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[–]hennaojichan 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

But who actually said it? When you try to track down the original it is not so easy. Great pic btw.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

That is an excellent question that applies to more "famous" quotes that we can imagine.

 

" As is often the case, this quote appears to be something Luxemburg could have said or written, but searches for a source have been unsuccessful[1]. While Luxemburg often used metaphors of breaking or shattering chains, this, apparently, is not one of them. "
~ https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg#Misattributed

[1] https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/reference-desk-unanswered-questions/

Among them:

I asked the Marxist Internet Archive as suggested, and quickly received the following reply, which seems to find the quote to be apocryphal:

“The German version of this (alleged) quote is “Wer sich nicht bewegt, spürt seine Fesseln nicht.” It has been attributed to Rosa Luxemburg by many people and she did say some things that have a similar meaning but none of the discussions I’ve read have been able to quote where it came from. While it may appear in one of her letters (most of them aren’t online yet), the earliest definite reference to this statement seems to be a banner on an opposition demonstration in the GDR on 17 January 1989 (i.e. on the 70th anniversary of her murder)!

The confusion may have arisen because the other banner carried by the demonstrators definitely was an abbreviated Luxemburg quote, i.e. “Freiheit ist the Freiheit des Andersdenkenden” (Freedom is the freedom of those who think differently). So I tend to think that the “quotation” is apochryphal – but I’m not going to search through the 6 volumes of her correspondence looking for it – particularly as many others have done so already without success: a recent discussion can be found (in German) in item 3 of this Wikipedia discussion archive: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Marxismus/Caf%C3%A9/Archiv/2012