Bob Avakian > Quotes

“One of these Roman senators says to the other: Don’t you actually believe in the gods? The second senator replies: “Privately I believe in none of them; publicly I believe in them all.”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“In the midst of this, and specifically in reference to this distribution of free food to poor people, Ronald Reagan declared that he hoped there would be an outbreak of botulism (deadly food poisoning)!”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“Well, in the Bible, not only does Moses, acting on the Lord’s behalf, kill thousands of his own people, the Israelites, because they worshipped an idol (see Exodus, chapter 32, especially verses 25 to 29); but, later, when the Lord learns that the men of Israel—here we go again—are having sexual relations with the women of Moab, and are being seduced by these women into worshipping their gods instead of “the one true God,” then that “one true God” orders Moses to “take all the chiefs of the people of Israel and impale them in the desert sun.” (This is once again from the book of Numbers, chapter 25, verses 1 to 5.)”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“Or, if you read through the book of Isaiah, which was supposed to be one of Jesus’s favorite parts of the Jewish scripture, you will see (for example, in chapters 11 through 14) how Isaiah goes on and on about the revenge that is going to be taken on Babylon, for oppressing the Jewish people, and on other nations who are opposed to and practice different religions than that of “the one true God.” Once again, the women of Babylon and these other nations are going to be raped, the babies are going to have their heads bashed in, and all the men are going to be slaughtered. Over and over and over again, this is proclaimed, sung about in hymns almost, by the prophet Isaiah.”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“But then, today, one sees these zombie-like Christian fundamentalists at abortion clinics, wrapping themselves in the Bible, accusing the women who have abortions and the medical personnel who perform them of being “baby-killers”—distorting what actually happens with an abortion, obscuring the reality that more than 90% of abortions take place during the first three months of pregnancy when the fetus is very small and not highly developed, and is far from being capable of life on its own. These Christian fundamentalist fanatics try to portray things as if fully developed and independent little children are being killed when fetuses are aborted. But, along with the gross ignorance that they are expressing and promoting, there is the profound hypocrisy and irony that the very Bible which they are wielding as a weapon against women with unwanted pregnancies—that very same Bible calls over and over again for slaughtering actual babies and infants.”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“It’s all these different capitalists, in far-flung parts of the world—and that’s all the more so today: in far-flung parts of the world—it’s all these capitalists in competition with each other, forcing each other to find ways to more efficiently produce, and more effectively exploit people, even if that means throwing a bunch of people out of work, or off the land, or whatever.”
― Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation

“Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves. (Numbers 31:17–18)”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“What does it say about this “God” that, even though he is “all-powerful” and could easily have prevented the Israelites from being enslaved in the first place, and then subsequently could have freed them once they were enslaved, he would instead choose to intentionally prolong the suffering of both the Israelites and the Egyptians merely so that he could show off his—powers? Is that God any kind of God to uphold or believe in?”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“Here, too, Ronald Reagan is a model, in a perverse sense. During the 1980s, in Africa, just as in Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America, the U.S. supported, financed and helped to organize the most bloodthirsty death-squads (and governments that spawned these death-squads), which carried out unspeakable atrocities. For example, in Mozambique, when a government came to power which the U.S. identified as standing in the way of its interests and tending in the direction of alignment with the Soviet Union and its camp, the Reagan government supported and aided an opposition group called RENAMO, which, over a period of years, systematically carried out the most grotesque brutality and mass murder. RENAMO forces would kill and maim people, then they would go into the hospitals where people were being treated and they would kill and maim still more. All this was organized and funded by the CIA and the U.S. government under the “kindly” Ronald Reagan.”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“Of course, in a larger sense, all this was taking place within the overall framework of the capitalist system, and that is why, although there were major changes—and specifically major changes in the situation of Black people—this did not bring about the end of oppression, even as it did bring about significant changes in the forms of that oppression.”
― Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation

“So, it’s private appropriation on the basis of socialized production. That’s the fundamental contradiction at the heart of capitalism.”
― Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation

“As a sharp illustration of this, there was a very good article20 on the revcom.us site about this capitalist who had investments in Bangladesh but who wanted to be a socially-conscious capitalist. This article ran down all the ways in which he tried to do things differently, do them in a way that would not so viciously exploit the women working in the plants that he owned—not have them in such horrific conditions, give them more social benefits—and how he was forced to give that up by this very driving force of anarchy, by the competition from other capitalists doing things in more efficient, more ruthless ways. So even though he was a good-hearted capitalist—and that may sound like an oxymoron (a contradiction in terms), but he was actually a good-hearted capitalist—still, he couldn’t keep up his “kind capitalism” because of the basic dynamics of what drives capitalism.”
― Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation

“Not only is the Bible not literally true—not only is it a book full of what can charitably be described as a hodge-podge of remarkably violent legends, tall tales and tribal history, interspersed with a little lyric poetry, a lot of revenge-filled fantastical rants and some origin myths—but these were all told and then set down in writing to reinforce first, a patriarchal desert agriculture society several thousand years ago, then a slave empire in Rome, and then an oppressive feudal society in Europe. It is filled with codes of behavior that are either hypocritical or openly oppressive. Now this same ancient stuff is being adapted to reinforce the capitalist oppression of today, in a 25-million-dollar, cleverly-promoted, Hollywood film.”
― Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World

“if you’re a capitalist, you don’t buy people—you buy their ability to work.”
― Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation