Revolutionaries

"We protest against any attempts to split our national territory. The Congo’s greatness is based on the maintenance of its political and economic unity."

"While our brothers in Kenya, Nyasa-land, Rhodesia, South Africa and Angola are still fighting for their freedom, look at the wonderful future that smiles at us."

"We are no longer your monkeys."

"At the moment when Congo reaches independence, the whole government wishes to pay solemn homage to the King of the Belgians, and to the noble people he represents for the work done here over three quarters of a century. I would not wish my feelings to be wrongly interpreted... Long live King Baudouin, Long live Belgium, Long live the independent Congo."

"History attests, that independence is never brought to you on a silver platter. It must be won. To that end we must organise ourselves and mobilise all the healthy forces in the country. The Congolese have responded to our appeal and thanks to this united strength we have dealt a mortal blow to rotten colonialism."

"Bourgeois scientists make sure that their theories are not dangerous to God or Capital."

"He (Lenin) had a habit of becoming passionately attached to people. His attachment to Plekhanov from whom he got so much, was typical in this respect, but it never prevented him from fighting hard against Plekhanov when he saw that Plekhanov was wrong, that his point of view harmed the cause; it did not prevent him from breaking completely with him when Plekhanov became a defencist."

"People [who belong in this environment] look for a path in the heavens for the simple reason that they have lost their way on earth."

"There is no historical fact that did not owe its origin to social economics; but it is no less true to say that there is no historical fact that was not preceded, not accompanied, and not succeeded by a definite state of consciousness."

"Children like to work, and are always eager to imitate the work of adults."

"Ibigin mo ang iyóng Bayan nang sunód kay Bathalà, sa iyóng kapurihan, at higít sa lahat sa iyong sarili."

"Itinuturo ng katwiran, na wala tayong iba pang maaantay kundi lalu't lalong kahirapan, lalu't lalong kataksilan, lalu't lalong kaalipustaan at lalu't lalong kaalipinan. Itinuturo ng katwiran na huwag nating sayangin ang panahon sa pag-asa sa ipinangakong kaginhawaan na hindi darating at hindi mangyayari … Itinuturo ng katwiran ang tayo’y magkaisang-loób, magkaisang-isip, at akala at nang tayo’y magkalakas na maihanap ang naghaharing kasamaan sa ating Bayan."

"Itinuturo ng katwiran na tayo’y magkaisang-loob, magkaisang-isip at nang tayo’y magkalakas na maihanap ang naghaharing kasamaan sa ating Bayan. Panahon na ngayong dapat na lumitaw ang liwanag ng katotohanan; panahon ng dapat nating ipakilala na tayo’y may sariling pagdaramdam, may puri, may hiya, at may pagdadamayan."

"I wish to make this statement in view of the mass of prejudice which has gathered about me owning to false statements, calumnies and innuendos which have been made about me in the press and elsewhere for a year past and to most of which I have been unable to reply. I am making no appeal. Let that be clear. Whatever befalls me I shall suffer gladly and happily, but I think it is due to me and the cause I represent, which has been traduced and slandered through the agency of attacks on me, to make some refutation to these attacks. I have been constantly called an Englishman, who, having betrayed his own country, came to Ireland to betray and destroy Ireland––a double traitor. In the alternative, I have suffered the vile charge of innuendo; instead of betraying England I have been acting as a spy or agent provocateur of Englishmen, trying to destroy Ireland in England's interest."

"The British can sign and find a way to repudiate their signatures. They've done it over and over again. You need to go back to the Treaty Of Limerick. You have Malta and Egypt, for instance. They can always find high moral reasons for such repudiation. They are opportunists. Griffith, however, having given his word, would stick to it whatever the consequences, even though it meant the disaster of a civil war. They knew that."

"....death stills the bitterest controversy."

"The treaty, though it has good points, is a vast trap."

"In this supremacy of tragedy, we find it only in our hearts, to wish that God's curse may overwhelm the treacherous..."

"I am a birth, domicile, and deliberate choice of citizenship an Irishman..."

"From this farcical Belfast, where anti-Catholic pogroms are occurring daily and where 30,000 Catholics are out of work because of their religion, and where the religious test is imposed on civic and private employment, we have cut ourselves off from as entirely as we have severed British connection. We will never recognize the partition of Ireland. When the time comes, Dail Eireann will be summoned by President Eamon De Valera and it will meet as an all Ireland parliament, independent of England."

"And here again, what does the King mean? The functions of a King as an individual, are very small indeed. What the King means, is the British Government, and let there be no mistake, under the terms of this Treaty the British Government will be supreme in Ireland."

"What we all know is that Ireland is permeated with spies, ordinary and extraordinary, imported Englishmen and perverted Irishmen, in and out of uniform, in low places and high places....punishing first and foremost the great national crime of Republicanism, and in the second place real crimes artificially promoted by the regime––symptoms of a disease invariably arising from the forcible suppression of a national ideal."

"Parnell once said that no man has the right to set a boundary to the onward march of a nation. Parnell was right. Parnell spoke in a moment when Ireland was still in a subordinate position in the British Empire. Since that time, Ireland has taken a step from which she can never withdraw by declaring her independence. This Treaty is a step backwards. And I, for my part, would be inclined to say that he would be a bold man, who would dare set a boundary to the backward march of a nation, which, of its own free will, had deliberately relinquished its own independence."

"I served four years in the War under the belief, growing ever fainter but held to the end, that it was fought to make such things impossible, and now I am daily witness to the prostitution of the Army I served in to fulfil the many aims I loathed and combated. I am Anglo-Irish by birth. Now I am identifying myself wholly with Ireland...."

"I want you to shake the hands of every Minister in the Provisional Government ( Irish Free State )who's responsible for my death. I forgive them and so must you, Erskine. The second will apply if ever you go into Irish politics. You must not speak of my execution in public."

"A keen wind from the west struck our faces, and as swiftly as it had come the fog rolled away from us, in one mighty mass, stripping clean and pure the starry dome of heaven...."

"Drunk with triumph, I cuddled in my rocking cradle and ransacked every unvisited chamber of the memory....to see the residue take life and meaning in the light of the great revelation."

"Juist, by jove!"

"This Irish war, small as it may seem now, will, if it is persisted in, will corrupt and eventually ruin not only your army, but your Empire itself. What right has England to torment and demoralise Ireland?"

"It was devotion to the sea, wedded to a fire of pent-up patriotism struggling incessantly for an outlet in strenuous physical expression; a humanity, born of acute sensitiveness to his own limitations, only adding fuel to the flame."

"What the devil do you mean Carruthers?"

"Take a step or two forward lads.....it will be easier that way."

"...to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing..."

"...the Dulcibella had begun to move in her sleep, as it were, rolling drowsily to some faint send of the sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an uneasy dreamer."

"Lieutenant Colonel Malone––was it necessary, in order to carry out the raid, to-ransack the nursery, and to wake up the children?"

"One of the charms of Africa, is the long settled periods of pure unclouded sky, in which the sun rises and sets with no flaming splashes of vivid colours, but by gentle, imperceptible gradations of pure light, waning or waxing."

"Most of England's wit and manhood scintillated in the sunlight, while British matrons and England's fairest maids lit up with looks of proud affection; bosoms heaved in sympathetic unison with the measured tramp of the ammunition boots...."

"Everything had been new and strange : the lean and ragged foot-soldiers who marched alongside of us, toughened, stained and blasés after months of service; the turmoil of encampment in the dark, with the shrill yells of black drivers, and the hassle and crush of crowding wagons, the twinkle of hosts of camp-fires, and the hot glow of a distant veldt-fire; and, finally the ghostly ride of two miles to water the horses...."

"An artillery man is not made in a month, nor an officer in a year; and unless we had had educated men as keen as mustard, and no trouble about discipline, I doubt if the battery in South Africa would have been much good for a long time."

"First let us rid our minds of the fallacy that guerrilla war is a wholly distinct thing in kind from regular war. It is nothing of the sort. War is a science whose fundamental principles are constant however wide or numerous the variations...."

"I do not know how I stand this parting from Molly, save that by a paradox we are so absoultely one that in the sense we never part, but talk to one another and watch one another and commune night and day, and grip fast the same ideals. The North Star is our only meeting place, in this manner. We both look at it every night."

"Being shot with volcanic suddenness into the Navy at an hour's notice is a queer experience, but I am beginning to get used to the life and to forget that I ever had a moustache or a tweed suit."

"The cavalryman, is for practical purposes a compound of three factors; man, horse and rifle. The lance should go altogether."

"I leapt into my boots, trousers and jacket, tumbled all my gear, lying ready laid out, into my bag, donned helmet and goggles, seized charts and rushed to the upper deck....the sea was calm under a heaving swell. Engadine towered above my cockle-shell."

"To the true African journalist, his newspaper is a collective organizer, a collective instrument of mobilization and a collective educator—a weapon, first and foremost, to overthrow colonialism and imperialism and to assist total African independence and unity."

"We in Ghana, are committed to the building of an industrialized socialist society. We cannot afford to sit still and be mere passive onlookers. We must ourselves take part in the pursuit of scientific and technological research as a means of providing the basis for our socialist society, Socialism without science is void. … We need also to reach out to the mass of the people who have not had the opportunities of formal education. We must use every means of mass communication – the press, the radio, television and films – to carry science to the whole population – to the people. ... It is most important that our people should not only be instructed in science but that they should take part in it, apply it themselves in their own ways. For science is not just a subject to be learned out of a book or form a teacher. It is a way of life, a way of tackling any problem which one can only master by using it for oneself. We must have science clubs in which our people can develop their own talents for discovery and invention."

"We cannot tell our peoples that material benefits in growth and modern progress are not for them. If we do, they will throw us out and seek other leaders who promise more … We have to modernize. Either we shall do so with the interest and support of the West or we shall be compelled to turn elsewhere. This is not a warning or a threat, but a straight statement of political reality."

"Together as one*"

"We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for socio-political practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, ."

"Just as in the days of the Egyptians, so today God had ordained that certain among the African race should journey westwards to equip themselves with knowledge and experience for the day when they would be called upon to return to their motherland and to use the learning they had acquired to help improve the lot of their brethren. ...I had not realized at the time that I would contribute so much towards the fulfillment of this prophecy."