# Quote — Emile Zola, Germinal

> They spoke one after the other in a despairing voice, giving expression to their complaints. The workers could not hold out; the Revolution had only aggravated their wretchedness; only the bourgeois had grown fat since '89, so greedily that they had not even left the bottom of the plates to lick. Who could say that the workers had had their reasonable share in the extraordinary increase of wealth and comfort during the last hundred years? They had made fun of them by declaring them free. Yes, free to starve, a freedom of which they fully availed themselves. It put no bread into your cupboard to go and vote for fine fellows who went away and enjoyed themselves, thinking no more of the wretched voters than of their old boots. No! one way or another it would have to come to an end, either quietly by laws, by an understanding in good fellowship, or like savages by burning everything and devouring one another. Even if they never saw it, their children would certainly see it, for the century could not come to an end without another revolution, that of the workers this time, a general hustling which would cleanse society from top to bottom, and rebuild it with more cleanliness and justice.

- Author: [Emile Zola](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola.md)
- Book: [Germinal](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Zola#Germinal_(1885)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/they-spoke-one

## More from this book

> Yes, that is your idea, all of you French workmen; you want to unearth a treasure in order to devour it alone afterwards in some lazy, selfish corner. You may cry out as much as you like against the rich, you haven't got courage enough to give back to the poor the money that luck brings you. You will never be worthy of happiness as long as you own anything, and your hatred of the bourgeois proceeds solely from an angry desire to be bourgeois yourselves in their place.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/yes-that-is-your.md)

> There were men so ambitious that they would wipe the masters' behinds to hear them say thank you.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/there-were-men.md)

> "Bread! is that enough, idiots!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/bread-is-that.md)