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“Democracy, as a form of government, has the advantage of making everybody a participant in war... This is one of the strongest reasons for expecting democracy to survive.”
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―
“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”
― The Will to Doubt
― The Will to Doubt
“You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”
― Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
― Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
“By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’.¹ But secondly—and this is much more important—I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a
single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.”
― Notes on Nationalism
single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.”
― Notes on Nationalism
“History is the memory of states,' wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the 'peace' that Europe had before the French Revolution was 'restored' by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation - a world not restored but disintegrated.
My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present
My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present
Marx's Capital Volumes I, II, III (Study Group - 2020 and beyond)
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