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
Nasrallah: So long as there is imperialism in the world, a permanent peace is impossible... while there is imperialism and occupation, the people will continue resisting. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3503
Kim Il Sung: In a ruined country, neither the land nor the people can remain at peace. Under the roofs of houses in a ruined country, even the traitors who live in luxury as a reward for betraying their country will not be able to sleep in peace. Even though they are alive, the people are worse than gutter dogs, and even if the mountains and rivers remain the same, they will not retain their beauty. A man who perceives this truth before others is called a forerunner; he who struggles against difficulties to save his country from tragedy is called a patriot; and he who sets fire to himself to demonstrate the truth and overthrows the unjust society by rousing the people to action is called a revolutionary. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3504
Enver Hoxha: Support for the Arab peoples in their struggle against American imperialism and its tool, Israel, is important for the policy of our state because, regardless of the existing regimes, we support the Arab peoples and defend their independence and sovereign rights which are threatened by the American imperialists. We must support the Arab peoples because they have awakened and are proceeding towards the consolidation of their states. Today they live under democratic bourgeois regimes and some of them feudal. Their progressive sentiments are burgeoning, especially in the resistance they are organizing against the intrigues of and political and economic enslavement by foreigners. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3505
Enver Hoxha: There cannot be a socialist democracy for the working class without its state of dictatorship of the proletariat. Marxism-Leninism teaches us that negation of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a negation of democracy for the masses of working people. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3506
Carl Sagan: I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3507
Carl Sagan: When awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3508
