Social Revolution Quotes

“One guy yelled at me, 'You stupid bitch, how do you live like that with nothing in your brain?' Well, that did it. I wasn't going to put up with that. Ok, I'm not so smart. I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running, and it's the working classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws out big words that working-class people can't understand? What kind of crap social revolution is that? I mean, I'd like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody's really being exploited, we've got to put a stop to it. That's what I believe, and that's why I ask questions. Am I right, or what?”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.”
― Karl Marx, On the Question of Free Trade

“you can't hide from a hurricane under a beach umbrella”
― Philip Rahv

“You have the right to promote your own happiness just like everyone else, just like me. Your present dream has been shattered, but you can dream another. You should know that 'you can't relive old dreams.' Even if you force them to come true, they won't bring you happiness.”
― Mao Dun, Rainbow

“O.K., so I’m not so smart. I’m working class. But it’s the working class that keeps the world running, and it’s the working class that gets exploited. What the hell kind of revolution have you got just tossing out big words that working-class people can’t understand? What the hell kind of social revolution is that? I mean, I’d like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody’s really being exploited, we’ve got to put a stop to it. That’s what I believe, and that’s why I ask questions. Am I right, or what?”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Varlıklarının toplumsal üretiminde, insanlar, belirli ilişkiler kurarlar; bu üretim ilişkileri, onların maddi üretici güçlerinin belirli bir gelişme derecesine tekabül eder. Bu üretim ilişkilerinin tümü, toplumun iktisadi yapısının, belirli toplumsal bilinç şekillerine tekabül eden bir hukuksal ve siyasal üstyapının, üzerinde yükseldiği gerçek temeli oluşturur. Maddi yaşamın üretim tarzı, genel olarak toplumsal, siyasal ve entelektüel yaşam sürecini koşullandırır. İnsanların varlığını belirleyen şey, bilinçleri değildir; tam tersine, onların bilincini belirleyen, toplumsal varlıklarıdır. Gelişmelerinin belirli bir aşamasında toplumun maddi üretici güçleri, o zamana kadar içinde hareket ettikleri mevcut üretim ilişkilerine, ya da bunların hukuksal ifadesinden başka bir şey olmayan mülkiyet ilişkilerine ters düşerler. Üretici güçlerin gelişmesinin biçimleri olan bu ilişkiler, onların engelleri haline gelirler. O zaman bir toplumsal devrim çağı başlar. İktisadi temeldeki değişme, kocaman üstyapıyı, büyük ya da az bir hızla altüst eder.”
― Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

“Дело в том, что на оккупированных немцами территориях Холокост был также и социальной революцией. Евреев сгоняли в гетто и впоследствии уничтожали. Немцы забирали все, что могли увезти с собой, но недвижимость доставалась местному населению. Это было значительно радикальнее, чем все, что позднее делали коммунисты. Коммунисты не были заинтересованы в том, чтобы отменить результаты этой социальной революции. Между ними и местным населением существовала своего рода договоренность: не упоминать об этом воровстве [161—62].”
― Timothy Snyder, Украинская история, российская политика, европейское будущее

“The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. With raising a reading level from second to third. With simplifying history and writing it down (or reciting it) for old folks. With helping illiterates fill out food-stamp forms--for they must eat, revolution or not. The dull, frustrating work with our people is the work of the black revolutionary artist. It means, most of all, staying close them to be there whenever they need you.
Essay: Duties of the Black Revolutionary Artist”
― Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

“With initial success, every social revolution simultaneously does two things: It attracts to itself fresh forces and strength, and at the same time it crystallizes the opposition.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

“Revolution comes from the backbone of a person, not the barrel of a gun.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“I now accept and embrace social change and my role in it. I embrace the newness and opportunities in every new day. I now live a life of truth in all I do.”
― Andrew Lutts, How to Live a Magnificent Life: Becoming the Living Expression of Higher Consciousness

“While entrusting the intellectuals with a critical role in the forthcoming revolution, Bakunin at the same time cautioned them against attempting to seize political power on their own, in the manner of the Jacobins or their eager disciple Auguste Blanqui. On this point Bakunin was most emphatic. The very idea that a tiny band of conspirators could execute a coup d'état for the benefit of the people was, in his derisive words, a "heresy against common sense and historical experience." These strictures were aimed as much at Marx as at Blanqui. For both Marx and Bakunin, the ultimate goal of the revolution was a stateless society of men liberated from the bonds of oppression, a new world in which the free development of each was the condition for the free development of all. But where Marx envisioned an intervening proletarian dictatorship that would eliminate the last vestiges of the bourgeois order, Bakunin was bent on abolishing the state outright. The cardinal error committed by all revolutions of the past, in Bakunin's judgment, was that one government was turned out only to be replaced by another. The true revolution, then, would not capture political power; it would be a social revolution, ridding the world of the state itself.”
― Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists

“It is in order to obtain for all of us joys that are now reserved to a few; in order to give leisure and the possibility of developing everyone’s intellectual capacities, that the social revolution must guarantee daily bread to all. After bread has been secured, leisure is the supreme aim.”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings

“Waiting for unity is just inviting inertia.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“Keyboard of Revolution (The Sonnet)

I wrote most of my works,
On broken down laptops.
Perhaps that's why they work well,
With this broken down world.
I don't write to butter the assheads of pomposity,
My duty is to till the soil of grassroots reform.
That's why I feel at home creating on humble machines,
The very thought of fancy devices makes my stomach turn.
I once said to you, ripped jeans and twenty dollar shirt,
That's how we change the world, how we build the world.
Often a fancy exterior is indicative of a rotten interior,
It's a simple life that facilitates a magnificent world.
I don't need thousand dollar machines to cause ascension.
Give me a keyboard, I'll give you revolution.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“The day a politician acts nonpartisan, is the day politics disappears from earth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Fever is not actually a sign of sickness, it is a sign that your body is fighting infection. Likewise, revolution is not a sign of disorder, it is a sign that the society is fighting the infection of inhumanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“When the civilians have grown out of the need for government, and are capable enough to carry the responsibility of their society on their own, there will be no reason for the state to exist. Thus, having served their brief role in the evolution of society, all constructs of state, government and representation will go extinct on their own - just like the tail on our back disappeared when we had no use for them, once we started to walk upright on our feet, breaking free from our traditional habit of hanging from the trees.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Representation without accountability is just as undemocratic as taxation without representation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“In the face of reformer civilians, even the politicians themselves will forget which party they belong to, so will their next of kin.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Good engineer designs gadgets, great engineer designs society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“Slippers are democracy’s first line of defense, bullets it’s last.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“Every class which struggles for its enfranchisement seeks to realize a social ideal, in complete opposition with that of the ruling class.”
― Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy

“The real contradiction between Marx's scientific socialism and all bourgeois philosophy and sciences consists entirely in the fact that scientific socialism is the theoretical expression of a revolutionary process, which will end with the total abolition of these bourgeois philosophies and sciences, together with the abolition of the material relations that find their ideological expression in them.”
― Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy

“The true dialectic of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority — that is the way the road runs.”
― Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution,: And Leninism or Marxism?

“A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people. And if it is to have any chance of victory, it must be able to do immediately as much for the peasants as the French bourgeoisie, mutatis mutandis, did in its revolution for the French peasants of that time. A fine idea, that the rule of labour involves the subjugation of land labour! But here Mr Bakunin's innermost thoughts emerge. He understands absolutely nothing about the social revolution, only its political phrases. Its economic conditions do not exist for him. As all hitherto existing economic forms, developed or undeveloped, involve the enslavement of the worker (whether in the form of wage-labourer, peasant etc.), he believes that a radical revolution is possible in all such forms alike. Still more! He wants the European social revolution, premised on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples, not to surpass this level [...] The will, and not the economic conditions, is the foundation of his social revolution.”
― Karl Marx, Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy