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/…
Santiago Ramón y Cajal: The intellect is presented with phenomena marching in review before the sensory organs. It can be truly useful and productive only when limiting itself to the modest tasks of observation, description, and comparison, and of classification that is based on analogies and differences. A knowledge of underlying causes and empirical laws will then come slowly through the use of inductive methods. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Winston Churchill: (To Benito Mussolini:) If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ho Chi Minh: Born and brought up in the old society, we all carry within ourselves, to varying extent, traces of that society in our thinking and habits. The worst and most dangerous vestige of the old society is individualism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Victory will belong only to those who have faith in the people, those who are immersed in the life-giving spring of popular creativity. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Fidel Castro: Everything imperialism used to concentrate against the USSR and the socialist camp, it now concentrates against us.... there is a country called Cuba, stuck in the middle of its throat! wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Do you mean to tell me that these men who have just organized the slaughter of seventeen million men in a purposeless war are concerned over the few thousand klIIed in our revolution, which has a conscious aim - to avoid the necessity of future wars? But never mind.. I don't deny the terror, don't minimise the evils of revolution. They occur, They must be counted on. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Throughout the civilized world, the teachings of Marx evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science... And no other attitude is to be expected, for there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Kim Jong-il: Our Republic is a genuine people’s country, a people-centered socialist State that upholds the masses of the people as the masters of the State and society, and serves them. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Muammar Gaddafi: Many say that communism has failed, there is an image of communism, but no one has seen it. You and I did not manage to meet him, but he still remains a matter of the future, in order to continue moving towards him, we had to retreat. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Deng Xiaoping: Their talk about human rights, freedom and democracy is only designed to safeguard the interests of the strong, rich countries, which take advantage of their strength to bully weak countries, and which pursue hegemony and practice power politics. We never listen to such stuff... Even in the past when we were quite weak, we ignored them. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
The German communist urban guerrilla group known as the Red Army Faction (RAF) kidnapped the German businessman Hanns Martin Schleyer on this day in 1977. But did you know that Schleyer was a former SS officer? A fact often ignored in the historical narrative. Schleyer’s aggressive anti-communist views, his history with the Nazi Party, and later his position as a prominent member of the right-wing Christian Democratic Union made him one of the main enemies of the 1968 student movement and a target for the RAF’s kidnapping operation. The RAF used Schleyer to blackmail the West German government into releasing imprisoned RAF members, including two of its founders, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. After all the imprisoned members were found dead in their jail cells, Schleyer was killed by the RAF. Early in his life, Schleyer became an enthusiastic Nazi follower and quickly rose in the ranks of the Nazi Party. After being held as a prisoner of war following the defeat of Nazi Germany, Schleyer was released in 1948 and became one of the most influential German businessmen. He was simultaneously president of the Confederation of German Employers’ Association and the Federation of German Industries. The RAF was a West German communist, anti-imperialist urban guerrilla group that emerged from the 1968 student movement. It was founded in 1970 and remained active until 1998. Due to the RAF’s numerous activities against the West German state and its NATO allies, it became one of the leading communist urban guerrilla groups in Europe. The infamous picture of Schleyer being held by the RAF, taken 20 days into his capture, has since become one of the most iconic pictures of the 20th century. (@redstreamnet) wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Kim Jong-il: The US imperialists are most fearful of the single-hearted unity of our entire army and the people behind the great Party, and resort to every conceivable scheme to break it. While persisting with their aggressive military maneuvers, the US imperialists and their acolytes try to slander us under the signboard of “human rights” and “democracy,” but this is wild dream. The “defence of human rights” and “democracy” the imperialist reactionaries advocate are nothing other than sophistry to hide their intervention in and hegemonic moves towards other countries. It is preposterous to slander our Republic, which is the motherland of the people, and our society that is united single-heartedly, with such far-fetched sophistry. It only serves to trigger the unanimous indignation of our people, and can never be tolerated. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Mikhail Kilev: No one doubted his absolute devotion to the revolution, socialism and the interests of the working class. His principles were unshakable and his person incorruptible. He had a capable and incisive intelligence, capable of analyzing complex situations and plotting courses of action accurately clear and thorough. He was decisive, calm and firm even under great stress. He had an unrivaled talent for organization. He had a great ability to undergo a high pace of work. His lifestyle, his way of acting at work and in dealing with others he denotes great modesty and simplicity. It was the combination of these characteristics and the undeniable achievements of the Soviet Union under his leadership that gave Stalin towering authority and earned him the respect of his comrades, of the people in general and also of many of his enemies. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: We professional revolutionaries must and will make it our business to engage in this kind of 'pushing on' a hundred times more forcibly than we have done hitherto. But the very fact that you select so hideous a phrase as 'pushing on from outside' ... proves you to be demagogues, and demagogues are the worst enemies of the working class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: Some comrades say that it is not advisable to speak openly of mistakes, since the open admission of mistakes may be construed by our enemies as weakness. This is rubbish. Open recognition of our mistakes and their honest rectification can only strengthen our Party. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Julius Fučík: In the face of adversity, the strength of the human spirit shines brightest. It is in the darkest of times that we must hold on to hope and fight for a better world. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
