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“This was Beethoven’s great significance, not through form or musical language, but in recalibrating what music was for. Single-handedly he turned it from genteel, ignorable after-dinner entertainment into an all-encompassing emotional experience, a way of perceiving life as a mighty struggle, the cry of the soul, the voice of conscience”
― Howard Goodall, The Story of Music: From Babylon to the Beatles: How Music Has Shaped Civilization

“Where those who hold the liberal conception of freedom would say we are free because we are not subject to deliberate interference by other humans, Marx says we are not free because we do not control our own society. Economic relations between human beings determine not only our wages and our prospects of finding work, but also our politics, our religion, and our ideas. These economic relations force us into a situation in which we compete with each other instead of co-operating for the good of all. These conditions nullify technical advances in the use of our resources.”
― Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction

“Marx’s first point is one still made by critics of the modern consumer society: A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut… however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls. (WLC 259)”
― Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction

“But for a society buit on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky