Kim Jong-Il: Progressive ideas can never develop freely in capitalist society, where the means of propaganda and education such as the mass media are in the hands of monopoly capitalists and reactionary rulers. The reactionary bourgeois ruling class tolerates progressive ideas to some extent, to make capitalist society seem democratic; but when they are considered the slightest threat to its ruling system, it mercilessly suppresses them. Outwardly, different thoughts appear to be tolerated in capitalist society, but all kinds of thoughts throughout it are, without exception, none other than various forms and expressions of bourgeois ideology. The "freedom" of ideology talked about by imperialists is a deceptive slogan to dress up under the signpost of "freedom" their oppression of progressive ideas in capitalist society and their resorting to every method to propagate reactionary bourgeois ideas. It is a deceptive slogan to justify their ideological and cultural infiltration into other countries. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9706
Friedrich Engels: ... some propose mere welfare measures - while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9707
György Lukács: The struggle for the revolution, the exploitation of objective opportunities in the world situation, and the internal struggle for the maturity of its own revolutionary class-consciousness are inseparable elements of one and the same dialectical process. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9708
Stalin: There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the collective. There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective. Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. Socialist society alone can most fully satisfy these personal interests. More than that; socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between "individualism" and socialism. But can we deny the contrast between classes, between the propertied class, the capitalist class, and the toiling class, the proletarian class? On the one hand we have the propertied class which owns the banks, the factories, the mines, transport, the plantations in colonies. These people see nothing but their own interests, their striving after profits. They do not submit to the will of the collective; they strive to subordinate every collective to their will. On the other hand we have the class of the poor, the exploited class, which owns neither factories nor works, nor banks, which is compelled to live by selling its labour power to the capitalists which lacks the opportunity to satisfy its most elementary requirements. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9711
Che Guevara: The government of the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetrator of exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against a large part of its own population. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9712
Karl Marx: There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9714
