Ho Chi Minh: Individualism is deceitful and insidious; it treacherously pulls one down. And it is always easier to go down than up. This makes individualism especially dangerous. In order to uproot the survivals of the past and foster in ourselves the moral qualities of a true revolutionary we must study, educate ourselves, transform ourselves in order to move on indefatigably. If one does not strive to make progress one will inevitably stop and fall behind. And if one stops and falls behind, the developing society will cast them aside. If one possesses the moral qualities of a revolutionary, they will not become frightened, lose their head or retreat before difficulties and defeats. One will, without hesitation, sacrifice their personal interests for the sake of the common interests of the party, the revolution, the working class, the nation and the whole of humanity. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3467
John F. Kennedy: So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3468
Rose Pastor Stokes: We workers are invited, by every subtle blandishment, to join with our capitalist Governments in a war of extermination against our fellow workers of Russia. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3470
Rose Pastor Stokes: We may not do the shooting ourselves, but we are no less guilty if their freedom is lost through the guns we make. Longshoremen load the guns on ships, railroad men bring them to the piers, sailors, workers too; carry them over seas, and soldiers, (also workers) receive them and use them to shoot down Bolshevist workers, (but what workers!) fighting in the front trenches of the world in the cause of the Social Revolution that will set the world's workers free! https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3471
Rose Pastor Stokes: Industry, agriculture, yes. Bread, security, yes. But Roses, Roses, yes, a thousand times yes! Are we workers hungry for joy and beauty for art and culture? Today, Russia answers for us until the day when we shall answer for ourselves. The worker, starved through the centuries amidst the very plenty he created, is satisfying his hunger at last--in Russia. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3472
Rose Pastor Stokes: The king and queen of Belgium visited the United States. There is a great stir of interest in the ranks of the exploiters. The Opera House here makes a gala night of their visit to that temple of music. The Workers take control of Russia. Their Opera becomes the Soviet Opera. There is a great stir among the common folk. The workers fill the Opera House. It is a gala night. Just as it is natural for Capitalist America to give a special performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in honor of the king and queen--charging incredible prices for seats; so it is natural for Soviet Russia to give Opera daily for the Russian worker--where he is entitled to a seat by virtue of his useful labor. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3473
Gramsci: In short, "democracy" organized fascism when it felt it could no longer resist the pressure of the working class in conditions even of only formal freedom. Fascism, by shattering the working class, has restored to "democracy" the possibility of existing. In the intentions of the bourgeoisie, the division of labour should operate perfectly: the alternation of fascism and democracy should serve to exclude for ever any possibility of working-class resurgence. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3474
Theodore Draper: We have, in truth, resorted to power (in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam) because our politics has failed. Since no politician can afford to admit this, we must pretend that we are resorting to power in order to make our politics succeed. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3477
Ralph Ellison: Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3478
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin: "Power to the people" does not mean a government or political party to rule in their name, but social and political power in the hands of the people themselves. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3479
Benjamin I. Page: When citizens are relatively equal, politics has tended to be fairly democratic. When a few individuals hold enormous amounts of wealth, democracy suffers. The reason for this pattern is simple. Through campaign contributions, lobbying, influence over public discourse, and other means, wealth can be translated into political power. When wealth is highly concentrated—that is, when a few individuals have enormous amounts of money—political power tends to be highly concentrated, too. The wealthy few tend to rule. Average citizens lose political power. Democracy declines. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3483
Benjamin I. Page: Average Americans have little or no influence over the making of U.S. government policy. ... Wealthy Americans wield a lot of influence. By investing money in politics, they can turn economic power into political power. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3484
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3485
Naomi Shihab Nye: It’s mysterious how these power structures unfold, isn’t it, and how we’re willing to accept them and allow them to prevail without questioning them. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3486
Donald Sutherland: Power. That's what this is about? Yes? Power and the forces that are manipulated by the powerful men and bureaucracies trying to maintain control and possession of that power? Power perpetrates war and oppression to maintain itself until it finally topples over with the bureaucratic weight of itself and sinks into the pages of history (except in Texas), leaving lessons that need to be learned unlearned. Power corrupts, and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny. Clinton, Chirac, Mao, Mitterrand. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3488
Nikola Tesla: To create and to annihilate material substance, cause it to aggregate in forms according to his desire, would be the supreme manifestation of the power of Man's mind, his most complete triumph over the physical world, his crowning achievement, which would place him beside his Creator, make him fulfill his Ultimate Destiny. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3490
Franklin D. Roosevelt: They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people's Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3495
Thomas Woodrow Wilson: When I resist, therefore, when I as a Democrat resist the concentration of power, I am resisting the processes of death, because the concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human initiative, and, therefore of human energy. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3496
Stalin: When the direct incursion of foreign troops may give rise to protests and conflicts, imperialist intervention assumes more flexible and more camouflaged forms. In the conditions prevailing today, imperialism prefers to intervene in a dependent country by organizing civil war there, by financing counter-revolutionary forces against the revolution, by giving moral and financial support to its agents. The imperialists were inclined to depict the struggle of Denikin and Kolchak, Yudenich and Wrangel against the revolution in Russia as an exclusively internal struggle. But we all know—and not only we, but the whole world—that behind these counter-revolutionary Russian generals stood the imperialists of Britain and America, France and Japan, without whose support a serious civil war in Russia would have been quite impossible. The same must be said of China. The struggle of Wu Pei-fu, Sun Chuan-fang, Chang Tsolin and Chang Tsung-chang against the revolution in China would be simply impossible if these counterrevolutionary generals were not instigated by the imperialists of all countries, if the latter did not supply them with money, arms, instructors, “advisers,” etc... Wherein lies the strength of the counter-revolutionary generals in China? In the fact that they are backed by the imperialists of all countries, by the owners of all the railways, concessions, mills and factories, banks and commercial houses in China. ... Intervention through the hands of others—that is where the root of imperialist intervention now lies. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3498
Bible: So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3499
Sir Anthony Hopkins: We live in a world where funerals are more important than the deceased, marriage is more important than love, looks are more important than the soul. We live in a packaging culture that despises content. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3501
