#to

Some foreign states will act against a dictatorship only to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country. ↗

— Gene Sharp

#foreign-states #dictatorship

Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin), your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold. Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? ... If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages. I hope you will not answer me that Power is for political men a professional duty, and that any attack against that power must be considered as a threat against which one must guard oneself at any price. This opinion is no longer held even by kings... Are you so blinded, so much a prisoner of your own authoritarian ideas, that you do not realise that being at the head of European Communism, you have no right to soil the ideas which you defend by shameful methods ... What future lies in store for Communism when one of its most important defenders tramples in this way every honest feeling? ↗

— Pyotr Kropotkin

#anarcho-communism #communism #dictatorship #freedom #lenin

[N]icht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschiedenen [...] sondern durch Eisen und Blut. ↗

— Otto von Bismarck

#dictatorship #history #war #dictatorship

The all but unanimous judgment seems to be that we, the democracies, are just as responsible for the rise of the dictators as the dictatorships themselves, and perhaps more so. ↗

— Harry Emerson Fosdick

#dictatorship

Obviously, there must be some connection between the subordination of actual individuals and the grotesque exaltation of symbolic ones like Kim Il Sung. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#dictatorship #kim-il-sung #north-korea #psychology #subordination

The dictatorship is like an aria that never becomes an opera. ↗

— Emilia Pardo Bazán

#opera #political #dictatorship

You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity--in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#ontology #change

Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself. ↗

— Erin Morgenstern

#habits #reasons #stories #the-night-circus #truth

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#art form #black #form #literature #rigorous

Power is the engine of the world,and sex and money its oil and lubricants.God is at best the invocation before you start the engine-meaningless if you have no engine to start!God is a goli,a multi-flavoured pill,invented by those who have power,money and sex, to give to those who have none! Love is another great goli.Some days we too swallow these golis.They feel good,like a joint,a temporary high!But they are not the reality.The reality is power,money,sex! And yes,there's another goli-morality! ↗

— Tarun J. Tejpal

#the-story-of-my-assasins #love