Politik

"Prestige bars any serious attack on power. Do people attack a thing they consider with awe?"

"Prestige stands between the masses and a revolt against their class enemy. The aura of magic, glamour, luster and splendid permanence covers the fascists like a protective layer of fat. The slimy scales of majesty shield and conceal the dilapidation of the old bourgeois reign of terror."

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth."

"Class struggle is inextricably bound to the struggle to end racism."

"We cannot dismiss and demonize rural white Americans. The class war waged by corporations and the ruling oligarchs has devastated their lives and communities. They have been betrayed. They have every right to be angry. That anger can sometimes be expressed in inappropriate ways, but they are not the enemy. They too are victims. In my case, they are family. I come from here. Our fight for economic justice must include them. We will wrest back control of our nation together or not at all."

"All the openings in our democracy were the result of prolonged popular struggle. Hundreds of workers were murdered, thousands were wounded, tens of thousands were blacklisted in our labor wars, the bloodiest of any industrialized country. Abolitionists, suffragists, unionists, crusading journalists and those in the anti-war and civil rights movements opened our democratic space. These radical movements were repressed and ruthlessly dismantled in the early 20th century in the name of anti-communism. They were again targeted by the corporate elites following the rise of new mass movements in the 1930s. These popular movements, which rose again in the 1960s, moved us, inch by bloody inch, towards equality and social justice. Most of these gains made in the 1960s have been rolled back under the onslaught of neoliberalism, deregulation, and a corrupt campaign finance system, legalized by court rulings such as Citizens United, which allow the rich and corporations to bankroll elections to select political leaders and impose legislation. The modern incarnation of 19th-century robber barons, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, each worth some $200 billion, summon us to our radical roots."

"Unions break down political divides, bringing workers of all political persuasions together to fight a common oligarchic and corporate foe. Once workers begin to exert power and extract demands from the ruling class, the struggle educates communities about the real configurations of power and mitigates the feelings of powerlessness that have driven many into the arms of the neofascists."

"The class warfare is global. Not until workers in sweatshops in China, Mexico, Cambodia, Vietnam, India and Bangladesh are lifted out of poverty will the American working class be lifted out of poverty. This class war is the real fight, which corporate-owned media platforms and bankrupt liberals refuse to discuss."

"Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. The sooner we realize that we are locked in deadly warfare with our ruling, corporate elite, the sooner we will realize that these elites must be overthrown. The corporate have now seized all institutional systems of power in the United States. Electoral politics, internal security, the judiciary, our universities, the arts and finance, along with nearly all forms of communication, are in corporate hands. Our democracy, with faux debates between two corporate parties, is meaningless political theater. There is no way within the system to defy the demands of , the fossil fuel industry or war profiteers. The only route left to us, as Aristotle knew, is revolt."

"We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around. So it's a dynamic that has to change. We've got to kill that attitude and that has to come through hurting the economy. We need to see unemployment rise, unemployment has to jump 40, 50 per cent."

"Just as class inequality leads to class struggle within societies, such international inequality leads to struggle between them. If the content of class struggles is the distribution of surplus, income and control over social production, that of international struggle is the international division of labour and the position of various nations in its hierarchy. The more advanced capitalist nations seek to maintain and extend the uneven distribution of productivity and productive power, and the resulting control over the sources of surplus profit, that privilege them and permit them to impose the costs of their capitalism's contradictions on other societies."

"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

"The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally."

"When questions of “class” interests are eliminated from public controversy a victory is thereby gained for the possessing, conservative class, whose only hope of security lies in such elimination."

"There’s class warfare, all right. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."

"It is therefore worthwhile, to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our persuasions."

"'Tis more than reason that goes to persuasion."

"Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces."

"The problem with breaking up with someone, if you are a little unsure — and so often, people are unsure — is that breaking up involves persuasion. You have to persuade your ex that it is better this way for everyone. And this is difficult if you have not entirely persuaded yourself. It is especially tricky to do this if you are also naked, and making two cups of coffee.”"

"They have the knack of persuading men before instructing them; although truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by first persuading."

"Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion."

"I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion."

"Only by plunging into illusions to which every fact gives the lie can he persuade himself that his will is a force that can overcome all other forces, or that it is less conditioned by circumstances than a wheelbarrow is."

"The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society."

"I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life."

"A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion."

"American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that."

"It ain't that he's not interested in, like, persuasiveness, get me? He's interested in it. Like something in a jar."

"The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion."

"Behold, I am become a reproach to thy holy name, by serving any ambition and the sins of others; which though I did by the persuasion of other men, yet my own conscience did cheek and upbraid me in it."

"Maybe tomorrow when He looks down Every green field and every town All of his children, every nation There'll be peace and good, brotherhood… Crystal blue persuasion."

"I used all diligence to arrive at London and therefore I now gave my crew a certificate under my hand, of my free and willing return, without persuasion or force by any one or more of them."

"There is hardly an example of a mass movement achieving vast proportions and a durable organization solely by persuasion. ...It was the temporal sword that made Christianity a world religion. Conquest and conversion went hand in hand... Where Christianity failed to gain or retain the backing of state power, it achieved neither a wide nor a permanent hold. ..."The most flourishing periods for Mohammedanism have been at the times of its greatest political ascendency..." The Reformation made headway only when it gained the backing of the ruling prince or the local government. In the case of the French Revolution, "It was the armies of the Revolution, not its ideas, that penetrated throughout the whole of Europe." ...The threat of communism at present does not come from the forcefulness of its preaching but from the fact that it is backed by one of the mightiest armies on earth."

"A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience... Understanding must move with the flow of the process."

"What is illiberal is not persuasion but imposition of one's views."

"Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world."

"I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor. I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind."

"Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art."

"Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world."

"To yield readily--easily--to the persuasion of a friend is no merit.... To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.”"

"If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty violated."

"Persuasion of others is to show that oneself is convinced."

"This progress among the people through Dharma has been done by two means, by Dharma regulations and by persuasion. Of these, Dharma regulation is of little effect, while persuasion has much more effect. The Dharma regulations I have given are that various animals must be protected. And I have given many other Dharma regulations also. But it is by persuasion that progress among the people through Dharma has had a greater effect in respect of harmlessness to living beings and non-killing of living beings."

"In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech."

"Variant:You won't persuade [peiseis] me even if you convince [peisēs] me."

"Even if you persuade me, you won’t persuade me."

"We always have hoped that American diplomacy deploys itself in dialogue and persuasion rather than by ultimatums. That is the path we want in international relations."

"Now, therefore, be it"

"There was no occupation. There were agreements at the time with the legitimately elected authorities in the Baltic countries."

"[having explained how with MRP, Germany had "given back" Estonian territory to the Soviet Union in 1939] This means that if in 1939 the Baltic countries had joined the Soviet Union, then in 1945 the Soviet Union could not have occupied them, because they were already part of the Soviet Union."