Harpal Brar: Fascism is the violent attempt of decaying capitalism to defeat the proletarian revolution and forcibly retard its own demise. Fascism uses demagogy as a science for it dare not declare its aims openly, for it could build no mass support on the basis of its real aims. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3252
Kenneth Neill Cameron: If Stalin had accomplished for the world bourgeoisie what he did for the world proletariat, he would have long been hailed in bourgeois circles as one of the “greats” of all time, not only of the present century. The same general criteria should apply to Stalin’s reputation from the Marxist point of view. Stalin advanced the position of the world proletariat further than any person in history with the exception of Lenin. True, without the base Lenin laid, Stalin could not have built, but using this base he moved about as far as was possible in the existing situation. In short a new class of world leader has emerged, and Stalin is in its highest rank. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3254
Leila Khaled: I do not see how my oppressor could sit in judgment on my response to his oppressive actions against me. He is in no position to render an impartial judgment or to accuse me of air piracy and hijacking when he has hijacked my home and hijacked me and my people out of our land. If the enemy defines morality and legality in his own terms and decides to apply his ethical and legal doctrines against me because he has the power as well as the means of communications to justify his inhumanity, I am under no moral obligation to listen, let alone obey his dictates. Indeed, I am under a moral obligation to resist and to fight to death the enemy's moral corruption. My deed cannot be evaluated without examining the underlying causes. The revolutionary deed I carried out on August 29, 1969 was an assertion of my spurned humanity, a declaration of the humanity of Palestinians. It was an act of protest against the West for its pro-Zionist (therefore anti-Palestinian) posture. The list of the sins of the West is overwhelming. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3255
John Steinbeck: Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3256
Ronald Wright: In times of war or crisis, power is easily stolen from the many by the few on a promise of security. The more elusive the or imaginary the foe, the better for manufacturing consent. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3260
Friedrich Engels: The demand for equality in the mouth of the proletariat has therefore a double meaning. It is either — as was the case especially at the very start, for example in the Peasant War (see Engels’ work Peasant War in Germany)— the spontaneous reaction against the crying social inequalities, against the contrast between rich and poor, the feudal lords and their serfs, the surfeiters and the starving; as such it is simply an expression of the revolutionary instinct, and finds its justification in that, and in that only. Or, on the other hand, this demand has arisen as a reaction against the bourgeois demand for equality, drawing more or less correct and more far-reaching demands from this bourgeois demand, and serving as an agitational means in order to stir up the workers against the capitalists with the aid of the capitalists’ own assertions; and in this case it stands or falls with bourgeois equality itself. In both cases the real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3262
Fernando Pessoa: The value of things is not in the time they last, but in the intensity with which they occur. That’s why there are unforgettable moments, unexplained things and incomparable people. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3263
William Randolph Hearst: Whatever is right can be achieved through the irresistible power of awakened and informed public opinion. Our object, therefore, is not to enquire whether a thing can be done, but whether it ought to be done, to so exert the forces of publicity that public opinion will compel it be done. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3267
Friedrich Engels: No nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3268
Lenin: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk dictated by monarchist Germany, and the subsequent much more brutal and despicable Treaty of Versailles dictated by the “democratic” republics of America and France and also by “free” Britain, have rendered a most useful service to humanity by exposing both imperialism’s hired coolies of the pen and petty- bourgeois reactionaries who, although they call themselves pacifists and socialists, sang praises to “Wilsonism”, and insisted that peace and reforms were possible under imperialism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3269
Lenin: The tens of millions of dead and maimed left by the war—a war to decide whether the British or German group of financial plunderers is to receive the most booty—and those two “peace treaties”, are with unprecedented rapidity opening the eyes of the millions and tens of millions of people who are downtrodden, oppressed, deceived and duped by the bourgeoisie. Thus, out of the universal ruin caused by the war a world-wide revolutionary crisis is arising which, however prolonged and arduous its stages may be, cannot end otherwise than in a proletarian revolution and in its victory. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3270
Frantz Fanon: Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3272
Barbara Anna Kistler: The revolution and revolutionaries have no homeland, they continue their struggle wherever they want. I am an international revolutionary, I defend the brotherhood and unity of the oppressed peoples of the world. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3273
Paulo Freire: Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3274
Ilan Pappé: Colonialism can be described as the movement of Europeans to different parts of the world, creating new “white” nations where indigenous people had once had their own kingdoms. These nations could only be created if the settlers employed two logics: the logic of elimination— getting rid by all means possible of the indigenous people, including by genocide; and the logic of dehumanization—regarding the non-Europeans as inferior and thus as not deserving the same rights as the settlers. In South Africa these twin logics led to the creation of the Apartheid system, founded officially in 1948, the same year that the Zionist movement translated the same logics into an ethnic cleansing operation in Palestine. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3276
Alexandre Dumas: Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3285
