Edward Gibbon: But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2811
Karl Marx: If the free-traders cannot understand how one nation can grow rich at the expense of another, we need not wonder, since these same gentlemen also refuse to understand how within one country one class can enrich itself at the expense of another. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2813
Karl Marx: This must be admitted : when capital remains stationary, commerce and manufacture are not merely stationary but decline, and in this case the workman is the first victim. He goes to the wall before the capitalist. And in the case of the growth of capital, under the circumstances, which, as we have said, are the best for the workingman, what will be his lot? He will go to the wall just the same. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2814
Friedrich Engels: The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system. Indirectly, however, it interests us inasmuch as we must desire as the present system of production to develop and expand as freely and as quickly as possible: because along with it will develop also those economic phenomena which are its necessary consequences, and which must destroy the whole system: misery of the great mass of the people, in consequence of overproduction. This overproduction engendering either periodical gluts and revulsions, accompanied by panic, or else a chronic stagnation of trade; division of society into a small class of large capitalist, and a large one of practically hereditary wage-slaves, proletarians, who, while their numbers increase constantly, are at the same time constantly being superseded by new labor-saving machinery; in short, society brought to a deadlock, out of which there is no escaping but by a complete remodeling of the economic structure which forms it basis. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2815
Friedrich Engels: If a country nowadays accepts Free Trade, it will certainly not do so to please the socialists. It will do so because Free trade has become a necessity for the industrial capitalists. But if it should reject Free Trade and stick to Protection, in order to cheat the socialists out of the expected social catastrophe, that will not hurt the prospects of socialism in the least. Protection is a plan for artificially manufacturing manufacturers, and therefore also a plan for artificially manufacturing wage laborers. You cannot breed the one without breeding the other. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2816
Che Guevara: A cadre is an individual who has attained sufficient political development to be able to interpret orders emanating from the central (Party) power, making these orders his own and conveying them to the masses. At the same time, the cadre should become aware of the masses’ needs and desires and their most intimate motivations. A cadre is an individual who possesses ideological and administrative discipline, who knows and practices democratic centralism. He knows how to evaluate existing contradictions. The cadre knows how to practice the principle of collective discussion and decision making. His loyalty has been tested. His physical and moral courage have matured with his ideological development. He is always willing to engage in discussion on any matter and to respond to the extent of giving his life for the Revolution. Also, he is an individual capable of analyzing by himself, which enables him to make decisions and to exercise creative initiative without conflicting with discipline. The cadre is a creative leader, a technician with a good political understanding who can reason dialectically, carrying forward his sector of production or developing the masses politically from his post of leadership. This exemplary human being, surrounded by virtues which are difficult to achieve, is present among the people of Cuba. We find him daily. It is essential to use all the opportunities available to develop him to the fullest—educating him and obtaining from him the greatest benefit for the nation. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2817
Rosa Luxemburg: The victory of socialism will not descend from heaven. It can only be won by a long chain of violent tests of strength between the old and the new powers. The international proletariat...will thereby learn to try to take its history into its own hands; instead of remaining a will-less football, it will take the tiller of social life and become the pilot to the goal of its own history. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2818
Ulrike Meinhof: The demand for equal rights no longer puts into question the social conditions of inequality that exist between people. On the contrary, it merely wants inequality to be applied systematically. It demands equality within inequality: equality of the female worker with the male worker, of the female clerk with the male clerk, of the female civil servant with the male civil servant, of the female editor with the male editor, of the female member of parliament with the male member of parliament, of the businesswoman with the businessman. Such demands for equal rights are the focus of every women’s union congress and every conference of businesswomen because so far equal rights only exist in law, not in practice. It seems that an unjust world is still having problems justly distributing its injustices. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2819
Karl Marx: The civilization and justice of bourgeois order comes out in its lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against their masters. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2820
Kwame Nkrumah: Neo-colonialism is based upon the principle of breaking up former large united colonial territories into a number of small non-viable States which are incapable of independent development and must rely upon the former imperial power for defense and even internal security. Their economic and financial systems are linked, as in colonial days, with those of the former colonial ruler. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2821
Marcelino Dos Santo: The Destruction of the socialist states in eastern Europe was a defeat for the socialist movement- and the fact that Mozambique is no longer a socialist country; and that Angola has also moved away from state socialism. But that doesn't mean that future generations will not take to socialism... patience! Now it seems a fatal situation but humanity is always in revolution... slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism - history is in motion. Do people think that now we have reached the stage where history has stopped? Be patient, I say. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2824
Karl Marx: But the battle must break out again and again in ever-growing dimensions, and there can be no doubt as to who will be the victor in the end – the appropriating few, or the immense working majority. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2825
Ho Chi Minh: The Vietnamese people fully support the Palestinian people’s liberation movement and the struggle of the Arab peoples for the liberation of territories occupied by Israeli forces. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2827
Joe Hill: There is pow'r, there is pow'r In a band of workingmen. When they stand hand in hand, That's a pow'r, that's a pow'r That must rule in every land - One Industrial Union Grand. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2830
Joe Hill: Workingmen of all countries, unite, Side by side we for freedom will fight: When the world and its wealth we have gained To the grafters we'll sing this refrain: You will eat, bye and bye, When you've learned how to cook and to fry Chop some wood, 'twill do you good, And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2832
Lenin: As I have had occasion to point out more than once…the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only the use of force against the exploiters, and not even mainly the use of force. The economic foundation of this use of revolutionary force, the guarantee of its effectiveness and success is the fact that the proletariat represents and creates a higher type of social organization of labor compared with capitalism. This is what is important, this is the source of the strength and the guarantee that the final triumph of communism is inevitable. The feudal organization of social labor rested on the discipline of the bludgeon, while the working people, robbed and tyrannized by a handful of landowners, were utterly ignorant and downtrodden. The capitalist organization of social labor rested on the discipline of hunger, and, not-withstanding all the progress of bourgeois culture and bourgeois democracy, the vast mass of the working people in the most advanced, civilized and democratic republics remained an ignorant and downtrodden mass of wage-slaves or oppressed peasants, robbed and tyrannized by a handful of capitalists. The communist organization of social labor, the first step towards which is socialism, rests, and will do so more and more as time goes on, on the free and conscious discipline of the working people themselves who have thrown off the yoke both of the landowners and capitalists. This new discipline does not drop from the skies, nor is it born from pious wishes; it grows out of the material conditions of large-scale capitalist production, and out of them alone. Without them it is impossible. And the repository, or the vehicle, of these material conditions is a definite historical class, created, organized, united, trained, educated and hardened by large-scale capitalism. This class is the proletariat. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2834
Mao Zedong: When the US first established a republic it was hated by all the crowned heads of Europe. That showed that Americans were then revolutionaries. Now the Americans need to struggle for liberation from their own monopoly Capitalists. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2835
George Orwell: The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2837
Mao Zedong: If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit". https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2838
Ronald Reagan: When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2839
Karl Marx: The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2844
Stephen King: Book-banners, after all, insist that the entire community should see things their way, and only their way. When a book is banned, a whole set of thoughts is locked behind the assertion that there is only one valid set of values, one valid set of beliefs, one valid perception of the world. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote2845
