Antonio Gramsci > Quotes

“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci: Prison Letters

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.

I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned”
― Antonio Gramsci

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born”
― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

“Man is above all else mind, consciousness -- that is, he is a product of history, not of nature.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“If you beat your head against the wall, it is your head that breaks and not the wall.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”
― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“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

“،نصبح مسنين عندما نبدأ بالخوف من الموت وإبداء الأسف عند رؤية الآخرين يفعلون أشياء لا نستطيع القيام بها”
― أنطونيو غرامشي, رسائل السجن : رسائل أنطونيو غرامشي إلى أمه

“The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture; language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and civilisations.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously "born" in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion-a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“تشاؤمُ العقل .. تفاؤلُ الإرادة”
― Antonio Gramsci

“Common sense is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that one like.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“Il vecchio mondo sta morendo. Quello nuovo tarda a comparire. E in questo chiaroscuro nascono i mostri.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“The crisis creates situations which are dangerous in the short run, since the various strata of the population are not all capable of orienting themselves equally swiftly, or of reorganizing with the same rhythm. The traditional ruling class, which has numerous trained cadres, changes men and programmes and, with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from its grasp. Perhaps it may make sacrifices, and expose itself to an uncertain future by demagogic promises; but it retains power, reinforces it for the time being, and uses it to crush its adversary and disperse his leading cadres, who cannot be be very numerous or highly trained.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“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

“بخصوص ما تبقى.. لم أفقد رغبتي في الحياة. الأشياء جميعها تهمني”
― أنطونيو غرامشي, رسائل السجن : رسائل أنطونيو غرامشي إلى أمه

“At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organisational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic "men of destiny".”
― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“History teaches, but has no pupils.”
― Antonio Gramsci, History, Philosophy and Culture in the Young Gramsci

“Verus Quid Factum”
― Antonio Gramsci

“حياتي تتدفق دائمًا بنفس الطريقة
أقرأ، آكل وأنام وأفكر
لا أستطيع أن أفعل أي شئ آخر ..”
― Antonio Gramsci, رسائل السجن : رسائل أنطونيو غرامشي إلى أمه

“The popular element "feels" but does not always know or understand; the intellectual element "knows" but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopedia knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world. This form of culture really is harmful, particularly for the proletariat. It serves only to create maladjusted people, people who believe they are superior to the rest of humanity because they have memorized a certain number of facts and dates and who rattle them off at every opportunity, so turning them almost into a barrier between themselves and others.”
― Antonio Gramsci, The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935

“Odio gli indifferenti. Credo che vivere voglia dire partecipare. Chi vive veramente non può non essere cittadino partecipe. L’indifferenza è abulia, è parassitismo, è vigliaccheria, non è vita. Perciò odio gli indifferenti.

L’indifferenza è il peso morto della storia. L’indifferenza opera potentemente nella storia. Opera passivamente, ma opera. È la fatalità; è ciò su cui non si può contare; è ciò che sconvolge i programmi, che rovescia i piani meglio costruiti; è la materia bruta che strozza l’intelligenza. Ciò che succede, il male che si abbatte su tutti, avviene perché la massa degli uomini abdica alla sua volontà, lascia promulgare le leggi che solo la rivolta potrà abrogare, lascia salire al potere uomini che poi solo un ammutinamento potrà rovesciare. Tra l’assenteismo e l’indifferenza poche mani, non sorvegliate da alcun controllo, tessono la tela della vita collettiva, e la massa ignora, perché non se ne preoccupa; e allora sembra sia la fatalità a travolgere tutto e tutti, sembra che la storia non sia altro che un enorme fenomeno naturale, un’eruzione, un terremoto del quale rimangono vittime tutti, chi ha voluto e chi non ha voluto, chi sapeva e chi non sapeva, chi era stato attivo e chi indifferente. Alcuni piagnucolano pietosamente, altri bestemmiano oscenamente, ma nessuno o pochi si domandano: se avessi fatto anch’io il mio dovere, se avessi cercato di far valere la mia volontà, sarebbe successo ciò che è successo?

Odio gli indifferenti anche per questo: perché mi dà fastidio il loro piagnisteo da eterni innocenti. Chiedo conto a ognuno di loro del come ha svolto il compito che la vita gli ha posto e gli pone quotidianamente, di ciò che ha fatto e specialmente di ciò che non ha fatto. E sento di poter essere inesorabile, di non dover sprecare la mia pietà, di non dover spartire con loro le mie lacrime.

Io partecipo, vivo, sento nelle coscienze della mia parte già pulsare l’attività della città futura che la mia parte sta costruendo. E in essa la catena sociale non pesa su pochi, in essa ogni cosa che succede non è dovuta al caso, alla fatalità, ma è intelligente opera dei cittadini. Non c’è in essa nessuno che stia alla finestra a guardare mentre i pochi si sacrificano, si svenano. Vivo, partecipo. Perciò odio chi non partecipa, odio gli indifferenti.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“لكنني متأكد جيدا أنني سأدان والرب وحده يعلم بكم سنة. ويجب أن تتفهمي أن استقامتي لا دخل لها في الأمر، ولا ضميري أيضا فيما يتعلق ببراءتي أو إدانتي. هذا الأمر سببه فعل نسميه السياسة، وهذا يعني أن كل تلك الأشياء الجميلة لا علاقة لها بالقضية”
― أنطونيو غرامشي, رسائل السجن : رسائل أنطونيو غرامشي إلى أمه