Stephen Hawking: We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Paulo Freire: True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Paulo Freire: True generosity lies in striving so that these hands—whether of individuals or entire peoples—need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Friedrich Engels: The state, therefore, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies which have managed without it, which had no notion of the state or state power. At a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Chinua Achebe: The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gore Vidal: Now we have a totalitarian government. And the totalitarian government wants to watch everybody, total surveillance of everyone. They listen to the telephone conversations, they look at your credit cards, they look where you travel. We are totally policed. This is contrary to everything in our Constitution. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gore Vidal: The founding fathers were not interested in democracy, in fact, in a country with 3 1/4 million people, which is about what we were at the time of the separation from England, only 700, 000 people could vote-white males of property. So it's never been terribly democratic. ...and they put together a constitution which would protect property for all time. No nonsense about democracy! wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gore Vidal: I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gore Vidal: The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Frank Snepp: I am, as an ex-CIA agent, opposed to the disinformation activities in which I was involved. I admit that I was involved, and I think it served no useful purpose. Propagandizing the American public or Congress is not the CIA's job. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: Proletarian parties develop and become strong by purging themselves of opportunists and reformists, social-imperialists and social-chauvinists, social-patriots and social-pacifists. The Party becomes strong by purging itself of opportunist elements. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
António Agostinho da Silva Neto: Our contribution has to be given not only for the liquidation of the colonial system but also for the liquidation of ignorance, disease and primitive forms of social organization. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Curtis LeMay: We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.... Over a period of three years or so, we killed off - what - twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure? wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Curtis LeMay: There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Eugene V. Debs: The working classes are beginning to ask why they who build the houses are in the cold, why they must walk weary and shelterless in the shadow of palaces they have built, but cannot enter. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Leo Amery: On the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane… I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: From the point of view of Marxism, that is, of modern scientific socialism, the main issue in any discussion by socialists on how to assess the war and what attitude to adopt towards it is this: what is the war being waged for, and what classes staged and directed it. We Marxists do not belong to that category of people who are unqualified opponents of all war. We say: our aim is to achieve a socialist system of society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war. But in the war to win that socialist system of society we are bound to encounter conditions under which the class struggle within each given nation may come up against a war between the different nations, a war conditioned by this very class struggle. Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility of revolutionary wars, i.e., wars arising from the class struggle, wars waged by revolutionary classes, wars which are of direct and immediate revolutionary significance. Still less can we rule this out when we remember that though the history of European revolutions during the last century, in the course of 125–135 years, say, gave us wars which were mostly reactionary, it also gave us revolutionary wars, such as the war of the French revolutionary masses against a united monarchist, backward, feudal and semi-feudal Europe. No deception of the masses is more widespread today in Western Europe, and latterly here in Russia, too, than that which is practised by citing the example of revolutionary wars. There are wars and wars. We must be clear as to what historical conditions have given rise to the war, what classes are waging it, and for what ends. Unless we grasp this, all our talk about the war will necessarily be utterly futile, engendering more heat than light. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Abraham Lincoln: Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: It would be foolish to assume that the international capital will leave us alone. No, comrades, that is not true. Classes exist, international capital exists, and it cannot look calmly at the development of a country under construction socialism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Mao Zedong: Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice and from it alone. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Che Guevara: One must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice & truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism, or an isolation from the masses. We must strive everyday so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Marxism has provided the guidance — i.e., the theory of the class struggle — for the discovery of the laws governing this seeming maze and chaos. It is only a study of the sum of the strivings of all the members of a given society or group of societies that can lead to a scientific definition of the result of those strivings. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
