Essayists

"The worker is the arm, the heart of the world."

"Mutualism needs the vigor of struggle and the firmness of conviction to advance in its unionizing effort; it needs to shake away the apathy of the masses, and enchain with links of abnegation the passions that rip apart its innermost being; it needs hearts that say: I am for you, as I want you to be for me; mutualism has need of us workers, the humble, the small gladiators of the idea, it needs for us to salvage from our egotisms something immense, something divine, that can make us a society ,that can make us nobly human. And the worker should not think of his humbleness, nr of his insignificance, he should not reason that he is unimportant and so remove himself discouraged from the social concert. What does it matter that he is but an atom, what does it matter? The atoms invisible for their smallness are the only elements of the universe."

"A Person Unknown has brought Autumn in the North Room. Oh now, when all is color, harvest, and smell of wine, when one hears the song of Things and Beasts, when the longing dead yell in their graves, A Person Unknown has brought Autumn on a silver platter in the room: grapes and pears, apples and figs.And outside there are steaming pools of sun juice, as one hears through the window: in the silk of day a woman is singing.And the birds tweet on."

"When a scientific principle puts on the toga of social dignity, it turns itself into a bell or a parrot; such phantoms have always been the most dangerous enemies of reason."

"Between the Protestant North and the Counter-Reformation of Vienna, menaced by Venetian intrigue, under the Ottomans and under the bloody tyranny of their own native nobles, split into three churches and five states, the Croatian masses vegetated in passive resistance for centuries, invisibly resilient in their Proto-Slavic passivity, which had survived the lordships of Rome and Byzantium and already (in principle) was getting over Istanbul. (...)Born in the Schism between Rome and the Slavs, torn by the fatal dilemma of the East and West, Križanić is a typical victim of our geographic position. As the instigator of Russian imperialism on a conceptual level equalling Peter the Great, as a forerunner and prophet of Panslavism, of Slavophiles, as the linguist of a Cyrillic/Latin synthesis to be followed by Romantic Illyrians, Soloviev, Rački, Strossmayer, and all the way to our "realistic" contemporary Yugoslavian political movement (1898-1928), as a theoretical colonizer of the remote Slavic East, historian of Siberia and dreamer of China, as a desperate man with Biblical lamentations over the schism, this half-mad missionary was abused for years, later suffered as an interned monk and beggar, and eventually died under Turkish hooves. (...)Around Juraj Križanić, armies were marching under generals Isolani and Wallenstein, cannons were firing around Prague, Magdeburg and Lutzen. People were skinned alive, impaled on stakes, had their throats cut, drank human blood, massacred one another from Sisak to Koprivnica for a hundred years, and everywhere there was the wail of the wounded, the rattling of lepers, and the mumbling of cripples and beggars. Everything was bloody like a wound and stank like a beggar's putrid rag."

"Ever more alone, ever madder, remoter, sadder alone, ever darker, ever baser, as it awfuls more and more.Ever colder, ever viler, ever icier, autumn's lonely void, as it autumns more and more."

"Clerks and constables, barracks and precincts, municipalities, documents, offices: all of this was seen by our heroes [mobilized Croatian peasants] as a machine that was invented by educated city folk for the sole purpose of letting the blood of paupers and counting the peasants' bags, pigs, and mares; however, this entire machinery of educated folk and doctors of the Triune Kingdom underestimated the great and indomitable life inside them, and when our heroes thought about themselves and their life, this is what it looked like, more or less: this is my hut; it has a slanted roof so that rain flows left and right instead of falling on my head. It's a good invention, not having the rain fall on one's head, and I inherited it from my grandfather, this sooty warm roof, and I will leave it to my son, because a roof is a smart thing. (Without a roof, man would be like a beast.) I sit under this mushroom of mine and watch the smoke go up, while the waters of heaven flow and soak the fields. This is good too. My wife sits at the loom like a spider, there is a potato rolling in my pot, and there should be a couple of fat smoked ribs on the attic. That is all. Honestly, I don't need more. Life is good! The man lights his pipe in the twilight as he watches yellow cat eyes shining like fireflies in the oxen steam in the stable. Life is good! (...)These people were shot by Hungarian gendarmes, all according to the Compromise of 1868, they had their wives and daughters raped by revolutionaries in 1848 and by deserters after Custozza and Solferino; when their women gave birth, they still cut the umbilical cord themselves, with a sickle, and went to work three days later; the dead were splashed with wine just like in the old pagan times. The fact that huge empires rose and fell on the shores of the European seas, that new lands were discovered, that life fundamentally changed, all of that didn't mean a thing to this life here. Or rather it did! Churches and prisons were built in the valleys: stone buildings with flags and Roman crosses, with lightning rods and church organs, with bars and articles of law; but all those prisons and offices and churches were not there yesterday, and it may come to pass that those churches and documents and articles will not be there tomorrow either, and the villages of Saint Elizabeth and Saint John will be Foxhole and Wolf Pit like before, and we're quits! God be praised!Since they considered things and measured events with this sublime and tried measure, it is quite natural that our heroes weren't too upset about this so-called war."

"[Zagreb. The twilight of Austria-Hungary. At the celebration of a priest's First Mass, the youth discusses the problems of the state and the church. The older generation, on the other hand...]"Ask these respectable gentlemen, if you don't believe me, to explain to you that the Earth is round!", angrily said uncle Šimonić, the janitor of the observatory. He has some little authority in astronomy, after all. When great professors and astronomers go to the attic to look at the stars, they go through his kitchen! And he carries all the keys to the stars in his pocket. And this man before him, this member of the public who doesn't even know what is an eclipse, this dolt won't believe him that the Earth is round and spinning like a ball."Round! So it is round! Fine, have it your way! It is round! Well then! Is this apple round? It is? So it is round like the Earth, as you say. And this crumb here is a man! Tell me now, how come the crumb falls from the apple when I turn the apple around? Well? Look how it falls right away! Did you ever hear that a single man fell off the Earth? You haven't? Would you be so kind and explain this to me?"That's true! Uncle Šimonić never thought that a man would fall off the Earth if it was really round. And it's as simple as a slap in the face, god damn it. And when those crazy professors up in the observatory explain things to him, it all seems so clear to him. But there you have it! Crumbs fall off the apple, and Šimonić, the royal janitor of the royal observatory, could fall off the Earth by the same principle. There's something fishy here after all!"

"We are creating a new society in which an individual is not a piece of merchandise, a society in which there are no wolves and lambs, when men do not live off the exploitation of other men. We are struggling to create a society in which the workers are the fundamental power driving things forward, but in which other social sectors also play a role, always insofar as they identify with the interests of the country, with the interests of the great majority"

"...When we talk about the FSLN, we are not talking about something that is just a political party. We're not talking simply about an armed organization. We are talking about a historic response. We are talking about the indivisible reality of the FSLN and the Nicaraguan people. As long as this people is militant and proud, as long as this people is made up of heroic workers, as long as the workers and peasants and all revolutionaries are ready to defend the national sovereignty arms in hand, as long as there are Nicaraguans who love the land where they were born, as long as this people exists, the FSLN will continue to exist."

"The sons and daughters of this country are not robots, not mannequins. This is a population every day more conscious, more audacious, and more creative. With this heroic population, we will make it to our goal, we will for all the way. With this heroic population that understands the world around it more clearly every day, it will be easier to come up with the right answers to the questions the revolution poses."

"We hate war, and our National Directorate has repeated this many times. We haven't organized the defense of our revolution for the purpose of conquering neighboring territories - or distant ones for that matter. We have done it in order to win peace. Our friends and neighbors can rest assured that this revolution was made in order to defend the land of our birth."

"Either you are in favor of human dignity and respect fir human rights, or you are against human rights. There is no their possibility."

"Our revolution has always been internationalist, ever since Sandino fought in the Segovias. There were internationalists from all over the world who fought alongside Sandino, men from Venezuela, Mexico, Peru. Another who fought alongside Sandino was the great hero of the Salvadoran people named Farabundo Marti. It is not strange that we are internationalists, because this is something we got from Sandino. All the revolutionaries and all the peoples of Latin America especially know that our people's heart is with them, beats alongside theirs. Our heart goes out to Latin America, and we also know that Latin America's heart goes our to the Nicaraguan revolution."

"People learn from experience. We have learned that in order to be revolutionaries and advance a revolutionary process, it is necessary to have one's feet on the ground."

"What use the green river, the gold place, if time and death pinned human in the pocket of my land not rest from taking underground the green all-willowed and white rose and bean flower and morning-mist picnic of song in pepper-pot breast of thrush?"

"The word permanent... had its own kind of revenge on those who misused it, for the Bible said that nothing was permanent and everything came and went."

"From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth."

"She sat quietly in one corner of the sofa, the end of her sari drawn modestly over her hair. Like the motionless illusion of a madly spinning top, she was staring vacantly into space."

"How as a young girl, Ismat Chugtai convinced her father to excuse her from learning how to cook, and give her instead the opportunity to go to school and get an education: “Women cook food Ismat. When you go to your in-laws what will you feed them?” he asked gently after the crisis was explained to him. “If my husband is poor, then we will make khichdi and eat it and if he is rich, we will hire a cook,” I answered. My father realised his daughter was a terror and that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it."

"I am against the veil not only because it is a religious sign, but because it is a symbol of the enslavement of women and sexism! Do not let yourself be convinced that the wearing of the veil is an act of freedom because it is the imprisonment of women in communitarianism and it is also their residence and cultural identity. In Europe today the veil is the symbol of conquering political Islam and a sign of visible and communicative Islamization."

"The veil is nothing but a sign of political Islam, as the armbands were for the Nazis!"

"A question for those who mix racism and freedom with the veil debate: who is the racist? he who defends the values of equality, of modernity, as well as the values of the French revolution or the one that advocates a return to medieval values and a dark period in which no equality existed?"

"I want to make things clear about the hijab. Anyone who is for equality between the sexes is against this garment which designates the woman as a temptress who must cover herself to keep her modesty! The hijab has an inherent sexual dimension. Before Islam, this practice of disguising women of the public dimension already existed, to show their inferiority. Now, the hijab is instrumentalized by Islamists who have understood its political dimension, in opposition to the values of emancipation and the Republic."

"When we begin to close our eyes on veiled girls in the name of "modesty" ... we finally close our eyes to girls raped under the guise of "marriage"."

"Jihad and terrorism carry the same meaning despite the efforts of Muslims to dissociate and differentiate them. Terrorism is not a new phenomenon in Islam, since it has been the main tool for the expansion of Islamic State since Muhammad. Islamic conquests were indeed a form of terrorism, although consistent with the practices of the time. [...] terrorism, the hereditary fruit of Koranic education, has its roots in the East. He is the son of the cohesion policy created by the Prophet Muhammad and his followers, bringing together all pre-Islamic groups under the same ideology: Islam. (pp. 209-210)"

"Like all exclusive ideologies, such as Marxism or eugenics, Islam wants to be the sole holder of the truth and the embodiment of its salvation. His hegemony, dogmatism and tyranny make Islam an eradicating movement. Those among non-Muslims who strive to seek a moderate Islam demonstrate their ignorance of the very nature of this religion. Muslims who defend an allegedly temperate Islam also ignore the foundations of their faith or are duplicitous and hypocritical. They hide their bloodthirsty history to present it in a better light. As a result, we can not speak of moderate Muslims. (pp. 154-155)"

"If Western countries really fear Islam, why do they welcome so many Muslims, granting them asylum and many helpers? Why do they tolerate the construction of so many mosques on their soil while Muslim countries forbid the building of churches on their own? If there is a real hostility towards Islam, why are hundreds of thousands of Muslims trying to clandestinely reach the lands of the infidels and apostates, often risking their lives? [...] the West is innocent of accusations of Islamophobia against it, [...] political Islam has invented this term to accelerate the ghettoisation of Muslims, oppose them to the host countries and radicalize them. (pp. 126-127)"

"This desire to impose coexistence and cohabitation in the name of "living together", while these guests of the nation do not intend to respect this concept, is to let termites destroy a house by saying that it is necessary that these poor beasts feed. (p. 41)"

"Too many Muslims still refuse to integrate in the West today. They claim all the rights granted to Western citizens in the name of human rights and equality, but they refuse the duties incumbent upon these citizens. They want to impose their religion to states that no longer have a religion and to the societies that practice it discreetly. In France, many of them do not respect the state and do not give it any importance ... / ... France and the West must protect their precious secularism, especially since it seems impossible in the Arab countries."

"There is no difference between the radicals who kill in the name of Allah and the pretended moderates who applaud and find them extenuating circumstances. The mistake in France is that the media use the term "extremist" to refer to jihadists who massacre and terrorize civilians and call "moderate" all others. Yet those who believe in sharia and dream of applying it, who reject gender equality, who impose Islam and its symbols in everyday life, who demand the separation of men and women in the public space who introduce religion to school through halal meat, who demand the veil, who want to adapt society to their ideology, who applaud the execution of renegades and want to Islamize through preaching are all extremists, even they have not - or not yet - carried the weapons. In fact, all Muslims who meet these criteria must be considered radicals. (p. 151)"

"Hatred against Islam becomes the second terminology used after Islamophobia to escape the debate. It is particularly aimed at lay people of Muslim or Arab origin. Practitioners are abusing it against ex-Muslims who dare to denounce virulent preaching and calls for violence in mosques and relayed to their neighborhoods. But where is the hatred to denounce hatred? (p. 135)"

"In the West, the Muslims exploit Islam for political reasons. Current issues, relating inter alia to scarf, veil and burqa attest. Nothing in the Qur'an requires the wearing of these scarves, but Muslims use it to prove their existence and to impose a common identity and recognizable to the entire community. This demand for clothing also allows extremist organizations to fight the liberalism of atheists and progressive movements. By imposing the veil, they want to distinguish Muslim women from European women, impious by definition, and prove that all the identity of these women resides in Islam, that their identity is Islam. It is obviously nonsense: the being is not defined by his religion. The scarf thus becomes a symbol through which they aspire to impose Islam in the countries that host them by demanding from them rights, on their terms. But Western laxity is problematic. The West, which has millions of Muslims from elsewhere and grants them citizenship, tolerates that some of them live in ghettos and demand respect for their own rules, even before integrating and respecting the laws. from their host country. The example of the Muslims in Britain is flagrant. They want to fight the ungodly, enforce the rules of Ramadan, prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol, forbid indigenous Christians to eat in public during the month of fasting, establish sharia law and declare jihad in Hyde Park!"

"It is a cry of alarm that I run to save the innocence of children, threatened by madness and anger. And it is at school and at the mosque that they are formatted to become criminals! Because in my country and beyond, the main suppliers of terrorists are mosques."

"Then one day, I took my courage in both hands. I first expanded my reading and immersed myself in philosophical and scientific works that called for reflection on the existence of God, such as To End God with the British Richard Dawkins. This book brought me the answers that religion was unable to provide me. Through the work of Darwin, Hawking, and other scientists who have marked humanity, I have discovered that most scholars are atheists. I had come to understand why the work of these scholars was not taught in our schools and universities: simply because those of Dawkins or for example, the theory of evolution of Darwin, go against the primacy of religion on science. ... / ... The Internet has allowed me to discover that the famous miracles of Islam, claimed by the religious and willingly relayed by the press and Islamic satellite television, were just lies. ... / ... Darwin's theory of evolution seemed to me much more convincing than the legend of Adam and Eve."

"The building of a Palestinian state will only be possible if the mentality of the people evolves and accepts the idea of complementarity between the two states ... A brewing between the two societies is essential in order to help the Palestinians to catch up in the matter modernity compared to their Israeli neighbors."

"Some Muslims now use the term Islamophobia instead of simply talking about racism against the Arabs. It is a very convenient, but quite wrong, way to believe that there is a specific stigma of Islam ... To fight the fight against fanaticism and to free Muslims, it would be necessary to first, that the media cease to serve as a support and platform for radicals and stop relaying these false accusations of Islamophobia."

"Those who are called revolutionaries and rebels, that is to say those who have escaped this conditioning, driven by the will to live, to reflect, to understand each other and to explore life and its."

"To dominate the faithful, the religious found an effective treatment: the administration of five daily bites, at fixed times announced by the Muezzin. As soon as his calls sound, people rush to the mosque and prostrate themselves by banging their heads on the ground, thus kissing their submission. Before the effects of the sting disappear, they undergo an injection of words that paralyze their brain fog of religion ... / ... Anesthetized, the faithful lives in the illusion and leaves the responsibility of its existence to the masters who say to speak in the name of God and to represent it on Earth ... / ... The religious have made generations of helpless to sacralized ignorance, deprived of future, progress, humanism, dignity and freedom."

"Accepting the hijab in advertisements, in children's toys or even considering the fact that children wear the veil at school or on television as something "normal" is not evidence of cultural diversity and openness of European societies but this is a proof of the gentle Islamization of these societies."

"... the cleverest way of battling the heat was not moving."

"There was a difference between his parents with regard to appliances; his father distrusted them as he would a rival; his mother had no confidence in using them, but none the less desired them."

"There was a gulmohar tree in the lane, the flaming orange flowers erupting from within, and banyan trees, private and removed as ancient pilgrims."

"It never became so dark in the room in Claremont; some light, inquisitive and worldly, always entered through the curtains"

"‘... the menu’s a delirious poem/on which the names of Moghlai and Punjabi and Parsi/"

"‘This morning he’d discovered the bathroom light on, its lustre wasted in daylight.’"

"The city was still .... Soon the machinery would start working again, not out of any sense of purpose, but like a watch that is wound daily by someone’s hand. Almost without any choice in the matter, people would embark upon the minute frustrations and satisfactions of their daily lives. It was in this moment of postponement that the azaan was heard, neither announcing the day nor keeping it a secret."

"‘... what I’ve tried to allow is for the essay to be a space in which the consciousness which reads poetry or remembers a line of poetry or listens to music or goes for a walk, is also the consciousness that is inflected and threatened and endangered by the political; is also the consciousness that registers and is permeated by the political. That somehow it is not a separate ... consciousness that is hiding behind the facade of the man who remembers a line of poetry or forgets it, but that it is the same consciousness in which these various things are coming in and going out.’"

"These small freshwater fish"

"‘I’m uncomfortable beginning at the beginning. It’s not because I’m clever, but because it’s a difficult thing, writing.’"