Marcus Tullius Cicero: It is passing strange, if Jupiter warns us by means of thunderbolts, that he sends so many to no purpose! https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3935

Mao Zedong: All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3936

Michael Parenti: Capitalist Russia, and Poland, and Bulgaria, with all of the privatization, and deregulation, and free market coming in. Poverty! Poverty, increase in crime, increase in desperation, increase in misery, increase in suicides! It's capitalism at work, moving in. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3937

Kris Kristofferson: I found a considerable lack of work after doing concerts for Palestinian children.. if that's the way it has to be, that's the way it has to be. If you support human rights, you gotta support them everywhere. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3938

Red Star Publishers http://redstarpublishers.org

Bible: Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3939

Red Star Publishers http://redstarpublishers.org

Herman Melville: Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3940

Che Guevara: The International Monetary Fund is the watchdog of the dollar in the capitalist camp. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3941

Will Rogers: Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3942

Bible: If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3943

George Carlin: That's our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3944

Karl Marx: The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole. The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries. The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave. The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3945

Karl Marx: The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his labor. The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has not. The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it. The serf liberates himself in one of three ways: either he runs away to the city and there becomes a handicraftsman; or, instead of products and services, he gives money to his lord and thereby becomes a free tenant; or he overthrows his feudal lord and himself becomes a property owner. In short, by one route or another, he gets into the owning class and enters into competition. The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3946

Karl Marx: How do communists differ from socialists? The so-called socialists are divided into three categories. ( Reactionary Socialists: ) The first category consists of adherents of a feudal and patriarchal society which has already been destroyed, and is still daily being destroyed, by big industry and world trade and their creation, bourgeois society. This category concludes, from the evils of existing society, that feudal and patriarchal society must be restored because it was free of such evils. In one way or another, all their proposals are directed to this end. This category of reactionary socialists, for all their seeming partisanship and their scalding tears for the misery of the proletariat, is nevertheless energetically opposed by the communists for the following reasons: (i) It strives for something which is entirely impossible. (ii) It seeks to establish the rule of the aristocracy, the guildmasters, the small producers, and their retinue of absolute or feudal monarchs, officials, soldiers, and priests – a society which was, to be sure, free of the evils of present-day society but which brought it at least as many evils without even offering to the oppressed workers the prospect of liberation through a communist revolution. (iii) As soon as the proletariat becomes revolutionary and communist, these reactionary socialists show their true colors by immediately making common cause with the bourgeoisie against the proletarians. ( Bourgeois Socialists: ) The second category consists of adherents of present-day society who have been frightened for its future by the evils to which it necessarily gives rise. What they want, therefore, is to maintain this society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it. To this end, 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. ( Democratic Socialists: ) Finally, the third category consists of democratic socialists who favor some of the same measures the communists advocate, as described in Question 18, not as part of the transition to communism, however, but as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery and evils of present-day society. These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat. It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists. It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3947

Karl Marx: What will this new social order have to be like? Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society. It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association. Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods. In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3948

Karl Marx: What follows from these periodic commercial crises? First: That, though big industry in its earliest stage created free competition, it has now outgrown free competition; that, for big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter; that, so long as big industry remains on its present footing, it can be maintained only at the cost of general chaos every seven years, each time threatening the whole of civilization and not only plunging the proletarians into misery but also ruining large sections of the bourgeoisie; hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which is an absolute impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all. Second: That big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom. It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions. We see with the greatest clarity: (i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and (ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3949

Võ Nguyên Giáp: The Vietnamese army was then weak in all respects and was destitute of everything... (But) in provoking hostilities, the aggressive colonialists had alienated a whole nation. And, indeed, the whole Vietnamese nation, the entire Vietnamese people rose against them. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3950

Xi Jinping: For communists, self-cultivation is not about sitting in meditation with our face toward the wall; rather, we strengthen self-cultivation when we engage in the social practices of remaking the world. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3951

Tolstoy: Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3952

Jorge Luis Borges: Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3953

Jorge Luis Borges: I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3954

Jorge Luis Borges: I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3955

Jorge Luis Borges: A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3956

Jorge Luis Borges: Don't talk unless you can improve the silence. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3957

Jorge Luis Borges: You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote3958