This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
But by no means limit ourselves to address the problem of religion in the abstract-to-idealistically, as a matter of reasoning completely detached from the class struggle (as they often radical bourgeois democrats). It would be absurd to imagine that, in a society based on the endless oppression and degradation of the toiling masses, we may remove religious prejudices with a mere preaching. It would give evidence of a bourgeois narrow-mindedness, lose sight of the fact that religious oppression of humanity is only the fruit or reflection aspect of economic oppression in society. Neither the books nor preaching can enlighten the proletariat positively if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. The union in this genuinely revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class to make the earth a heaven, is more important to us than unity of proletarian criteria about imaginary paradise of heaven. 's why we do not represent or declare in our program that we are atheists , which is why we do not ban or prohibit proletarians who still cling to the vestiges of the old prejudices that come into closer contact with our party. Always preach a scientific philosophy, we must combat the absurdities of Christians, but this does not mean that the religious question should be placed in the foreground where it does not belong. We must not allow the forces oriented in a genuinely revolutionary struggle, economic and political, where infringements on behalf of opinions and conceptions of much less importance, they quickly lose any political significance and are gradually relegated to the pile by the normal course of economic development. The reactionary bourgeoisie, here as elsewhere, always strives stoke religious antagonisms in order to divert attention from the masses of those really important and fundamental issues, both economic and political, that the Russian proletariat is in the process of deciding through the practice of the revolutionary struggle. This reactionary tactic of dividing the proletarian forces, which today is mainly manifested in the pogroms of the Black Hundreds, tomorrow can be expressed in more subtle forms. Anyway, we know oppose this our propaganda firm sustained and patient towards proletarian solidarity and scientific philosophy that will prevent differences arising secondary.
Democracy | Freedom | Inferiority |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The first step towards the emancipation of the people from this penal servitude is the confiscation of the landed estates, the introduction of workers’ control and the nationalization of the banks. The next steps will be the nationalization of the factories, the compulsory organization of the whole population in consumers’ societies, which are at the same time societies for the sale of products, and the state monopoly of the trade in grain and other necessities.
Democracy | Individuality | Revolution | Will |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organize those forces for the struggle.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The entire trend of development is towards abolition of coercive domination of one part of society over another.
Democracy | Freedom | Organization | Proletariat | Purpose | Purpose | Time |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
An infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct.
Democracy | Government | Government |
The funny thing is, people's perceptions of what a song is about is usually wrong a majority of the time. But they're still going to read what they want to into it.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
Democracy | Government | Government |
Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world. Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction.
Awakening | Democracy | Fate | Global | Man | Personality | Salvation | Time | Fate |
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Blame | Democracy | Duty | Freedom | Government | Obligation | Responsibility | Sin | Will | Wrong | Government | Understand |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
When you study history and look at every civilization that has grown up and died off, they all leave one remnant: a major sports coliseum at the heart of their capital. Our fate can be different; but only if we start doing things differently.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.
I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.
A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.
What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!
Democracy | Free press | Free speech | Opinion | Safe | Speech | War | World |