
“We cannot improve the world if we are conformed to the world.”
1860s, Reply to Charles Kingsley (1860)
“We cannot improve the world if we are conformed to the world.”
“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”
Part 1, chapter 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=eWU4AAAAYAAJ&q=%22there+is+only+one+enduring+happiness+in+life+to+live+for+others%22&pg=PA22#v=onepage
Family Happiness (1859)
Variant: There is only one enduring happiness in life— to live for others.
Quoted in "Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E. Stevenson" (1952), Random House. Republished in the New York Times, "Books of the Times", by Charles Poore, April 20, 1953, p. 23
Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)
“As to conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that.”
“The life of a revolutionary would be quite impossible without a certain amount of "fatalism."”
Foreword (1929) http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/foreword.htm
My Life (1930)