David

“The 'Manifesto' being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and the oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoisie—without, at the same time, and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles.

This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we, both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845.”
― Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

“The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification of inequality.”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.”
― Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?

“I have been in many awful places, but have never seen such fear as in the eyes of those who are trying to survive in Haiti's indescribable slums during the Clinton backed terror, or such misery as among poor peasants in southern Colombia, driven from their devastated lands by US chemical warfare -fumigation- and much more like it around the world. Even after violence achieves its goals and it's relaxed, it leaves a residual culture of terror as the surviving Salvadorean Jesuits observed. Yet somehow, communities endure and survive.”
― Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy