Proletariat Quotes - Page 3

• You're gonna have to keep on saying that - I am the proletariat, I am the people. I am not the pig. You've got to make a distinction.

  Fred Hampton

  Pigs, People, Distinction

  89 Copy quote

• The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some super-personal force: the Race, the Party, History, the Proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.

  Lloyd Billingsley

  Party, Race, Evil

  Lloyd Billingsley (1986). “Religion's rebel son: fanaticism in our time”, Multnomah Pub

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. "We have a single system," he wrote, and "in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses."

  Gore Vidal

  Party, Wings, Two

  Gore Vidal (2004). “Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia”, p.50, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Class, States, Working Class

  Speech, May 27, 1922.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The old freedom sufficiently survives in the mind of the wage earner to give him the illusion that, while accepting insurance and maintenance from the capitalist state, he can still be a full citizen. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too. He is mistaken. The great capitalists who procured these regulations from the politicians knew what they were at. They were catching their proletariat in a net, and now they hold it fast.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Thinking, Cake

  Hilaire Belloc (2009). “Essays of a Catholic”, p.13, TAN Books

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the 18th century, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, and Richard Arkwright pioneered the water-propelled spinning frame which led to the mass production of cotton. This was truly revolutionary. The cotton manufacturers created a whole new class of people - the urban proletariat. The structure of society itself would never be the same.

  A. N. Wilson

  Class, People, Water

  16 Copy quote

• A 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' becomes again another dictator.

  Dorothy Day

  Dictator, Dictatorship

  8 Copy quote

• Almost all religions provide opportunities for human beings to convince themselves of their own righteousness, to speak in the name of God, and even to go to war on God's behalf. This 'blasphemy of certainty' is also rife among secularists who in their case have not God but science or the proletariat on their side.

  Stephen Prothero

  Atheist, War, Opportunity

  Stephen Prothero (2010). “God Is Not One”, p.356, ReadHowYouWant.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Coupled with Usury, Unrestricted Competition destroys the small man for the profit of the great and in so doing produces that mass of economically unfree citizens whose very political freedom comes in question because it has no foundation in any economic freedom, that is, any useful proportion of property to support it. Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Men, Support

  41 Copy quote

• With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.

  Leon Trotsky

  Order, Class, Giving

  Leon Trotsky (1935). “The defence of terrorism: terrorism and communism; a reply to Karl Kautsky”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Litigation: A form of hell whereby money is transferred from the pockets of the proletariat to that of lawyers.

  Kin Hubbard

  Money, Law, Pockets

  7 Copy quote

• This independent Negro movement is able to intervene with terrific force upon the general social and political life of the nation, despite the fact that it is waged under the banner of democratic rights ... [and] is able to exercise a powerful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat, that it has got a great contribution to make to the development of the proletariat in the United States, and that it is in itself a constituent part of the struggle for socialism.

  C. L. R. James

  Powerful, Struggle, Independent

  12 Copy quote

• The main form of struggle is war; the main form of organization is the army... . Without armed struggle there would be no place for the proletariat, there will be no place for the people, there will be no place for the Communist Party, and there will be no victory in revolution.

  Mao Zedong

  War, Party, Struggle

  4 Copy quote

• Precisely because Marx was convinced that the cause of the proletariat was of decisive importance for the whole future of mankind, he wanted to create for that cause not a flimsy platform of rhetorical invective or wishful thinking, but the rock-like foundation of scientific truth.

  Ernest Mandel

  Thinking, Rocks, Foundation

  9 Copy quote

• The history of mankind is a history of the subjugation and exploitation of a great majority of people by an elite few by what has been appropriately termed the 'ruling class'. The ruling class has many manifestations. It can take the form of a religious orthodoxy, a monarchy, a dictatorship of the proletariat, outright fascism, or, in the case of the United States, corporate statism. In each instance the ruling class relies on academics, scholars and 'experts' to legitimize and provide moral authority for its hegemony over the masses.

  Ed Crane

  Religious, Class, People

  8 Copy quote

• No more painters, no more scribblers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no more royalists, no more radicals, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more communists, no more proletariat, no more democrats, no more republicans, no more bourgeois, no more aristocrats, no more arms, no more police, no more nations, an end at last to all this stupidity, nothing left, nothing at all, nothing, nothing.

  Louis Aragon

  Stupidity, Police, Musician

  36 Copy quote

• If I can't have the proletariat as my chosen people any longer, at least capitalism remains my Satan.

  T. J. Clark

  People, Satan, Chosen

  5 Copy quote

• China is now suffering from poverty, not from unequal distribution of wealth. Where there are inequalities of wealth, the methods of Marx can, of course, be used; a class war can be advocated to destroy the inequalities. But in China, where industry is not yet developed, Marx's class war and dictatorship of the proletariat are impracticable.

  Sun Yat-sen

  War, Class, Suffering

  "Capital and the State". Book by Sun Yat-sen, 1924.

  77 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interest of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

  Karl Marx

  Country, Struggle, Different

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (2016). “The Communist Manifesto (Diversion Classics)”, p.18, Diversion Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality, must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia.

  Joseph Stalin

  Struggle, Russia, Goal

  "J. V. Stalin Works" Volume 1, by Joseph Stalin, Foreign Languages Publishing House, (pp. 279-94), 1954.

  203 Copy quote

  Show source

• Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society.

  Joseph Stalin

  Country, Socialist

  "Problems of Leninism". Book by Joseph Stalin, August 1924.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Terror, as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class, is historically justified, precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break the political will of the intelligentsia, pacify the professional man of various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to its own aims within the field of their specialties.

  Leon Trotsky

  Men, Political Will, Class

  17 Copy quote

• Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, recognizes that it is man's destiny to unite and not divide, and understands that creating proletariats and scapegoats and second-class citizens is a mean and contemptible activity.

  Northrop Frye

  Real, Mean, Destiny

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham, Jean O'Grady, David Staines (2003). “Northrop Frye on Canada”, p.416, University of Toronto Press

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same thing.

  Graham Greene

  Thinking, Government, People

  5 Copy quote

• The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune.

  Friedrich Engels

  Mean, Organization, Paris

  Letter to Philipp Van Patten, www.marxists.org. April 18, 1883.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source