Quotes

A collection of quotes that stuck with me. There will probably be a great deal of political stuff here since those tend to stick longer than anything else.

During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.

Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.

We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes.

Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.

YOU - What is beauty?
KLAASJE - When you have the fewest deviations from the norm. I've been told it's a type of mediocrity that I possess.

All we can do is to laugh as we gaze at this spectacle, for one cannot help laughing when one sees a man fighting his own imagination, smashing his own inventions, while at the same time heatedly asserting that he is smashing his opponent.

Moralists don’t really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child’s toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn’t change – not even incremental change. It is *control*. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.

Hitler waited for Napoleon's answer:
"Tell me, how will my battle with Russia end?"
He replied sleepily from his grave:
"Here, my friend, I'll make room, lie down here with me."

If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

For the bourgeoisie, freedom of the press meant freedom for the rich to publish and for the capitalists to control the newspapers, a practice which in all countries, including even the freest, produced a corrupt press.