Kim Jong-il: The "human rights" advertised by the imperialists are privileges of the rich, privileges to do anything on the strength of money. The imperialists do not recognize the right of unemployed people to work, or the right of orphans or people without support to eat and survive, for instance, as human rights. As they do not grant working people elementary rights to existence and as they pursue anti-popular policies and policies of racial and national discrimination and colonialism, the imperialists have no right to speak about human rights. The imperialists are the most heinous enemy of human rights. They violate the people's right to Independence and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries on the pretext of "defending human rights". We will never tolerate any imperialist interference or arbitrariness aimed at infringing upon the sovereignty of our country and nation, which we will staunchly safeguard. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9699
Lenin: The long reign of political reaction in Europe, which has lasted almost uninterruptedly since the days of the Paris Commune, has too greatly accustomed us to the idea that action can proceed only "from below," has too greatly inured us to seeing only defensive struggles. We have now, undoubtedly, entered a new era: a period of political upheavals and revolutions has begun. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9700
Aldous Huxley: There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9701
Kim Jong-il: Progressive ideas can never develop freely in capitalist society, where the means of propaganda and education such as the mass media are in the hands of monopoly capitalists and reactionary rulers. The reactionary bourgeois ruling class tolerates progressive ideas to some extent, to make capitalist society seem democratic; but when they are considered the slightest threat to its ruling system, it mercilessly suppresses them. Outwardly, different thoughts appear to be tolerated in capitalist society, but all kinds of thoughts throughout it are, without exception, none other than various forms and expressions of bourgeois ideology. The "freedom" of ideology talked about by imperialists is a deceptive slogan to dress up under the signpost of "freedom" their oppression of progressive ideas in capitalist society and their resorting to every method to propagate reactionary bourgeois ideas. It is a deceptive slogan to justify their ideological and cultural infiltration into other countries. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9706
Friedrich Engels: ... some propose mere welfare measures - while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9707
György Lukács: The struggle for the revolution, the exploitation of objective opportunities in the world situation, and the internal struggle for the maturity of its own revolutionary class-consciousness are inseparable elements of one and the same dialectical process. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9708
Stalin: There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the collective. There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective. Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. Socialist society alone can most fully satisfy these personal interests. More than that; socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between "individualism" and socialism. But can we deny the contrast between classes, between the propertied class, the capitalist class, and the toiling class, the proletarian class? On the one hand we have the propertied class which owns the banks, the factories, the mines, transport, the plantations in colonies. These people see nothing but their own interests, their striving after profits. They do not submit to the will of the collective; they strive to subordinate every collective to their will. On the other hand we have the class of the poor, the exploited class, which owns neither factories nor works, nor banks, which is compelled to live by selling its labour power to the capitalists which lacks the opportunity to satisfy its most elementary requirements. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9711
Che Guevara: The government of the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetrator of exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against a large part of its own population. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9712
Karl Marx: There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9714
Margot Honecker: The GDR was not a paradise. There were defects that complicated daily life, shortcomings in supply, and deficiencies in everyday political life. There were decisions made at various levels in which the people concerned were not always included. However, compared with the conditions now prevailing in most capitalist countries, it was close to heaven. More and more people who experienced life in the GDR understand that. After 25 years, a generation has now grown up which has no living memory of the GDR, because they're too young. This suits the FRG propaganda: Forget about it. The longer the GDR is history, the thicker the lies that are spread about it. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9720
Lenin: In all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic, the police (like the standing army) is the chief instrument of oppression of the masses, an instrument making for a possible restoration of the monarchy. The police beats up the "common people" in the police stations of New York, Geneva, and Paris; it favours the capitalists either because it is bribed to do so (America and other countries), or because it enjoys wealthy "patronage" and "protection" (Switzerland), or because of a combination of both (France). Separated as it is from the people, forming a professional caste of men trained in the practice of violence upon the poor, men who receive somewhat higher pay and the privileges that go with authority (to say nothing of "gratuities"), the police everywhere, in every republic, however democratic, where the bourgeoisie is in power, always remains the unfailing weapon, the chief support and protection of the bourgeoisie. No important radical reforms in favour of the working masses can be implemented through the police. That is objectively impossible. A people's militia instead of the police force and the standing army is a prerequisite of effective municipal reforms in the interests of the working people. At a time of revolution this prerequisite is practicable. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9722
Margot Honecker: Marxism-Leninism is an ideology, a method of investigation to understand the world, the laws according to which it moves, so you can orient yourself in the world. Some believe in a divine will, others in a predetermined fate. We communists are materialists. We follow a scientific outlook, which assumes that the society and everything that arises in it are the work of human beings. Exploitation and oppression are neither divinely ordained, nor are these evils acceptable. We have to fight for a humane, fair, peaceful world, and today that is more urgent than ever. We must refuse to allow that people perish from war, hunger and disease, and that natural resources and the livelihood of the people be depleted or destroyed by ruthless capitalist exploitation, solely for profit. If humanity is to have a future, the power of the banks and corporations must be broken. They will not give up their power voluntarily. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9724
R. Palme Dutt: The line of Social Democracy, of the promises of the “democratic path to socialism,” of trust in capitalist “democracy” and legality, of the refusal of the united working-class front, of unity with capitalism, leads inevitably to the victory of Fascism and the servitude of the working-class. If the British workers put their faith in the Labour Party as the defence against Fascism, they will suffer as cruel an awakening as the German workers, who put their faith in German Social Democracy. Let the warning be taken in time. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9725
R. Palme Dutt: Such is the completion of the line of Social Democracy. The Social Democratic leadership first betrays the workers to Fascism, and then passes over to Fascism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9726
Russell Jacoby: Dialectical logic is loyal to the contradictions, not by the reasoning of "on the one hand and the other" but by tracing the contradictions to their fractured source. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote18
Bertolt Brecht: Let nothing be called natural in an age of bloody confusion, ordered disorder, planned caprice, and dehumanized humanity, lest all things be held unalterable! https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote20
Stalin: Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx's proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote269
