Julian

“I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience…”
― E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class

“As a means of alleviating poverty, Christian charity was worse than useless, as could be seen in the Papal states, which abounded in it. But it was popular not only among the traditionalist rich, who cherished it as a safeguard against the evil of equal rights... but also among the traditionalist poor, who were profoundly convinced that they had a right to crumbs from the rich man's table.”
― Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848

“Memory is life. It is always carried by groups of living people, and therefore it is in permanent evolution.”
― Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age Of Empire 1875-1914

“Nada importa, en la historia, el valor abstracto de una idea. Lo que importa es su valor concreto.”
― José Carlos Mariátegui