Socialists

871 quotes found

"The Japanese encountered resistance from some indigenous peoples, to be sure, and not only from those ethnic groups and elites that had done relatively well under Western colonial rule. The overwhelming majority of Indians showed no interest in the kind of liberation the Japanese had in mind for them. In the Philippines the peasant Hukbalahap movement waged a guerrilla war against them; in Burma the Karen and Kachin hill tribes also resisted Japanese rule. Nevertheless, the Japanese had no difficulty in finding collaborators among both anti-European nationalists and opportunists. Indian nationalists had not forgotten the 1919 Amritsar Massacre; it was in March 1940 that Udham Singh assassinated Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who had been Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab at that time. Though the majority of Congress leaders eschewed collaboration with the Japanese - in practice, 'Quit India' meant neutrality, albeit with a great deal of circumlocution - Subhas Chandra Bose enthusiastically hailed 'the end of the British Empire' and called on Indians to join the Axis side. Around 3,500 answered the initial call from Berlin of the self-proclaimed Netaji ('leader') to form an Indian Army of Liberation, most of them Indians who had been taken prisoner by the Germans in North Africa. When he reached Asia - having travelled by U-boat from Kiel to Sumatra - Bose was able to recruit a further 45,000 men (again mostly prisoners from Singapore and elsewhere) to his Indian National Army and the Axis cause."

- Subhas Chandra Bose

0 likesMilitary leaders from IndiaPolitical leadersNationalistsRevolutionariesSocialists
"I believe that I understand Anti-Semitism, which is really a highly complex movement. I consider it from a Jewish standpoint, yet without fear or hatred. I believe that I can see what elements there are in it of vulgar sport, of common trade jealousy, of inherited prejudice, of religious intolerance, and also of pretended self-defence. I think the Jewish question is no more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, which can only be solved by making it a political world-question to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council. We are a people — one people. We have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves in the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve the faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so. In vain are we loyal patriots, our loyalty in some places running to extremes; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow-citizens; in vain do we strive to increase the fame of our native land in science and art, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In countries where we have lived for centuries we are still cried down as strangers, and often by those whose ancestors were not yet domiciled in the land where Jews had already had experience of suffering. The majority may decide which are the strangers; for this, as indeed every point which arises in the relations between nations, is a question of might. I do not here surrender any portion of our prescriptive right, when I make this statement merely in my own name as an individual. In the world as it now is and for an indefinite period will probably remain, might precedes right. It is useless, therefore, for us to be loyal patriots, as were the Huguenots who were forced to emigrate. If we could only be left in peace.... But I think we shall not be left in peace."

- Theodor Herzl

0 likesJournalists from HungaryPolitical leadersSocialistsLawyers from HungaryJews from Hungary
"The advance of technology, together with a culture of caution that transcended ideology, caused the nature of power itself to shift between 1945 and 1991: by the time the Cold War ended, the capacity to fight wars no longer guaranteed the influence of states, or even their continued existence, within the international system. A second escape from determinism involved the discrediting of dictatorships. Tyrants had been around for thousands of years; but George Orwell's great fear, while writing 1984 on his lonely island in 1948, was that the progress made in restraining them in the 18th and 19th centuries had been reversed. Despite the defeats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, it would have been hard to explain the first half of the 20th century without concluding that the currents of history had come to favor authoritarian politics and collectivist economics. Like Irish monks at the edge of their medieval world, Orwell at the edge of his was seeking to preserve what little was left of civilization by showing what a victory of the barbarians would mean. Big Brothers controlled the Soviet Union, China, and half of Europe by the time 1984 came out. It would have been Utopian to expect that they would stop there. But they did: the historical currents during the second half of the 20th century turned decisively against communism. Orwell himself had something to do with this: his anguished writings, together with the later and increasingly self-confident ones of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Havel, and the future pope Karol Wojtyla, advanced a moral and spiritual critique of Marxism-Leninism for which it had no answer. It took time for these sails to catch wind and for these rudders to take hold, but by the late 1970s they had begun to do so. John Paul II and the other actor-leaders of the 1980s then set the course. The most inspirational alternatives the Soviet Union could muster were Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, a clear sign that dictatorships were not what they once had been."

- Andrei Sakharov

0 likesAcademics from RussiaPhysicists from RussiaPhysicists from the Soviet UnionSocialistsInventors
"I have always been a Tory Democrat... You remember that from the first the Clarion crowd and the Hardie crowd were out of harmony. It was a repetition of the old hostility between the Roundheads and Cavaliers. The Labour Leader people were Puritans; narrow, bigotted, puffed up with sour cant. They were nonconformist, self-righteous ascetics, out for the class war and the dictation by the proletariat. We loved the humour and colour of the old English tradition... I loathe the "top-hatted, frock-coated magnolia-scented" snobocracy as much as you do; but I cannot away with the Keir Hardies and Arthur Hendersons and Ramsay MacDonalds and Bernard Shaws and Maxtons. Not long ago you told me in a letter of some trade union delegates who were smoking cigars and drinking whisky at the House of Commons at the expense of their unions. You liked them not. Nor do I like the Trade Union bigots who have cheated J. H. Thomas of his pension... I am glad the Labour Party is defeated because I believe they would have disrupted the British Empire. I dreaded their childish cosmopolitanism; their foolish faith that we could abolish crime by reducing the police force. All the other nations are out for their own ends. American enthusiasm for Naval Disarmament is not dictated by a love of peace. It is an expression of naval rivalry. All the nations hated our naval supremacy. Do the Americans love us? Do the French love us? Is France, America, Italy, devoted to an unselfish and human peace? Can we dispel the bellicose sentiments of Russia and China and Japan by sending an old pantaloon to talk platitudes at Geneva, or by disbanding the Horse Guards and scrapping a few submarines? ... The England of my affection and devotion is not a country nor a people: it is a tradition, the finest tradition the world has ever produced. The Labour Party do not subscribe to that tradition; do not know it; could not feel it. And if that tradition is to survive, the policy of scuttle and surrender must be abandoned. You agree with all this I feel sure. You always upheld the Pax Britannica."

- Robert Blatchford

0 likesJournalists from EnglandSocialistsNationalistsPeople from England
"Now, remembering Germany's gospel of force and frightfulness, her plea that necessity knows no law, her carefully organized war and peace machines, her enormous and costly system of espionage and intrigue, her immense armaments, her avowed intention to conquer the world, her record of treacherous diplomacy, her hatred of Russia and Britain and France, her steady persistence on the Bagdad Railway, her secret alliances with Turkey and Bulgaria, her building of her Fleet, her expansion of her own and the Austrian army, her expenditure on Zeppelins and poison gas and flame throwers, her secret siege artillery, her pushing of strategic railways to the Belgian border, her fortification of Flushing, and her purchases of gold; and remembering her three sudden attacks on Denmark, and Austria, and France; and remembering her contempt for "scraps of paper," and her contempt for the law of nations; and remembering her savagery and lawlessness on land and sea; and remembering the Kaiser's speeches and the thousands of books and articles abusing Britain and France; and remembering all that Germany hungered for and hoped to gain; and remembering that Russia, and France and Britain coveted nothing, had threatened nobody, and were unready and unwilling for war, what conclusion can we come to as to which nation is to blame for the agony and ruin which have come upon Europe since the end of July, 1914? Who caused the war? Who threatened war, who preached war, who stood to gain by war, who had been for forty years preparing for war? Germany."

- Robert Blatchford

0 likesJournalists from EnglandSocialistsNationalistsPeople from England
"Meet the president - who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay. Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside. This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders. President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife's farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo. The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers. This austere lifestyle - and the fact that Mujica donates about 90% of his monthly salary, equivalent to $12,000 (£7,500), to charity - has led him to be labelled the poorest president in the world... Elected in 2009, Mujica spent the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Uruguayan guerrilla Tupamaros, a leftist armed group inspired by the Cuban revolution. He was shot six times and spent 14 years in jail. Most of his detention was spent in harsh conditions and isolation, until he was freed in 1985 when Uruguay returned to democracy. Those years in jail, Mujica says, helped shape his outlook on life....Uruguayan law means he is not allowed to seek re-election in 2014. Also, at 77, he is likely to retire from politics altogether before long."

- José Mujica

0 likesHeads of stateSocialistsFeministsAtheistsFarmers
"To see him today, now aged 78, sitting on his wooden chair, surrounded by books and silence, a pair of sandals on his feet and a bust of Che Guevara opposite him, you might take Mujica for some Latino Diogenes, a benevolent patriarch, the last man on Earth and obviously indignant. He is also one of the few people to have experienced nothingness, spending two years' captivity at the bottom of a well... The international media have described him as "the most incredible politician" or indeed "the best leader in the world". Some have suggested he should win the next Nobel peace prize. He is also thought to be the world's poorest president, because he gives almost 90% of his income to low-income housing organisations. He is not very keen on such labels. The pinnacle of his presidential career came in June 2012 when defence minister Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro announced that the state would be taking over the production and sale of marijuana, which would be legalised and regulated... Mujica, who says he has never smoked a joint and knows very well that 62% of voters are opposed to legalisation, yet has no qualms about launching the world's first state-grown marijuana. He says it is a question of public security and that he is determined to separate consumers from dealers, and marijuana from other narcotics... He may indeed be a bit crazy, but he is also captivating and quite unique among world leaders."

- José Mujica

0 likesHeads of stateSocialistsFeministsAtheistsFarmers
"The debate between us is on one level between historians who believe they are purely objective reconstructers of the past, like [Benny] Morris, and those who claim that they are subjective human beings striving to tell their own version of the past, like myself. When we write histories, we built arches over a long period of time and we construct out of the material in front of us a narrative. We believe and hope that this narrative is a loyal reconstruction of what happened — although as was discovered by historiographers Morris had never bothered to read — we can not ride a train back in time to check it. Narratives of this kind, when written by historians involved deeply in the subject matter they write about, such as in the case of Israeli historians who write about the Palestine conflict, is motivated also — and this is not a fault but a blessing — by a deep involvement and a wish to make a point. This point is called ideology or politics. Zionist historians wanted to prove that Zionism was valid, moral and right and Palestinian historians wished to show that they were victimized and wronged.... I had a different point to make: I condemned the uprooting of the Palestinians and the violence inflicted on them, as well as the de—Arabization of Jews who came from Arab countries to Israel, the imposition of military rule on Palestinians in Israel before 1967 and the de—facto Apartheid policies put in place after 1967."

- Ilan Pappé

0 likesAcademics from IsraelHistorians from IsraelSocialistsPolitical activistsUniversity of Exeter faculty