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
Napoleon Bonaparte: If you want something to be done, appoint someone responsible for ensuring it gets done. If you want something to be eternally delayed, appoint a committee. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3746
Lenin: When the bourgeoisie was fighting for freedom together with the people, together with all those who labour, it stood for full freedom and equal rights for the nations. Advanced countries, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway and others, provide us with an example of how free nations under a really democratic system live together in peace or separate peacefully from each other. Today the bourgeoisie fears the workers and is seeking an alliance with the Purishkeviches, with the reactionaries, and is betraying democracy, advocating oppression or unequal rights among nations and corrupting the workers with nationalist slogans. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3747
Lenin: War is no chance happening, no “sin” as is thought by Christian priests (who are no whit behind the opportunists in preaching patriotism, humanity and peace), but an inevitable stage of capitalism, just as legitimate a form of the capitalist way of life as peace is. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3748
Lenin: The Second International is dead, overcome by opportunism. Down with opportunism, and long live the Third International, purged not only of “turncoats”(as Golos wishes), but of opportunism as well. The Second International did its share of useful preparatory work in preliminarily organising the proletarian masses during the long, “peaceful” period of the most brutal capitalist slavery and most rapid capitalist progress in the last third of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. To the Third International falls the task of organising the proletarian forces for a revolutionary onslaught against the capitalist governments, for civil war against the bourgeoisie of all countries for the capture of political power, for the triumph of socialism! https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3749
Kim Jong-Un: Man-centred socialism, socialism centred on the popular masse, is absolutely scientific, and the most advantageous and powerful socialism. For its scientific accuracy and truth, socialism is sure to be victorious. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3750
Mao Zedong: U.S. imperialism invaded China's territory of Taiwan and has occupied it for the past nine years. A short while ago it sent its armed forces to invade and occupy Lebanon. The United States has set up hundreds of military bases in many countries all over the world. China's territory of Taiwan, Lebanon and all military bases of the United States on foreign soil are so many nooses round the neck of U.S. imperialism. The nooses have been fashioned by the Americans themselves and by nobody else, and it is they themselves who have put these nooses round their own necks, handing the ends of the ropes to the Chinese people, the peoples of the Arab countries and all the peoples of the world who love peace and oppose aggression. The longer the U.S. aggressors remain in those places, the tighter the nooses round their necks will become. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3752
Mao Zedong: Imperialism will not last long because it always does evil things. It persists in grooming and supporting reactionaries in all countries who are against the people, it has forcibly seized many colonies and semi-colonies and many military bases, and it threatens the peace with atomic war. Thus, forced by imperialism to do so, more than 90 per cent of the people of the world are rising or will rise in struggle against it. Yet, imperialism is still alive, still running amuck in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the West imperialism is still oppressing the people at home. This situation must change. It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3753
Mao Zedong: Riding roughshod everywhere, U.S. imperialism has made itself the enemy of the people of the world and has increasingly isolated itself. The atom bombs and hydrogen bombs in the hands of the U.S. imperialists will never cow those who refuse to be enslaved. The raging tide of the people of the world against the U.S. aggressors is irresistible. Their struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys will assuredly win still greater victories. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3754
Mao Zedong: If the U.S. monopoly capitalist groups persist in pushing their policies of aggression and war, the day is bound to come when the people of the whole world will hang them. The same fate awaits the accomplices of the United States. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3755
Xi Jinping: Socialism is the primary stage of communism, and communism is our highest ideal. What we are doing now belongs to the primary stage of socialism, but we must stay true to our loftiest goal. We cannot be evasive and vague with our words on this issue. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3756
Lenin: To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class... Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3757
George Habash: Our real enemy is not Israel and Zionism only, it is American Imperialism, who is backing Israel because Israel is a bodyguard for American imperialist interests. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3758
Friedrich Engels: With Hegel, evil is the form in which the motive force of historical development presents itself. This contains the twofold meaning that, on the one hand, each new advance necessarily appears as a sacrilege against things hallowed, as a rebellion against condition, though old and moribund, yet sanctified by custom; and that, on the other hand, it is precisely the wicked passions of man — greed and lust for power — which, since the emergence of class antagonisms, serve as levers of historical development — a fact of which the history of feudalism and of the bourgeoisie, for example, constitutes a single continual proof. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3759
Mao Zedong: Both in the army and in the local organizations, inner-Party democracy is meant to strengthen discipline and increase combat effectiveness, not to weaken them. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3760
Stalin: The October Revolution exposed the lie of the Social-Democrats that at the present time a peaceful transition to socialism is possible through bourgeois parliamentarism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3761
Mao Zedong: It was through the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism. Before the October Revolution, the Chinese were not only ignorant of Lenin and Stalin, they did not even know of Marx and Engels. The salvoes of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped progressives in China, as throughout the world, to adopt the proletarian world outlook as the instrument for studying a nation's destiny and considering anew their own problems. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3762
Vladimir Putin: Since the middle of the last century, when Nazism – the most malicious and aggressive ideology – was defeated through timely action, humanity was faced with the task of avoiding the revival of this evil and a recurrence of world wars. Despite all the zigzags and local skirmishes, the general vector was defined at that time. It was a total rejection of all forms of racism, the dismantling of the classical colonial system and the inclusion of a greater number of full-fledged participants in international politics... Our country, then called the Soviet Union, made a major contribution to consolidating these trends. The Soviet Union assisted states that had renounced colonial or neo-colonial dependence, whether in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East or Latin America. I would like to emphasise that in the mid-1980s, it was the Soviet Union that called for an end to ideological confrontation, the overcoming of the Cold War legacy, an end to the Cold War and its legacy, and the elimination of barriers that hampered global unity and comprehensive world development. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3763
Mao Zedong: The people's state protects the people. Only when the people have such a state can they educate and remold themselves by democratic methods on a country-wide scale, with everyone taking part, and shake off the influence of domestic and foreign reactionaries (which is still very strong, will survive for a long time and cannot be quickly destroyed), rid themselves of the bad habits and ideas acquired in the old society, not allow themselves to be led astray by the reactionaries, and continue to advance - to advance towards a socialist and communist society. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3764
