Lenin: Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations - all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich - that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" - supposedly petty - details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for "paupers"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., - we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Modern monopolist capitalism on a world-wide scale - imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Experience has proved that, on certain very important questions of the proletarian revolution, all countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Alexis de Tocqueville: When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas Jefferson: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be... The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas Jefferson: Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Voltaire: So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Daniel Webster: Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Albert Einstein: The World is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas Jefferson: Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
General Douglas MacArthur: One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Harry Truman: When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Abraham Lincoln: We the People are the rightful masters of both congress and the courts -- not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Abraham Lincoln: I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Abraham Lincoln: I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
General Douglas MacArthur: Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Indeed it is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
General Smedley Butler: I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.... I could have given Al Capone a few hints... I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys.... I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers.... I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Frederick Douglass: Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Imagine walking along the beach at night and then you see a girl lying on the shore, looking at the leisurely splashing of the waves, with a dreamy look.
