Ryan Mack > Ryan's Quotes

“Art that puts itself in dependence on orthodoxy,even under the most progressive doctrine,is doomed to failure.”
― Anatoli Rybakov, Дети Арбата. Книга 2: Страх

“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.”
― Thomas Sankara

“And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“he who feeds you, controls you”
― Thomas Sankara

“Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.”
― Thomas Sankara, Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

“One thing is sure:the idea that each nation is racially pure is a myth, especially a nation with a history of four thousand years.”
― Anatoli Rybakov, Heavy Sand

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

“Why should we place Christ at the top and summit of the human race? Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than Socrates? Was he more patient, more charitable, than Epictetus? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than Epicurus? In what respect was he the superior of Zoroaster? Was he gentler than Lao-tsze, more universal than Confucius? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior to those of Zeno? Did he express grander truths than Cicero? Was his mind subtler than Spinoza’s? Was his brain equal to Kepler’s or Newton’s? Was he grander in death – a sublimer martyr than Bruno? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the equal of Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, About The Holy Bible

“The smart tyrant flatters the people with words,while with deeds he destroys them.”
― Anatoli Rybakov, Дети Арбата. Книга 2: Страх

“When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognises the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, On the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State

“Carelessness on the part of revolutionaries has always been the best aid the police have.”
― Victor Serge

“Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.”
― Karl Marx

“[Responding to the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce's question whether he traced his descent from an ape on his mother's or his father's side]

A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who … plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.”
― Thomas Huxley

“Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

“I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”
― Michael Crichton

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Workingmen of all countries unite!”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth, where he first appeared as a weakly member of the animal kingdom, and on which each individual of his species must ever again appear as a helpless infant... is a direct fulfilment of all, or of most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales. All these possessions he has acquired through culture. Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires - or forbidden to him - he attributed to these gods. One may say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals of his culture. Now he has himself approached very near to realizing this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself. But only, it is true, in the way that ideals are usually realized in the general experience of humanity. Not completely; in some respects not at all, in others only by halves. Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory organs; but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble at times... Future ages will produce further great advances in this realm of culture, probably inconceivable now, and will increase man's likeness to a god still more.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through.”
― Karl Marx

“Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.”
― Karl Marx

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates

“Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear

“One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
― Albert Einstein

“That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
― George Carlin

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.”
― Mark Twain

“History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.”
― Jeffrey Sachs

“Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse”
― Joseph Brodsky

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.”
― Sigmund Freud, Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873-1939;