marxist_god
19th December 2007, 16:44
Welcome to the Quote of the Day Archives! Its purpose is to provide a wide variety of quotes relating to the struggle for socialism so as to continually educate ourselves and others! Send in your suggestions!
On Proletarian Culture
On the Transitional Program
On the Revolutionary Party
On Corporate Domination of the Government
On the Youth
On the Law and the State
On Revolution
On the Inevitability of Revolution
On State Repression
On Revolution in the United States
On the Communist Manifesto
On the National Question
On Religion
On the Class Struggle and Race
On the Individual in under Capitalism
On the Role of the Bourgeois Military
On Capitalism
On the Role of the Individual in History
On Marx's Contribution to the Understanding of Human Social Development
On the Ideas of Marxism
On the Origins of the Antithesis Between Town and Country
On War
On the Role of the Proletariat's Political Struggle in the Preparation and carrying out of the Socialist Revolution
On Communism and the Withering Away of Classes
On the Purpose of Marxist Theory and Application
On the Trade Unions and their Role in the Class Struggle of the Proletariat Against the Bourgeoisie
On life
On Proletarian Culture
"Marxism has won its historic significance as the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat because, far from rejecting the most valuable achievements of the bourgeois epoch, it has, on the contrary, assimilated and refashioned everything of value in the more than two thousand years of the development of human thought and culture. Only further work on this basis and in this direction, inspired by the practical experience of the proletarian dictatorship as the final stage in the struggle against every form of exploitation, can be recognised as the development of a genuine proletarian culture."
- V.I. Lenin, On Proletarian Culture
On the Transitional Program
"It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat"
- L. Trotsky, The Transitional Program
Back to top
On the Revolutionary Party
"We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the nearby marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation."
- V.I. Lenin, What is to Be Done?
Back to top
On Corporate Domination of the Government
"Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master...Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware."
- Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1890
Back to top
On the Youth
"You have read and heard that communist theory—the science of communism created in the main by Marx, this doctrine of Marxism—has ceased to be the work of a single socialist of the nineteenth century, even though he was a genius, and that it has become the doctrine of millions and tens of millions of proletarians all over the world, who are applying it in their struggle against capitalism."
- V.I. Lenin, Tasks of the Youth Leagues
Back to top
On the Law and the State
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality, instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have property against those who have none at all."
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Back to top
On Revolution
"All men recognize the right of revolution: that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, or to resist, the government when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable."
- Henry David Thoreau
"When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties."
- Marquis De Lafayette
"There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the routes of the wine-shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution."
- M.A. Bakunin
Back to top
On the Inevitability of Revolution
"If our generation happens to be too weak to establish Socialism over the earth, we will hand the spotless banner down to our children. The struggle which is in the offing transcends by far the importance of individuals, factions and parties. It is the struggle for the future of all mankind. It will be severe, it will be lengthy. Whoever seeks physical comfort and spiritual calm let him step aside. In time of reaction it is more convenient to lean on the bureaucracy than on the truth. But all those for whom the word ‘Socialism’ is not a hollow sound but the content of their moral life - forward! Neither threats nor persecutions nor violations can stop us! Be it even over out bleaching bones the future will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth; because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future."
- Leon Trotsky, I Stake My Life
Back to top
On State Repression
"Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order."
- John V. Lindsay
"No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it."
- Samuel Johnson
Back to top
On Revolution in the United States
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln
Back to top
On the Communist Manifesto
"With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work outlines the new world outlook - consistent materialism, which also embraces the realm of social life, dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, the theory of the class struggle and of the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat, the creator of a new, communist society."
V.I. Lenin, Karl Marx
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On the National Question
"The politically conscious worker feels and regards himself not only a member of the Russian Marxist family; he is aware that he is also a member of the international family of Marxists."
- V. I. Lenin, Russian Workers and the International
“Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism are two implacably opposed slogans, corresponding to two great class camps throughout the entire capitalist world and expressing two policies (rather, two world outlooks) on the national question.”
- V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, in Russian, vol. 48
"Since the situation of the workers of all countries is the same, their interests the same, and their enemies the same, they must also fight together and confront the fraternity of the bourgeoisie of all nations with a fraternity of the workers of all nations."
- Marx/Engels, Reden uber Polen
Back to top
On Religion
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
- Karl Marx, Preface to: A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Back to top
On the Class Struggle and Race
"I believe there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those doing the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I dont think it will be based on the colour of the skin."
- Malcolm X
Back to top
On the Individual in under Capitalism
"In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."
- Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Back to top
On the Role of the Bourgeois Military
"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-classed muscle man for Big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...."
- Smedley D. Butler (1881-1940) Major General (U.S. Marine Corps)
Back to top
On Capitalism
"The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime."
- George Soros, (financial speculator and profiteer)
Back to top
On the Role of the Individual in History
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living."
- Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Back to top
On Marx's Contribution to the Understanding of Human Social Development
"...no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle of the classes, and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production; 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society."
- Marx in a letter to Weydenmeyer (1852)
Back to top
On the Ideas of Marxism
"The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas."
- Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
Back to top
On the Origins of the Antithesis Between Town and Country
"The division of labor inside a nation leads at first to the separation of industrial and commercial from agricultural labor, and hence to the separation of town and country and to the open conflict of their interests."
- Marx and Engels, The German Ideology
Back to top
On War
"The working class, which is the principle supplier of soldiers, and which bears the brunt of the material sacrifices, is in particular the natural enemy of wars, because wars contradict the aim it pursues, namely, the creation of an economic system founded on socialist principles, which in practice will give effect to the solidarity of peoples..."
- V.I. Lenin, Bellicose Militarism and the Anti-Militarist Tactics of Social-Democracy
Back to top
On the Role of the Proletariat's Political Struggle in the Preparation and carrying out of the Socialist Revolution
"Every class struggle is a political struggle... the working-class movement only then grows out of its embryonic state, its infancy, and becomes a class movement when it makes the transition to the political struggle."
- V.I. Lenin, Apropos of the "Profession de foi"
Back to top
On Communism and the Withering Away of Classes
"By introducing social in place of private ownership of the means of production and exchange, by introducing planned organization of social production to ensure the well-being of all the members of society, the proletarian social revolution will do away with the division of society into classes and thereby emancipate the whole of oppressed humanity, for it will put an end to all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another"
- V.I. Lenin, Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Program
Back to top
On the Purpose of Marxist Theory and Application
"Since it is not for us to create a plan for the future that will hold for all time, all the more surely, what we contemporaries have to do is the uncompromising critical evaluation of all that exists, uncompromising in the sense that our criticism fears neither its own results nor the conflict with the powers that be."
- Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843
Back to top
On the Trade Unions and their Role in the Class Struggle of the Proletariat Against the Bourgeoisie
"The workers have discovered that the union is the only way for them to withstand the overpowering pressure of capital."
- Karl Marx, Die Kriegsfrage
Back to top
On life
"Life is beautiful. Let future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Trotsky's Testament
Back to top
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Get Involved | Online Store | Links | Contact Us | Home
On Proletarian Culture
On the Transitional Program
On the Revolutionary Party
On Corporate Domination of the Government
On the Youth
On the Law and the State
On Revolution
On the Inevitability of Revolution
On State Repression
On Revolution in the United States
On the Communist Manifesto
On the National Question
On Religion
On the Class Struggle and Race
On the Individual in under Capitalism
On the Role of the Bourgeois Military
On Capitalism
On the Role of the Individual in History
On Marx's Contribution to the Understanding of Human Social Development
On the Ideas of Marxism
On the Origins of the Antithesis Between Town and Country
On War
On the Role of the Proletariat's Political Struggle in the Preparation and carrying out of the Socialist Revolution
On Communism and the Withering Away of Classes
On the Purpose of Marxist Theory and Application
On the Trade Unions and their Role in the Class Struggle of the Proletariat Against the Bourgeoisie
On life
On Proletarian Culture
"Marxism has won its historic significance as the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat because, far from rejecting the most valuable achievements of the bourgeois epoch, it has, on the contrary, assimilated and refashioned everything of value in the more than two thousand years of the development of human thought and culture. Only further work on this basis and in this direction, inspired by the practical experience of the proletarian dictatorship as the final stage in the struggle against every form of exploitation, can be recognised as the development of a genuine proletarian culture."
- V.I. Lenin, On Proletarian Culture
On the Transitional Program
"It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat"
- L. Trotsky, The Transitional Program
Back to top
On the Revolutionary Party
"We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the nearby marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation."
- V.I. Lenin, What is to Be Done?
Back to top
On Corporate Domination of the Government
"Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master...Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware."
- Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1890
Back to top
On the Youth
"You have read and heard that communist theory—the science of communism created in the main by Marx, this doctrine of Marxism—has ceased to be the work of a single socialist of the nineteenth century, even though he was a genius, and that it has become the doctrine of millions and tens of millions of proletarians all over the world, who are applying it in their struggle against capitalism."
- V.I. Lenin, Tasks of the Youth Leagues
Back to top
On the Law and the State
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality, instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have property against those who have none at all."
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Back to top
On Revolution
"All men recognize the right of revolution: that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, or to resist, the government when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable."
- Henry David Thoreau
"When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties."
- Marquis De Lafayette
"There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the routes of the wine-shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution."
- M.A. Bakunin
Back to top
On the Inevitability of Revolution
"If our generation happens to be too weak to establish Socialism over the earth, we will hand the spotless banner down to our children. The struggle which is in the offing transcends by far the importance of individuals, factions and parties. It is the struggle for the future of all mankind. It will be severe, it will be lengthy. Whoever seeks physical comfort and spiritual calm let him step aside. In time of reaction it is more convenient to lean on the bureaucracy than on the truth. But all those for whom the word ‘Socialism’ is not a hollow sound but the content of their moral life - forward! Neither threats nor persecutions nor violations can stop us! Be it even over out bleaching bones the future will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth; because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future."
- Leon Trotsky, I Stake My Life
Back to top
On State Repression
"Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order."
- John V. Lindsay
"No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it."
- Samuel Johnson
Back to top
On Revolution in the United States
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln
Back to top
On the Communist Manifesto
"With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work outlines the new world outlook - consistent materialism, which also embraces the realm of social life, dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, the theory of the class struggle and of the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat, the creator of a new, communist society."
V.I. Lenin, Karl Marx
Back to top
On the National Question
"The politically conscious worker feels and regards himself not only a member of the Russian Marxist family; he is aware that he is also a member of the international family of Marxists."
- V. I. Lenin, Russian Workers and the International
“Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism are two implacably opposed slogans, corresponding to two great class camps throughout the entire capitalist world and expressing two policies (rather, two world outlooks) on the national question.”
- V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, in Russian, vol. 48
"Since the situation of the workers of all countries is the same, their interests the same, and their enemies the same, they must also fight together and confront the fraternity of the bourgeoisie of all nations with a fraternity of the workers of all nations."
- Marx/Engels, Reden uber Polen
Back to top
On Religion
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
- Karl Marx, Preface to: A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Back to top
On the Class Struggle and Race
"I believe there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those doing the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I dont think it will be based on the colour of the skin."
- Malcolm X
Back to top
On the Individual in under Capitalism
"In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."
- Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Back to top
On the Role of the Bourgeois Military
"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-classed muscle man for Big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...."
- Smedley D. Butler (1881-1940) Major General (U.S. Marine Corps)
Back to top
On Capitalism
"The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime."
- George Soros, (financial speculator and profiteer)
Back to top
On the Role of the Individual in History
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living."
- Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Back to top
On Marx's Contribution to the Understanding of Human Social Development
"...no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle of the classes, and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production; 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society."
- Marx in a letter to Weydenmeyer (1852)
Back to top
On the Ideas of Marxism
"The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas."
- Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
Back to top
On the Origins of the Antithesis Between Town and Country
"The division of labor inside a nation leads at first to the separation of industrial and commercial from agricultural labor, and hence to the separation of town and country and to the open conflict of their interests."
- Marx and Engels, The German Ideology
Back to top
On War
"The working class, which is the principle supplier of soldiers, and which bears the brunt of the material sacrifices, is in particular the natural enemy of wars, because wars contradict the aim it pursues, namely, the creation of an economic system founded on socialist principles, which in practice will give effect to the solidarity of peoples..."
- V.I. Lenin, Bellicose Militarism and the Anti-Militarist Tactics of Social-Democracy
Back to top
On the Role of the Proletariat's Political Struggle in the Preparation and carrying out of the Socialist Revolution
"Every class struggle is a political struggle... the working-class movement only then grows out of its embryonic state, its infancy, and becomes a class movement when it makes the transition to the political struggle."
- V.I. Lenin, Apropos of the "Profession de foi"
Back to top
On Communism and the Withering Away of Classes
"By introducing social in place of private ownership of the means of production and exchange, by introducing planned organization of social production to ensure the well-being of all the members of society, the proletarian social revolution will do away with the division of society into classes and thereby emancipate the whole of oppressed humanity, for it will put an end to all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another"
- V.I. Lenin, Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Program
Back to top
On the Purpose of Marxist Theory and Application
"Since it is not for us to create a plan for the future that will hold for all time, all the more surely, what we contemporaries have to do is the uncompromising critical evaluation of all that exists, uncompromising in the sense that our criticism fears neither its own results nor the conflict with the powers that be."
- Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843
Back to top
On the Trade Unions and their Role in the Class Struggle of the Proletariat Against the Bourgeoisie
"The workers have discovered that the union is the only way for them to withstand the overpowering pressure of capital."
- Karl Marx, Die Kriegsfrage
Back to top
On life
"Life is beautiful. Let future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Trotsky's Testament
Back to top
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Socialist Appeal Magazine | Educate Yourself | Join Y.F.I.S. | About Us
Get Involved | Online Store | Links | Contact Us | Home