution (1918), Ch. VII http://marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1918/worldrev/ch07.html
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Nikolai Bukharin 18
Soviet politician 1888–1938Related quotes
2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)
Robert F. Kennedy, in a speech in the US Senate (9 May 1966)
Misattributed
Speech in the United States Senate (9 May 1966)
“The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913.”
Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 35
Refering to the French Revolution
1850s, Third Annual Message to Congress (1852)
Context: In less than ten years her Government was changed from a republic to an empire, and finally, after shedding rivers of blood, foreign powers restored her exiled dynasty and exhausted Europe sought peace and repose in the unquestioned ascendency of monarchical principles. Let us learn wisdom from her example. Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our Revolution. They existed before. They were planted in the free charters of self-government under which the English colonies grew up, and our Revolution only freed us from the dominion of a foreign power whose government was at variance with those institutions. But European nations have had no such training for self-government, and every effort to establish it by bloody revolutions has been, and must, without that preparation, continue to be a failure. Liberty, unregulated by law, degenerates into anarchy, which soon becomes the most horrid of all despotisms. Our policy is wisely to govern ourselves, and thereby to set such an example of national justice, prosperity, and true glory, as shall teach to all nations the blessings of self-government, and the unparalleled enterprise and success of a free people.
Speech to Conservative Party Conference (13 October 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107789
Third term as Prime Minister
April 18, 1934. Attributed by Winston Churchill in Vol. 1 of The Second World War. (1948)
Disputed