Antonio Gramsci Quotes

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• The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters

  Antonio Gramsci

  Struggle, Dying, Monsters

  1968 Copy quote

• Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.

  Antonio Gramsci

  School, Media, Order

  368 Copy quote

• I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Inspirational, Life Changing, Optimistic

  Antonio Gramsci (2011). “Letters from Prison”, p.299, Columbia University Press

  251 Copy quote

• What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Responsibility, People, Doe

  Antonio Gramsci, Amadeo Bordiga, Angelo Tasca (1977). “Selections from political writings (1910-1920)”

  262 Copy quote

• The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Challenges, Becoming, Illusion

  209 Copy quote

• The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Knowledge And Power, Diversity, Dying

  249 Copy quote

• To tell the truth is revolutionary.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Revolutionary, Telling The Truth, Truth Is

  Antonio Gramsci (1957). “The Open Marxism of Antonio Gramsci: Translated and Annotated by Carl Marzani”

  159 Copy quote

• The philosophy of praxis does not aim at the peaceful resolution of existing contradictions in history and society, but is the very theory of these contradictions. It is not the instrument of government of the dominant groups in order to gain the consent and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes. It is the expression of subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the impossible deceptions of the upper class, and even more their own.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Art, Philosophy, Exercise

  237 Copy quote

• One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality

  Antonio Gramsci

  Struggle, Reality, Feelings

  128 Copy quote

• Indifference is the dead weight of history.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Weight, Indifference

  Antonio Gramsci (1975). “History, Philosophy and Culture in the Young Gramsci”

  131 Copy quote

• If you beat your head against the wall, it is your head that breaks and not the wall.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Wall, Break, Beats

  Antonio Gramsci (1968). “The modern prince: and other writings”

  79 Copy quote

• Every State is a dictatorship.

  Antonio Gramsci

  States, Dictatorship

  Antonio Gramsci (1978). “Selections from political writings (1921-1926)”

  129 Copy quote

• Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Common Sense

  105 Copy quote

• Man is above all else mind, consciousness -- that is, he is a product of history, not of nature.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Men, Mind, Consciousness

  116 Copy quote

• All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Men, Function

  "Selections from the Prison Notebooks". Book by Antonio Gramsci, 1971.

  110 Copy quote

• The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born

  Antonio Gramsci

  Inspirational, Dying, Facts

  "Selections from the Prison Notebooks". Book by Antonio Gramsci, pp. 275-276, 1971.

  135 Copy quote

• I give culture this meaning: exercise of thought, acquisition of general ideas, habit of connecting causes and effects ... I believe that it means thinking well, whatever one thinks, and therefore acting well, whatever one does.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Believe, Mean, Exercise

  68 Copy quote

• Telling the truth is always revolutionary

  Antonio Gramsci

  Revolutionary, Telling The Truth, Truth Is

  73 Copy quote

• Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Optimism, Spirit, Pessimism

  26 Copy quote

• It indicates a person who has not only good manners but who possesses a sense of balance, a sure mastery of himself, a moral discipline that permits him to subordinate voluntarily his own selfish interest to the wider interests of the society in which he lives. The gentleman, therefore is a cultural person in the noblest sense of the word, if by culture we mean not simply wealth of intellectual knowledge but also the ability to fulfil one's duty and understand one's fellow man by respecting / every principle, every opinion, every faith that is sincerely professed.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Selfish, Mean, Men

  149 Copy quote

• Before puberty the child's personality has not yet formed and it is easier to guide its life and make it acquire specific habits of order, discipline, and work.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Children, Order, Discipline

  Antonio Gramsci (2011). “Letters from Prison”, p.348, Columbia University Press

  96 Copy quote

• From the moment when a subordinate class becomes really independent and dominant, calling into being a new type of State, the need arises concretely, of building a new intellectual and moral order, i.e. a new type of society, and hence the need to elaborate the most universal concepts, the most refined and decisive ideological weapons.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Independent, Order, Class

  78 Copy quote

• A social group can, indeed must, already exercise 'leadership' before winning governmental power (this is indeed one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to 'lead' as well.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Exercise, Winning, Groups

  99 Copy quote

• How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?

  Antonio Gramsci

  Strong, People, Parent

  46 Copy quote

• Is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one' own personality?

  Antonio Gramsci

  Work Out, Personality, Brain

  42 Copy quote

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