Protestation

Leonardo da Vinci: He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.

Leonardo da Vinci: He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

Leonardo da Vinci: Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

Leonardo da Vinci: Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

Leonardo da Vinci: Truth was the only daughter of Time.

Leonardo da Vinci: Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

Leonardo da Vinci: All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.

Stuart Hall: The university is a critical institution or it is nothing.

Ernst Bloch: Only an atheist can be a good Christian; only a Christian can be a good atheist.

Ernst Bloch: The best thing about religion is that it makes for heretics.

Marie Curie: I am among those who think that science has great beauty.

George Carlin: The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore they neutralise people.

George Carlin: The government doesn't lie they engage in misinformation.

Haile Selassie I: Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Nietzsche: All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

Stalin: How do the Social-Democratic parties of the West exist and develop nowadays? Have they inner-party contradictions, disagreements based on principle? Of course, they have. Do they disclose these contradictions and try to over come them honestly and openly in sight of the mass of the party membership? No, of course not. It is the practice of the Social-Democrats to cover up and conceal these contradictions and disagreements. It is the practice of the Social-Democrats to turn their conferences and congresses into an empty parade of ostensible well-being, assiduously covering up and slurring over internal disagreements. But nothing can come of this except stuffing people's heads with rubbish and the ideological impoverishment of the party. This is one of the reasons for the decline of West-European Social-Democracy, which was once revolutionary, and is now reformist. We, however, cannot live and develop in that way, comrades. The policy of a "middle" line in matters of principle is not our policy. The policy of a "middle" line in matters of principle is the policy of decaying and degenerating parties. Such a policy cannot but lead to the conversion of the party into an empty bureaucratic apparatus, running idle and divorced from the masses of the workers. That path is not our path.

Stalin: I think that the source of the contradictions within the proletarian parties lies in two circumstances. What are these circumstances? They are, firstly, the pressure exerted by the bourgeoisie and bourgeois ideology on the proletariat and its party in the conditions of the class struggle—a pressure to which the least stable strata of the proletariat, and, hence, the least stable strata of the proletarian party, not infrequently succumb. It must not be thought that the proletariat is completely isolated from society, that it stands outside society. The proletariat is a part of society, connected with its diverse strata by numerous threads. But the party is a part of the proletariat. Hence the Party cannot be exempt from connections with, and from the influence of, the diverse sections of bourgeois society. The pressure of the bourgeoisie and its ideology on the proletariat and its party finds expression in the fact that bourgeois ideas, manners, customs and sentiments not infrequently penetrate the proletariat and its party through definite strata of the proletariat that are in one way or another connected with bourgeois society. They are, secondly, the heterogeneity of the working class, the existence of different strata within the working class. I think that the proletariat, as a class, can be divided into three strata. One stratum is the main mass of the proletariat, its core, its permanent part, the mass of "pure-blooded" proletarians, who have long broken off connection with the capitalist class. This stratum of the proletariat is the most reliable bulwark of Marxism. The second stratum consists of newcomers from non-proletarian classes—from the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie or the intelligentsia. These are former members of other classes who have only recently merged with the proletariat and have brought with them into the working class their customs, their habits, their waverings and their vacillations. This stratum constitutes the most favourable soil for all sorts of anarchist, semi-anarchist and "ultra-Left" groups. The third stratum, lastly, consists of the labour aristocracy, the upper stratum of the working class, the most well-to-do portion of the proletariat, with its propensity for compromise with the bourgeoisie, its predominant inclination to adapt itself to the powers that be, and its anxiety to "get on in life." This stratum constitutes the most favourable soil for outright reformists and opportunists. Notwithstanding their superficial difference, these last two strata of the working class constitute a more or less common nutritive medium for opportunism in general—open opportunism, when the sentiments of the labour aristocracy gain the upper hand, and opportunism camouflaged with "Left" phrases, when the sentiments of the semi-middle-class strata of the working class which have not yet completely broken with the petty-bourgeois environment gain the upper hand. The fact that "ultra-Left" sentiments very often coincide with the sentiments of open opportunism is not at all surprising. Lenin said time and again that the "ultra-Left" opposition is the reverse side of the Right-wing, Menshevik, openly opportunist opposition. And that is quite true. If the "ultra-Lefts" stand for revolution only because they expect the victory of the revolution the very next day, then obviously they must fall into despair and be disillusioned in the revolution if the revolution is delayed, if the revolution is not victorious the very next day. Naturally, with every turn in the development of the class struggle, with every sharpening of the struggle and intensification of difficulties, the differences in the views, customs and sentiments of the various strata of the proletariat must inevitably make themselves felt in the shape of definite disagreements within the party, and the pressure of the bourgeoisie and its ideology must inevitably accentuate these disagreements by providing them with an outlet in the form of a struggle within the proletarian party.

Josip Broz Tito: There is no struggle against Fascism without struggle against its Trotskyist form.

Rabindranath Tagore: If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.

Rabindranath Tagore: The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.

Rabindranath Tagore: That one who talks so much is completely hollow, you know that the empty pitcher is the one that sounds the most.

Rabindranath Tagore: The woods would be quiet if no bird sang but the one that sang best.

Rabindranath Tagore: If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.

Rabindranath Tagore: Thank the flame for its light, but do not forget the lampholder standing in the shade with constancy of patience.

Rabindranath Tagore: Set bird's wings with gold and it will never again soar in the sky.

Rabindranath Tagore: So for men to accept is truly to give: for women to give is truly to gain.

Helen Keller: Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

Albert Einstein: Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Che Guevara: Brave is he who has more shame than fear.

John Brown: I have only a short time to live, only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no peace in this land until slavery is done for.

John Brown: These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!

Mahmoud Darwish: The wars will end and the leaders will shake hands, and that old woman will remain waiting for her martyred son, and that girl will wait for her beloved husband, and the children will wait for their heroic father, I do not know who sold the homeland but I know who paid the price.

John Brown: Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than the most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens against another portion, the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude, or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence.

Yemelyan Yaroslavsky: In 1939, a very dangerous situation for the USSR had been created in Europe. Having seized Czechoslovakia and Austria, the German fascists were preparing to seize other states. At this time, many capitalist states incited Germany to direct its military forces against the USSR, to attack us. The foreign newspapers of the capitalist states openly wrote that Germany could seize everything she needed in the East, that is, in the USSR: land, raw materials, food, ore, oil, cotton, and the like. What was the Soviet state to do then? Go to war with Germany? At that time, such a war would have been even more dangerous for the Soviet state. The Soviet Government and the Bolshevik Party, headed by Comrade Stalin, did everything to avoid war. We knew that this war would be very difficult. If we had gone to such a war then, the position of the Soviet state would have been much more dangerous than it is now. Comrade Stalin has already answered the question whether the Soviet Government did the right thing by signing in 1939 a non-aggression pact (that is, a treaty) with the fascist government of Germany. “One may ask,” said Comrade Stalin, “how could it have happened that the Soviet Government agreed to conclude a non-aggression pact with such treacherous people and monsters as Hitler and Ribbentrop? Was there not a mistake on the part of the Soviet Government here? Of course not! A non-aggression pact is a peace pact between two states. It was precisely such a pact that Germany proposed to us in 1939. Could the Soviet Government refuse such a proposal? I think that no peace-loving state can refuse a peace agreement with a neighboring power, even if such monsters and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop are at the head of this power. And this, of course, under one indispensable condition: that the peace agreement does not affect either directly or indirectly the territorial integrity, independence and honor of the peace-loving states.” This agreement lasted a year and a half, during which time Hitler repeatedly stated that he would never fight against the USSR. So on August 25, 1939, he told the British Ambassador Henderson that “Russia and Germany will never again take up arms against each other.” On September 1, 1939, he spoke in the German parliament: “Russia and Germany fought against each other during the world war! It shouldn not and will not happen a second time.” These were treacherous, false words, because Hitler was preparing to attack the USSR at the same time.

Vasily Lanovoy: In Europe, journalists asked me: 'Why do you celebrate Victory Day like that? We have already forgotten it. I asked them, "How many days did your countries resist Hitler?" They are silent.

Naomi Klein: The only thing I can imagine more horrific than this live-streamed genocide would be a world in which that became normal.

Enver Hoxha: Israel was artificially created by Zionism and imperialism at the expense of the Palestinian people. To abolish a nation in the name of a nationality of dubious authenticity is condemned by the peoples and will result in a bloody national liberation war.

Nicolás Maduro: Marxism is the study of concrete reality, with concrete solutions, based on an understanding of dialectics, so that it is a scientific knowledge that arises from reality.

Georges Braque: Truth exists; only lies are invented.

Georg C. Lichtenberg: It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.

Saramago: The fascists of the future will not have that stereotype of Hitler or Mussolini. They will not have that tough military gesture. They will be men talking about everything the majority wants to hear. About goodness, family, good manners, religion and ethics. In that hour, the new devil will emerge, and few will perceive that history is repeating itself.

Louise Michel: The revolution will be the flowering of humanity as love is the flowering of the heart.

Peter Ustinov: In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.

Peter Ustinov: Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

Bertolt Brecht: Fascism is not the opposite of democracy but its evolution in times of crisis.

Ghassan Kanafani: If we fail to defend our cause, then we should change the defenders, not the cause.

Sylvia Pankhurst: Let us face the facts, comrades, the education of the masses is a large and strenuous task, but there can be no communism until the masses desire Communism and act Communism. We cannot take part in the work of education till we are ourselves deeply imbued with the Communist ideal and unless our thoughts and our desires are constantly turning towards it.

Mao Zedong: A well-disciplined Party armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, using the method of self-criticism and linked with the masses of the people; an army under the leadership of such a Party; a united front of all revolutionary classes and all revolutionary groups under the leadership of such a Party-these are the three main ,weapons with which we have defeated the enemy. Relying on them, we have won basic victory. We have travelled a tortuous road. We have struggled against opportunist deviations in our Party, ;both Right and 'Left'. Whenever we made serious mistakes on these three matters, the revolution suffered setbacks. Taught by mistakes and sebbacks, we have become wiser and handle our affairs better. It is hard for any political party or person to avoid mistakes, but we should make as few as possible. Once a mistake is made, we should correct it, and the more quickly and thoroughly the better.

Edward Bernays: Goebbels (...) was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me.

Friedrich Engels: Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.

Jean-Paul Sartre: The (Communist) Party has one objective: the creation of a socialist economy; and one means: the utilization of the class struggle.

Jean-Paul Sartre: There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

Jean-Paul Sartre: I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity do not eliminate pauperism; they perpetuate it.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In some places the metropolis makes do with paying a clique of feudal overlords; in others, it has fabricated a fake bourgeoisie of colonized subjects in a system of divide and rule; elsewhere, it has killed two birds with one stone: the colony is both settlement and exploitation.

Georges Brassens: The best wine is not necessarily the most expensive one, but that which we share.

Enver Hoxha: At these difficult moments, when capitalism in crisis is seeking to establish its savage dictatorship, sacrifices on the part of Marxist-Leninists, the working class and progressive elements are indispensable, but every revolutionary action requires courage, intelligence and vigorous actions. There must be no retreat in the face of this situation. The just and heroic struggle of the Palestinian people for the liberation of their territories seized and occupied by Israel is a fine example. Despite the fact that it is not led by Marxist-Leninists we support it. We support it since it is a national liberation, anti-imperialist struggle. In assessing their struggle we must appreciate their bravery in coping with countless difficulties against extremely strong powers, armed to the teeth, such as the American imperialists and the Israeli Zionists. We must also bear in mind the fact that, at the same time, the Palestinians have to fight the reactionary Arab forces, too. They are left without a homeland, but they have the strength of their spirit and the strength of their arms, their courage and honest aims to have their homeland liberated, which keep them alive. They are fighting tooth and nail against the Israeli Zionists, fighting for their existence as a people and for their right to have their own homeland. It is useful for the Marxist-Leninist parties of the capitalist countries to bear in mind this wonderful experience for the organization of their struggle, to draw inspiration from the example of the resistance of this small people who, although displaced and scattered, have been able to rally their energies for a great purpose. They are fighting in the ways which the conditions of bourgeois domination have allowed them for the creation of a Palestinian state in opposition to the great forces of capitalism and imperialism.

Democritus: All is lost when the bad ones serve as an example and the good ones as a mockery.

Otto Kuusinen: The main thing that characterises the parties of the new type is their irreconcilability to capitalism. The Communists are waging an active struggle for its abolition, for a revolutionary transformation of capitalist society, for they hold that the taking of political power by the working class and the establishment, of a dictatorship of the proletariat are essential conditions for this transformation. Hence the intolerance displayed by Communists for all forms of opportunism, which in practice signifies adaptation to capitalism.

Umberto Eco: A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.

Umberto Eco: Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.

Umberto Eco: Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.

Umberto Eco: Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...

Umberto Eco: A philosophy has a practical power: it contributes to the changing of the world.

Umberto Eco: A philosophy does not play its role as an actor during a recital; it interacts with other philosophies and with other facts, and it cannot know the results of the interaction between itself and other world visions. World visions can conceive of everything, except alternative world visions, if not in order to criticize them and to show their inconsistency.

Umberto Eco: What is a symbol? Etymologically speaking, the word σύμβολον comes from σνμβάλλω, to throw-with, to make something coincide with something else: a symbol was originally an identification mark made up of two halves of a coin or of a medal. Two halves of the same thing, either one standing for the other, both becoming, however, fully effective only when they matched to make up, again, the original whole. … in the original concept of symbol, there is the suggestion of a final recomposition. Etymologies, however, do not necessarily tell the truth — or, at least, they tell the truth, in terms of historical, not of structural, semantics. What is frequently appreciated in many so-called symbols is exactly their vagueness, their openness, their fruitful ineffectiveness to express a 'final' meaning, so that with symbols and by symbols one indicates what is always beyond one's reach.

General Douglas MacArthur: Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

Simone de Beauvoir: The most scandalous aspect of any scandal is that one gets used to it.

Hannah Arendt: Freedom of expression is a farce if the information about the facts is not guaranteed.

Don Marquis: Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

Kim Il Sung: So long as imperialism exists on the globe and oppresses and plunders the people, the people cannot leave off the anti-imperialist struggle even a moment. The struggle must continue till all shades of colonialism are wiped off the face of the earth.

Sydney J. Harris: The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

Ernst Thälmann: We do not say, choose Thälmann, then you have bread and freedom , we say, for bread and freedom you must fight!

Ernst Thälmann: My people, to whom I belong, and whom I love, are the German people, and my nation, which I worship with great pride, is the German nation, a knightly, proud and hard nation Flesh of the flesh of the German workers, and therefore, as their revolutionary child, have later become their revolutionary leader.

Ernst Thälmann: One finger is easy to break, but five fingers are a fist!

Aimé Césaire: It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.

Marcus Aurelius: Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.

Marcus Aurelius: The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.

Marcus Aurelius: The intelligence of the universe is social.

Marcus Aurelius: The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.

Marcus Aurelius: The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Marcus Aurelius: What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

Marcus Aurelius: Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?

Marcus Aurelius: Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic.

Marcus Aurelius: And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.

Marcus Aurelius: All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.

Marcus Aurelius: All those (events in history) were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors.

Marcus Aurelius: Acquire the contemplative way of seeing how all things change into one another, and constantly attend to it, and exercise thyself about this part (of philosophy). For nothing is so much adapted to produce magnanimity.

Marcus Aurelius: All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other things. For things have been co-ordinated, and they combine to make up the same universe. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, and one reason.

Marcus Aurelius: Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of there substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may ever be new.

Marcus Aurelius: This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place; should look at them... a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries.

Marcus Aurelius: The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.

Marcus Aurelius: As thou thyself art a component part of a social system, so let every act of thine be a component part of social life. Whatever act of thine that has no reference, either immediately or remotely, to a social end, this tears asunder thy life, and does not allow it to be one, and it is of the nature of a mutiny, just as when in a popular assembly a man acting by himself stands apart from the general agreement.

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed. - anonymous

Virgil: Fortune favors the bold.

Virgil: Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.

Virgil: They can because they think they can.

Virgil: The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.

Virgil: If I cannot sway the heavens, I'll wake the powers of hell!

Virgil: There is no salvation in war.