George Bernard Shaw: We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment … A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people's time to look after them. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
George Bernard Shaw: The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it … If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in modern populations? wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas R. Malthus: Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice. ... This natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas R. Malthus: No state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of) ... that no check whatever has existed to early marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas R. Malthus: The redundant population, necessarily occasioned by the prevalence of early marriages, must be repressed by occasional famines, and by the custom of exposing children, which, in times of distress, is probably more frequent than is ever acknowledged to Europeans. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas R. Malthus: But as from the laws of our nature some check to population must exist, it is better that it should be checked from a foresight of the difficulties attending a family and the fear of dependent poverty than that it should be encouraged, only to be repressed afterwards by want and sickness. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Kim Jong-il: The basic requirement of socialist collectivism is for people to give prominence to the interests of the state and society and pursue their own interests within those of the state and society. Socialist collectivism is against the pursuance of only individual interests at the expense of those of the state and society, yet not against the interests of individuals. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Theodore Roosevelt: The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Malcolm X: I don’t believe in any form of unjustified extremism. But I believe that when a man is exercising extremism, a human being is exercising extremism, in defense of liberty for human beings, it’s no vice. And when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings, I say he’s a sinner. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The class-conscious workers will always combat the various concepts of parties that stand above classes, against every attempt to gloss over the gulf between the class of wage-workers and the class of the petty proprietors. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The attempts or efforts to include different classes in "one party" have always been characteristic of bourgeois democracy at the time when it had to look for its main enemy in the past, not in the future-when it saw its enemy in the feudal lords, not in the proletariat. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gramsci: War is war, and he who embarks on that adventure must feel the full force of the beast that he has awoken. All that the worker has created through his sacrifice, everything which generations of the working class have slowly and through much difficulty, created through blood and tears, should be respected as sacred. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
George Santayana: To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: The degree of exploitation of labour, the appropriation of surplus-labour and surplus-value, is raised notably by lengthening the working-day and intensifying labour. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: The mass of surplus-value produced by a capital of a given magnitude is the product of two factors — the rate of surplus-value multiplied by the number of labourers employed at this rate. At a given rate of surplus-value it therefore depends on the number of labourers, and it depends on the rate of surplus-value when the number of labourers is given. Generally, therefore, it depends on the composite ratio of the absolute magnitudes of the variable capital and the rate of surplus-value. Now we have seen that, on the average, the same factors which raise the rate of relative surplus-value lower the mass of the employed labour-power. It is evident, however, that this will occur to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the definite proportion in which this conflicting movement obtains, and that the tendency towards a reduction in the rate of profit is notably weakened by a rise in the rate of absolute surplus-value, which originates with the lengthening of the working-day. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Rabindranath Tagore: The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Rosa Luxemburg: The fundamental idea consists of the affirmation that capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Rosa Luxemburg: The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order. And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Hugo Chávez: Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can't be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can't be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: People cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. "Liberation" is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture... wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle... political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed... an aggregate mean, a common resultant... each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Joe Biden: I was suggesting we bomb Belgrade. I was suggesting we send American pilots in and blow up all the bridges on the Drina. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
George Carlin: Don't just teach your children to read... Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
George Carlin: Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ferdinand Magellan: The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Albert Einstein: Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future. Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
John T. Flynn: The line between fascism and Fabian socialism is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
