Howard Zinn: If you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday then any leader can tell you anything. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Albert Einstein: By the way, there are increasing signs that the Russian trials are not faked, but that there is a plot among those who look upon Stalin as a stupid reactionary who has betrayed the ideas of the revolution. Though we find it difficult to imagine this kind of internal thing, those who know Russia best are all more or less of the same opinion. I was firmly convinced to begin with that it was a case of a dictator's despotic acts, based on lies and deception, but this was a delusion. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The state, dear people, is a class concept. The state is an organ or instrument of violence exercised by one class over another. So long as it is an instrument of violence by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, the proletrait can have only one slogan: destruction of the state. But when the state will be a proletarian state, when it will be an instrument of violence exercised by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, we shall be fully and unreservedly in favour of a strong state power and of centralism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Benjamin Franklin: There are two ways to increase your wealth. Increase your means or decrease your wants. The best is to do both at the same time. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lev Sotskov: Had the British, French and their European ally Poland, taken this offer seriously then together we could have put some 300 or more divisions into the field on two fronts against Germany - double the number Hitler had at the time. (...) It was clear that the Soviet Union stood alone and had to turn to Germany and sign a non-aggression pact to gain some time to prepare ourselves for the conflict that was clearly coming. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Oscar Wilde: Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Vladimir Putin: There was a moment when your humble servant simply suggested that maybe we should join NATO? But no, NATO does not need such a country. No. The question is, what else? We thought that we were already our own, excuse me, as our people say, bourgeois. What else? There is no more ideological confrontation, what is the problem? Apparently, the problem is geopolitical interests and an arrogant attitude towards others. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gamal Abdel Nasser: We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand. We shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Against the workers the capitalists of all nations and religions are united, but they strive to divide and weaken the workers by national strife! wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Only scoundrels or simpletons can think that the proletariat must first win a majority in elections carried out under the yoke of the bourgeoisie, under the yoke of wage-slavery, and must then win power. This is the height of stupidity or hypocrisy; it is substituting elections, under the old system and with the old power, for class struggle and revolution. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The proletariat wages its class struggle and does not wait for elections to begin a strike, although for the complete success of a strike it is necessary to have the sympathy of the majority of the working people (and, it follows, of the majority of the population); the proletariat wages its class struggle and overthrows the bourgeoisie without waiting for any preliminary elections (supervised by the bourgeoisie and carried out under its yoke); and the proletariat is perfectly well aware that for the success of its revolution, for the successful overthrow of the bourgeoisie, it is absolutely necessary to have the sympathy of the majority of the working people (and, it follows, of the majority of the population). wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: Money lowers all the gods of mankind and transforms them into a commodity. Money is the universal, self-constituting value of all things. It has therefore robbed the whole world, both the human world and nature, of its own peculiar value. Money is the essence of man’s work and existence, alienated from man, and this alien essence dominates him and he prays to it. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Rousseau: Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Kim Il Sung: Mankind’s cause of independence, the cause of socialism, will surely emerge victorious by overcoming the obstacles and difficulties that lie in the way of its advance. The progress of human history has always passed through fierce struggles against reactionaries. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Luis Corvalan: Marxism can never be destroyed just as no ideology that responds to its era and the fundamental interests of the majority of society can be destroyed. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Santiago Ramón y Cajal: Knowing the conditions under which a phenomenon occurs allows us to reproduce or eliminate it at will, therefore allowing us to control and use it for the benefit of humanity. Foresight and action are the advantages we obtain from a deterministic view of phenomena. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Rivero: Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Rivero: The history of war is the history of powerful individuals willing to sacrifice thousands upon thousands of other people’s lives for personal gains. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Santiago Ramón y Cajal: The unique method of reflection indulged in by the Pythagoreans and followers of Plato (and pursued in modern times by Descartes, Fichte, Krause, Hegel, and more recently at least partly by Bergson) involves exploring one’s own mind or soul to discover universal laws and solutions to the great secrets of life. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Santiago Ramón y Cajal: This history of civilization proves beyond doubt just how sterile the repeated attempts of metaphysics to guess at nature' s laws have been. Instead, there is every reason to believe that when the human intellect ignores reality and concentrates within, it can no longer explain the simplest inner workings of life' s machinery or of the world around us. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
