Ulli Diemer

Radical Digressions

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Words of Wisdom

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

— Mark Twain

Whenever a particular freedom is put in question, freedom in general is put in question.

— Karl Marx

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.

— Aldous Huxley

I didn’t really say everything I said.

— Yogi Berra

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

— Albert Einstein

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

— George Orwell

“I've noticed,” said Mr. Keuner, “that a lot of people are put off by our teaching because we know the answer to everything. Couldn’t we, in the interests of propaganda, draw up a list of questions which appear to us quite unresolved?”

— Berthold Brecht, Anecdotes of Mr. Keuner

I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

— Bertrand Russell

Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes, turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.

— William Morris, A Dream of John Ball

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

— Andre Gide

Democracy is the road to socialism.

— Karl Marx

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

— Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

— Bertrand Russell

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

— Albert Schweitzer

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer.

— William Blake

Every new onset and every fresh victory of the political struggle is transformed into a powerful impetus for the economic struggle, extending at the same time its external possibilities and intensifying the inner urge of the workers to better their position and their desire to struggle. After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle shoot forth. And conversely. The workers’ condition of ceaseless economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting energy alive in every political interval.

— Rosa Luxemburg

I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakenly on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for... Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom.

— Edward Said

The law, in all its magnificent equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, or the steal bread.

— Anatole France

Revolution is never practical until the roar of revolution strikes. Then it alone is practical, and all the efforts of the conservatives and compromisers become the most futile and visionary of human language.

— James Connolly

If you expect to see the final results of your work you have not asked a big enough question.

— I.F. Stone

Whenever people say, ‘We mustn’t be sentimental,’ you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, ‘We must be realistic,’ they mean they are going to make money out of it.

— Brigid Brophy

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

— Immanuel Kant

If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.

— Blaise Pascal

Since it is not for us to create a plan for the future that will hold for all time, all the more surely what we contemporaries have to do is the uncompromising critical evaluation of all that exists, uncompromising in the sense that our criticism fears neither its own results nor the conflict with the powers that be.

— Karl Marx

Live as though you are going to die tomorrow; read as though you are going to live forever.

— Erasmus

Orthodoxy is the death of intelligence.

— Bertrand Russell

Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman.

— Nancy Banks-Smith

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

— Romain Rolland, popularised by Antonio Gramsci

When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist.

— Dom Helder Camara

I don't like what has happened over the last 500 years. We can’t do much about that. But what are we going to do about the next 500 years? What are we going to do about the next ten years?

— George Erasmus

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

— Abraham Lincoln

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

— Oscar Wilde

To Every Complex Problem there is a Simple Answer: Neat, Plausible, and Wrong.

— H.L. Mencken

Forests precede people. Deserts follow them.

— Chateaubriand

A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad.

— Albert Camus

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

— George Orwell

The issue that is not clear to organizers, missionaries, educators, or any outsider, is simply that if people feel they don't have the power to change a bad situation, then they do not think about it. Why start figuring out how you are going to spend a million dollars if you do not have a million dollars or are ever going to have a million dollars - unless you want to engage in fantasy? Once people are organized so that they have the power to make changes, then, when confronted with questions of change, they begin to think and to ask questions about how to make the changes.

— Saul Alinsky

The nationality question... cannot be settled by the use of some vague cliche, even such a fine-sounding formula as ‘the right of all nations to self-determination’. For such a formula expresses either absolutely nothing, so that it is an empty, noncommittal phrase, or else it expresses the unconditional duty of socialists to support all national aspirations, in which case it is simply false.

— Rosa Luxemburg

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

— Samuel Johnson

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

— Mark Twain

We may with advantage at times forget what we know.

— Publius Syrus

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.

— Miguel de Cervantes

I always have a quotation for everything — it saves original thinking.

— Dorothy Sayers