John Adams: Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3668
Allan Boesak: There are clear and predictable consequences for the world if human beings continue to rape the earth and plunder its resources; to exploit, oppress, and dominate the weak and the poor for the sake of greed and the hunger for power; to depend on ever-rising levels of violence and ever more lethal instruments of death and destruction in order to secure positions of power and privilege. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3671
Stalin: The dictatorship of the proletariat, the transition from capitalism to communism, must not be regarded as a fleeting period of "super-revolutionary" acts and decrees, but as an entire historical era, replete with civil wars and external conflicts, with persistent organisational work and economic construction, with advances and retreats, victories and defeats. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3674
Vinod Mishra: The point is to retrieve the revolutionary essence of Marxism. I do not agree with those who say that communism is in crisis because workers in certain countries today enjoy better standards of living. Those who understand communism as the philosophy of poverty only display the poverty of their own philosophy. Communism is really the philosophy of abundance. Communism presupposes the abundant availability of material goods to ensure full satisfaction of human needs. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3675
Vinod Mishra: The Scientific and Technological Revolution which is working wonders in today's world is only creating necessary material conditions for humanity's inexorable march towards communism. The development of automation has the potential to obliterate the difference between manual and mental labour. The grounds are being laid, all we have to do is to wrest control of the means of production from the capitalists and imperialists so that productive forces can grow unhindered and undistorted. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3676
Baltasar Gracián: Because the ignorant do not know themselves, they never know for what they are lacking. Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3681
Baltasar Gracián: Some marry the first information they receive, and turn what comes later into their concubine. Since deceit is always first to arrive, there is no room left for truth. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3682
Georgi Plekhanov: The Anarchists are Utopians. Their point of view has nothing in common with that of modern scientific Socialism. But there are Utopias and Utopias. The great Utopians of the first half of our century were men of genius; they helped forward social science, which in their time was still entirely Utopian. The Utopians of today, the Anarchists, are the abstractors of quintessence, who can only fully draw forth some poor conclusions from certain mummified principles. They have nothing to do with social science, which, in its onward march, has distanced them by at least half a century. Their “profound thinkers”, their “lofty theorists”, do not even succeed in making the two ends of their reasoning meet. They are the “decadent” Utopians, stricken with incurable intellectual anaemia. The great Utopians did much for the development of the working class movement. The Utopians of our days do nothing but retard its progress. And it is especially their so-called tactics that are harmful to the proletariat. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3686
William Montgomery Brown: Philosophic anarchy differs by the space of the whole heavens from practical anarchy, and it is the latter that I always have in mind. The great essential of philosophic anarchy is individualistic freedom. The great essential of practical anarchy is imperialistic slavery. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3687
Kaysone Phomvihane: (The Lao people) always stand by the people of Palestine, Lebanon, & other Arab countries who are fighting bravely against imperialism, old & new colonialism, racism, and Zionism, for independence, freedom, & the right to live according to their chosen path. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3689
Lev Vygotsky: Now that the world has experienced the cleansing threat of social revolution, the very foundations of bourgeois morality are trembling, and it is very possible that in no other realm do we meet up with such shapeless and tenuous ideas as in the domain of ethical standards. All those rules of bourgeois morality, which were fully laden with hypocrisy and mendacity, have lost their meaning. Bourgeois morality was compelled to be hypocritical, because it taught one thing and did another, because it was constructed at the juncture of class interests and, preaching the kingdom of God after death, implanted a kingdom of enslavers in the world. Lies and hypocrisy were the natural source of such a form of morality, and sanctimoniousness was its inevitable accompaniment. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3691
Lenin: Kautsky is pursuing a characteristically petty—bourgeois, philistine policy by pretending (and trying to make the people believe the absurd idea) that putting forward a slogan alters the position. The entire history of bourgeois democracy refutes this illusion; the bourgeois democrats have always advanced all sorts of “slogans” to deceive the people. The point is to test their sincerity, to compare their words with their deeds, not to be satisfied with idealistic or charlatan phrases, but to get down to class reality. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3693
Mao Zedong: Our point of departure is to serve the people whole-heartedly and never for a moment divorce ourselves from the masses, to proceed in all cases from the interests of the people and not from one's self-interest or from the interests of a small group, and to identify our responsibility to the people with our responsibility to the leading organs of the Party. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3694
