Mao Zedong: In order to have a real grasp of Marxism, one must learn it not only from books, but mainly through class struggle, through practical work and close contact with the masses of workers and peasants. When in addition to reading some Marxist books our intellectuals have gained some understanding through close contact with the masses of workers and peasants and through their own practical work, we will all be speaking the same language, not only the common language of patriotism and the common language of the socialist system, but probably even the common language of the communist world outlook. If that happens, all of us will certainly work much better. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3706
Ursula K. Le Guin: The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3709
James Connolly: It is an axiom accepted by all Socialists that the ruling class industrially will always be the ruling class politically, and will also dominate in all other walks of life and fields of thought. That until the epoch of revolution arrives the interests of the class who hold the dominant machinery of production will colour and mould the entire thought and institutions of society at large. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3713
William Montgomery Brown: With our materials, factories, railroads and skill, all should have enough and to spare of every necessity, but so far is this from being the case that millions are insufficiently fed, clothed, housed and warmed, and are doomed to a perpetual and exhaustive drudgery which leaves neither leisure nor energy for the cultivation of their soul life. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3714
Stalin: Can such a radical transformation of the old bourgeois system of society be achieved without a violent revolution, without the dictatorship of the proletariat? Obviously not. To think that such a revolution can be carried out peacefully within the framework of bourgeois democracy, which is adapted to the domination of the bourgeoisie, means one of two things. It means either madness, and the loss of normal human understanding, or else an open and gross repudiation of the proletarian revolution. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3715
Michał Kalecki: It is the export surplus and the budget deficit which enable the capitalists to make profits over and above their own purchases of goods and services. The connection between 'external' profits and imperialism is obvious. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3717
Baltasar Gracián: It’s a sad thing not to have friends, but it must be even sadder not to have enemies. Because someone without enemies is a sign that they have neither: talent that casts a shadow, courage that others fear, honor that others murmur about, wealth that others covet, nor anything good that others envy. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3718
Muammar Gaddafi: Israel is a colonialist-imperialist phenomenon. There is no such thing as an Israeli people. Before 1948, world geography knew of no state such as Israel. Israel is the result of an invasion, of aggression. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3721
Muammar Gaddafi: If they wanted to end the violence and war between them and if they wanted Jews and Palestinians to live in peace, Jews and Palestinians, then they should consider this solution: one democratic state, free from weapons of mass destruction, and with the return of the Palestinian refugees. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3722
Voltairine De Cleyre: They (the workers) must learn that their power does not lie in their voting strength, that their power lies in their ability to stop production. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3724
John Reed: No, comrades, Uncle Sam is not one ever to give anybody something for nothing. He comes along with a sack stuffed with straw in one hand and a whip in the other. Whoever takes Uncle Sam’s promises at their face value will find himself obliged to pay for them with blood and sweat. The American workers are demanding an ever larger share of the product of their labour; with a view to preventing revolution at home, the American capitalists are forced to seek out colonial peoples to exploit, peoples who will furnish sufficient profit to keep the American workers in obedience and so make them participants in the exploitation of the Armenians. I represent thousands of revolutionary American workers who know this, and who understand that, acting together with the Armenian workers and peasants, with the toiling masses of the whole world, they will overthrow capitalism. World capitalism will be destroyed, and all the peoples will be free. We appreciate the need for solidarity between all the oppressed and toiling peoples, for unity of the revolutionary workers of all the countries of Europe and America under the leadership of the Russian Bolsheviks, in the Communist International. And we say to you, peoples of the East: Do not believe the promises of the American capitalists! https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3725
John Reed: I represent here the revolutionary workers of one of the great imperialist powers, the United States of America, which exploits and oppresses the peoples of the colonies. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3726
John Reed: The Americans have promised the Filipinos independence. Soon an independent Filipino republic will be proclaimed. But this does not mean that the American capitalists will leave or that the Filipinos will not continue to work to make profits for them. The American capitalists have given the Filipino leaders a share of their profits — they have given them government jobs, land and money — they have created a Filipino capitalist class which also lives on the profits created by the workers — and in whose interest it is to keep the Filipinos in slavery. This has also happened in Cuba, which was freed from Spanish rule with the help of the Americans. It is now an independent Republic. But American millionaire trusts own all the sugar plantations, apart from some small tracts which they have let the Cuban capitalists have: the latter also administer the country. And the moment that the workers of Cuba try to elect a government which is not in the interests of the American capitalists, the United States of America sends soldiers into Cuba to compel the people to vote for their oppressors. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3727
Doris Lessing: It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3730
Doris Lessing: With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all — can tell you what to read and when and how. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3731
Ron Suskind: We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3734
Karl Marx: The first socialists (Fourier, Owen, Saint-Simon, etc.), since social conditions were not sufficiently developed to allow the working class to constitute itself as a militant class, were necessarily obliged to limit themselves to dreams about the model society of the future and were led thus to condemn all the attempts such as strikes, combinations or political movements set in train by the workers to improve their lot. But while we cannot repudiate these patriarchs of socialism, just as chemists cannot repudiate their forebears the alchemists, we must at least avoid falling back into their mistakes, which, if we were to commit them, would be inexcusable. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3736
Karl Marx: Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities. The historical progress and extension of exchanges develops the contrast, latent in commodities, between use-value and value. The necessity for giving an external expression to this contrast for the purposes of commercial intercourse, urges on the establishment of an independent form of value, and finds no rest until it is once for all satisfied by the differentiation of commodities into commodities and money. At the same rate, then, as the conversion of products into commodities is being accomplished, so also is the conversion of one special commodity into money. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3737
Ho Chi Minh: The working class is fighting not only for its own emancipation but also for the emancipation of all of humanity from oppression and exploitation. This is why the interests of the working class coincide with those of the whole people. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3739
Ho Chi Minh: Acting in the name of the party, a party member represents the interests of the working class and all the working people. This is why the interests of a party member should be those of the party and the working class, and not be opposed to them. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3740
