Gabriel Bley > Gabriel's Quotes

“Your love is like murder.”
― Alexander Bogdanov

“Scientific and technical rules are one typical example of pragmatic norms. These rules do not coerce anyone to do anything. They only point out more useful ways to reach a specific goal. Their imperative is contingent and hypothetical. Externally coercive norms impose on a person his very goals, or, at the very least, the limits of these goals. Pragmatic norms offer a choice.”
― Alexander Bogdanov

“Life's monumental progress and humanity's energies are always accompanied with the massive expansion of social contrasts and contradictions.
It is not hard to understand just how great the significance is of anything that brings a bit of order into this chaos, anything that introduces some organization or contains this disharmony - in other words, the significance of anything that acts as a coercive norm. This is why social creativity in this sphere unfolds with immense energy and gives rise to an immense wealth of forms. It is a result of the harsh necessities of life.”
― Alexander Bogdanov

“A human enemy does not push us toward the path of progress nearly as forcefully and accurately as our other great and mysteriously enchanted adversary - nature.
The internal social struggle that the individualist takes as the only possible and unquestionably necessary engine of progress in reality appears rather as its barrier. It wastes energy and dissipates the creative attention of men.
Man's struggle with nature - the main and universal engine of progress - is entirely devoid of such detrimental side effects.
Progress may be accomplished with the greatest speed and energy, the greatest versatility and harmony, only in a society that would have comradely cooperation as its form and the whole of humanity as its limit. There the forces of development will become infinite.”
― Alexander Bogdanov

“Just how much more vivid, bright, and deep must the consciousness of the collective goal be in a society wherein this goal becomes apparent not only in exceptional circumstances, but instead permeates the entirety of social life and becomes directly embodied in the organized system of collective labor.”
― Alexander Bogdanov

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement.”
― Vladimir Lenin, What Is to Be Done?

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State and Revolution

“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
― Vladimir Ilich Lenin

“Sometimes - history needs a push.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Three keys to success: read, read, read.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”
― Lenin

“When a liberal is abused, he says, ‘Thank God they didn’t beat me.’ When he is beaten, he thanks God they didn’t kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“Every society is three meals away from chaos”
― Vladimir Lenin

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay”
― Vladimir Ilich Lenin

“All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov