Karl Marx. Not the slightest. The book will live, regardless of the fate of the author.
Frau Holthoff. You do not seem very sanguine of immediate success of the workingmen's party!
Karl Marx. We will succeed when the ditches are even full of our dead—then progress can pass.
Frau Holthoff. And that time has not come?
Karl Marx. I hope we are great enough not to deceive ourselves. We work for truth: whether this truth will be accepted by the many this year, or next, or the next century, we can not say, but that should not deter us from our best endeavors.
Helene Von Donniges. [Golden-haired, enthusiastic, needlessly pink and gorgeously twenty] Men fight for a thing and lose, and the men they fought fight for the same thing under another name, and win! [All turn and listen] Life is in the fight, not the achievement. Oh, I think it would be glorious to suffer, to be misunderstood, and fail; and yet know in our hearts that we were right—absolutely right—and that the wisdom of the ages will endorse our acts and on the tombs of some of us carve the word "Savior"!
Karl Marx. Grand, magnificent! That sounds just like Lassalle.
Helene. There; that is the third time I have been told I talk just like Lassalle—a person I have never seen.
Doctor Haenle. Then you have something to live for.
Helene. Perhaps, but I echo no man. When one speaks from one's heart it is not complimentary to have people suavely smile and say, "Goethe," "Voltaire," "Shakespeare," "Rousseau," "Lassalle"!