“Within twenty years at the most, he reflected, the huge and simple question, “Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?” would have ceased once and for all to be answerable. But in effect it was unanswerable even now, since the few scattered survivors from the ancient world were incapable of comparing one age with another. They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister’s face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago; but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.”
“Money won’t change you. Change will change you.”
“I don t have a life of my own. I ve put myself and my life at the service of the people. If necessity dictates I run, I run.. go to jail, I go to jail.. die, I die.My private aspirations are exactly the general aspirations of the people.”
“Every man who has in his soul a secret feeling of revolt against any act of the State, of life, or of destiny, is on the verge of riot; and so soon as it appears, he begins to quiver, and to feel himself borne away by the whirlwind.”
“Egyptians are like camels: they can put up with beatings, humiliation and starvation for a long time but when they rebel they do so suddenly and with a force that is impossible to control.”
“Revolutionary man must be a contingent being, unjustifiable but free, entirely immersed in the society that oppresses him, but capable of transcending this society by his effort to change it. Idealism mystifies him in that it binds him by rights and values that are already given; it conceals from him his power to devise roads of his own. But materialism also mystifies him, by depriving him of his freedom. The revolutionary philosophy must be a philosophy of transcendence.”
“What the gods are supposed to be, what the priests are commissioned to say, is not a sensational secret like what those running messengers of the Gospel had to say. Nobody else except those messengers has any Gospel; nobody else has any good news; for the simple reason that nobody else has any news. Those runners gather impetus as they run. Ages afterwards they still speak as if something had just happened. They have not lost the speed and momentum of messengers; they have hardly lost, as it were, the wild eyes of witnesses. In the Catholic Church, which is the cohort of the message, there are still those headlong acts of holiness that speak of something rapid and recent; a self-sacrifice that startles the world like a suicide. But it is not a suicide; it is not pessimistic; it is still as optimistic as St. Francis of the flowers and birds. It is newer in spirit than the newest schools of thought; and it is almost certainly on the eve of new triumphs. For these men serve a mother who seems to grow more beautiful as new generations rise up and call her blessed. We might sometimes fancy that the Church grows younger as the world grows old.”
“The lost man, who has no belongings, no outside interests, no personal ties of any sort - not even a name. Possessed of but one thought, interest and passion - the revolution. A man who has broken with Society, broken with its laws and conventions. He must despise the opinions of others, and be prepared for death and torture at any time. Hard towards himself, he must be hard to others, and in his heart there must be no place for love, friendship, gratitude or even honor.”
“Now on, the revolution and all the future revolutions must continue without resorting to violence. I am not talking about simply nonviolence, I am talking about having an actual and utter repulsiveness towards violence. This is the fundamental requirement of a civilized revolution.”
“Revolutionären är revolutionen.”
“Orättvisa kommer inte att förstöra vår värld, likgiltighet gentemot orättvisa kommer att förstöra vår värld.”
“He who tells the people false revolutionary myths, he who amuses them with sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.”
“Human Helpline (The Sonnet) Neither Christ, nor Krishna, nor Superman, No imagination can rescue humanity. Each of us is the only helpline, Human salvation is human responsibility. Enough with these prayer and rituals, Now awake from the sleep of subjugation. As heroes fraught with reason and conscience, We must rise to break all submission. Progress demands a life of revolution, Self-induced slavery won t do. The more you seek a savior outside, The more you turn into boneless goo. Of all life on earth the human being is peerless. Only those called sapiens roar for the helpless.”
“The first frictions and difficulties with the northern giant began immediately. These frictions were logical if you consider that a country accustomed to special treatment suddenly saw that this little colony in the Caribbean irreverently sought to speak the only language a revolution can speak: the language of equal treatment.”
“[The young communist] should have a great sense of duty, a sense of duty toward the society we are building, toward our fellow human beings, and toward all humanity around the world. That is something that must characterize the Young Communist. And along with that there must be deep sensitivity to all problems, sensitivity to injustice; a spirit that rebels against every wrong, whoever commits it; [applause] questioning anything not understood, discussing and asking for clarification on whatever is not clear; declaring war on formalism of all types; always being open to new experiences in order to take the many years of experience of humanity s advance along the road to socialism and apply them to our country s concrete conditions, to the realities that exist in Cuba. Each and every one of you must think about how to change reality, how to make it better.”
“[The young communist] must always pay attention to the mass of human beings he lives among. Every Young Communist must fundamentally be human, so human that he draws closer to humanity s best qualities. Through work, through study, and through ongoing solidarity with the people and all the peoples of the world, he distills the best of what man is. Developing to the utmost the sensitivity to feel anguish when a human being is murdered in any corner of the world and to feel enthusiasm when a new banner of freedom is raised in any corner of the world. [Applause] The Young Communist cannot be limited by national borders. The Young Communist must practice proletarian internationalism and feel it as his own.”
“In the transition to socialism, man starts to see himself reflected in his work and to understand his full stature as a human being through the object created, through the work accomplished. Work no longer entails surrendering a part of his being in the form of labor power sold, which no longer belongs to him, but represents an expression and extension of himself, a contribution to the common social existence in which he is reflected.”