“Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?”
“The Arab Spring whose seeds failed to bloom anything other than a chaotic mess that requires only blood to grow has contributed immensely to the rising numbers of these migrants.”
“If we make a union in these fields, is there anything we can do to ensure it doesn t become corrupt? Or that later it doesn t only look after the people who work here, we just look after our own, and everyone else can fend for themselves? We need to fight for ourselves, here and now, but we also need changes so large and impossible they encompass the entire world.”
“To recreate a new aristocracy is the eternal task of every revolutionary project.”
“The development of the proletarian elite does not take place in an academic setting. Rather, it is brought about by battles in the factories and unions, by disciplinary punishments and some very dirty fights within the parties and outside of them, by jail sentences and illegality. Students do not flock in large numbers there as they do to the lecture halls and laboratories of the bourgeoisie. The career of a revolutionary does not consists of banquets and honarary titles, of interesting research projects and professional salaries; more likely, it will acquaint them with misery, dishonory and jail and, at the end, uncertainty. These conditions are made bearable only by a super-human faith. Understandably, this way of life will not be the choice of those who are nothing more than clever.”
“A woman in love with another woman is revolution’s revolution: it is not an act of war. it is not an act of desperation. it is not an act of fear. it is - it always has been and it always, always will be - an act of love.”
“Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail . We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity.”
“The principle of laughter and the carnival spirit on which the grotesque is based destroys this limited seriousness and all pretense of an extratemporal meaning and unconditional value of necessity. It frees human consciousness, thought, and imagination for new potentialities. For this reason, great changes, even in the field of science, are always preceded by a certain carnival consciousness that prepares the way.”
“Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upward for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder.”
“When we say transformation, it means that nothing of the old has remained. Something totally new has flowered within you. Now you look at a rose plant that is full of thorns. Springtime came and rose flowers burst out — it is a transformation. The thorns are still there — there are more thorns than flowers — but we do not call it a thorn plant. We call it a rose plant because of that single rose. Everyone s attention goes more towards that single rose than a hundred thorns that are on the plant, isn t it? So all the thorns in you, maybe you cannot remove them right now, but if one rose flower blossoms, everyone is willing to overlook those things.”
“The battles over women s bodies can be won only by a revolution of the mind”
“Make criticism in good time; don t get into the habit of criticizing only after the event.”
“People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.”
“His headstone said FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST But death is a slave s freedom We seek the freedom of free men And the construction of a world Where Martin Luther King could have lived and preached non-violence”
“During self-reflection, the realization came that revolution begins within.”
“They use the pretext of avoiding war, to make you swallow any kind of peace, said Paul. They use the pretext of a revolution to involve us in any kind of war, said Jardinet.”
“This is the thing you need to spread the word about among our people wherever you go. Never let them be brainwashed into thinking that whenever they take steps to see that they re in a position to defend themselves that they;re being unlawful. The only time you re being unlawful is when you break the law. It s LAWFUL to have something to DEFEND yourself.”