Atheists

"The emergence of the strong state went hand in hand with its increasing monopoly over the use of force and violence within its borders. If you refuse to pay taxes, set your neighbour’s house on fire or ignore the summons to do military service, a strong state will lay hands on you and often your property as well and you will be punished and even, sometimes, executed. The peoples of Yugoslavia lived together peacefully if not always happily under Tito’s firm rule because, as a Croat put it, ‘every hundred yards we had a policeman to make sure we loved each other very much’. When Tito died and his Communist Party fell to pieces, the different ethnicities in Yugoslavia, urged on by unscrupulous demagogues, turned on each other. We may see the state as oppression incarnate, but we should think for a moment what it is like to live where there is no state power. The Samoans and the New Guinea highlanders once knew that and the unfortunate people of the failed states of Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan know it today."

"I must really say that he is a veteran Communist, this Herr Josip Broz, a consistent man. Unfortunately he is our enemy. He really has earned his title of Marshal. When we catch him we shall do him in at once; you can be sure of that; he is our enemy. But I wish we had a dozen Titos in Germany... The man had nothing at all. He was between the Russians, the British and Americans for a ride and to shit on them in the most comical way. He is a Moscow man … He has never capitulated."

"The views of Tito and his associates showed from the very beginning that they were far from being “hard-line Marxists”, as the bourgeoisie calls the consistent Marxists, but “reasonable Marxists”, who would collaborate closely with all the old and new bourgeois and reactionary politicians of Yugoslavia."

"When Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito took over in 1945, he attempted to quash Serbian nationalism. He preached that there was no room for ethnic differences in the class struggle. But Serbs, suspicious of Tito's Croatian and Slovenian background, said he was giving them short shrift. To allay fears of anti-Serb chauvinism, Tito prohibited Albanian-language publications and gave Kosovo's most desirable jobs to Serbs. When Albanians staged protests in the late '60s, Tito attempted to pacify them by strengthening local government (largely dominated by Albanians) over local affairs and by restoring jobs. This satisfied no one: It was not enough to dent Albanian unemployment and just enough to rile Serbs. Following Tito's death in 1980, malcontents on both sides rioted."

"It is difficult to know whether an independent Macedonian state would have come into existence had Tito not recognised and supported the development of Macedonian ethnicity as part of his ethnically organised Yugoslavia. He did this as a counter to Bulgaria, which for centuries had a historical claim on the area as far west as Lake Ohrid and the present border of Albania."

"If you saw what I see for the future in Yugoslavia, it would scare you."

"Kosovo is now the biggest problem confronting Yugoslavia"

"To Joseph Stalin: Stop sending people to kill me! We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send a very fast working one to Moscow and I certainly won't have to send another."

"Comrade Khrushchev often repeats that Socialism cannot be built with American wheat. I think it can be done by anyone who knows how to do it, while a person who doesn't know how to do it cannot build Socialism even with his own wheat. Khrushchev says we live on charity received from the imperialist countries … What moral right have those who attack us to rebuke us about American aid or credits when Khruschev himself has just tried to conclude an economic agreement with America?"

"We have said, and we will always say again, that we are opposed to the intervention of foreign military forces. But which was the lesser evil? Chaos, civil war, counter-revolution, and a new world war, or an intervention by Soviet troops? … I say clearly that the first alternative was the worst thing that could have occurred, and the second, the intervention of Soviet troops, was a necessary evil."

"Churchill, he is a great man. He is, of course, our enemy and has always been the enemy of Communism, but he is an enemy one must respect, an enemy one likes to have."

"The bishops play the hero and say they are ready to fight, even if it costs them their lives. The fight against whom? Against the people's government, of course, against our new democratic Yugoslavia … But how is it that the bishops did not issue this kind of pastoral letter, to be read in all the churches, in the days of Pavelić and the Germans, against those terrible massacres of Serbs in Croatia in which hundreds of thousands of women, children and menfolk lost their lives?"

"Think well about this, dear brothers and sisters, and you will see that we should have been in a state of terrible chaos, in a fratricidal war, in a country which would no longer be Yugoslavia, but be only a group of petty little states fighting among themselves and destroying each other. But our people do not want that to happen."

"Today, 9 May, exactly forty-nine months and three days after the Fascist attack on Yugoslavia, the most powerful aggressive force in Europe, Germany, has capitulated."

"We will liquidate the kulak, but not because he is a kulak but because he is a fifth columnist … The present struggle is national liberation in form, but class war in essence."

"Those Chetniks up there who are now firing on us will have joined us within a year."

"It will do for the moment."

"None of our republics would be anything if we weren't all together, but we have to create our history — our Yugoslavian socialist history, that is unique, in the future — that is our path; not touching the national rights of the some republics to preserve their own traditions, not at the expense of, but in the interest of the whole community, to mutually complete each other. That is what we want, and not the destruction of our unity."

"The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war."

"I knew that many things were wrong... I witnessed a great many injustices... But it was my revolutionary duty at the time not to criticize and not to help alien propaganda against [the Soviet Union], for at that time it was the only country where a revolution had been carried out and where Socialism had been built. I considered that propaganda should not be made against that country; that my duty was to make propaganda in my own country for Socialism."

"In the most trying hours, through dismal nights and endless interrogations and maltreatment, during days of killing solitude in cells and close confinement, we were always sustained by the hope that all these agonies were not in vain, that there was a strong and mighty country, however far away, in which all the dreams for which we were fighting had been fulfilled. For us it was the homeland of the workers, in which labour was honoured, in which love, comradeship, and sincerity prevailed. With what joy I had felt the strength of that country as, emerging from prison in 1934, I listened in the dead of each night to Radio Moscow and heard the clock of the Kremlin tower striking the hours, and the stirring strains of the 'International'."

"Our sacrifices are terrible. I can safely say that there is no other part of the world which has been devastated on a vaster scale than Yugoslavia. Every tenth Yugoslav has perished in this struggle in which we were forced to wrest armaments from our enemies, to freeze without clothing, and to die without medication. Nevertheless our optimism and faith have proved justified. The greatest gain of this conflict between democracy and fascism lies in the fact that it has drawn together everything that was good in humanity. The unity of the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain is the best guarantee to the peoples of the world that Nazi horrors will never again be repeated."

"No country of people's democracy has so many nationalities as this country has. Only in Czechoslovakia do there exist two kindred nationalities, while in some of the other countries there are only minorities. Consequently in these countries of people's democracy there has been no need to settle such serious problems as we have had to settle here. With them the road to socialism is less complicated than is the case here. With them the basic factor is the class issue, with us it is both the nationalities and the class issue. The reason why we were able to settle the nationalities question so thoroughly is to be found in the fact that it had begun to be settled in a revolutionary way in the course of the Liberation War, in which all the nationalities in the country participated, in which every national group made its contribution to the general effort of liberation from the occupier according to its capabilities. Neither the Macedonians nor any other national group which until then had been oppressed obtained their national liberation by decree. They fought for their national liberation with rifle in hand. The role of the Communist Party lay in the first place in the fact that it led that struggle, which was a guarantee that after the war the national question would be settled decisively in the way the communists had conceived long before the war and during the war. The role of the Communist Party in this respect today, in the phase of building socialism, lies in making the positive national factors a stimulus to, not a brake on, the development of socialism in our country. The role of the Communist Party today lies in the necessity for keeping a sharp lookout to see that national chauvinism does not appear and develop among any of the nationalities. The Communist Party must always endeavour, and does endeavour, to ensure that all the negative phenomena of nationalism disappear and that people are educated in the spirit of internationalism. What are the phenomena of nationalism? Here are some of them: 1) National egoism, from which many other negative traits of nationalism are derived, as for example — a desire for foreign conquest, a desire to oppress other nations, a desire to impose economic exploitation upon other nations, and so on; 2) national-chauvinism which is also a source of many other negative traits of nationalism, as for example national hatred, the disparagement of other nations, the disparagement of their history, culture, and scientific activities and scientific achievements, and so on, the glorification of developments in their own history that were negative and which from our Marxist point of view are considered negative. And what are these negative things? Wars of conquest are negative, the subjugation and oppression of other nations is negative, economic exploitation is negative, colonial enslavement is negative, and so on. All these things are accounted negative by Marxism and condemned. All these phenomena of the past can, it is true, be explained, but from our point of view they can never be justified. In a socialist society such phenomena must and will disappear. In the old Yugoslavia national oppression by the great-Serb capitalist clique meant strengthening the economic exploitation of the oppressed peoples. This is the inevitable fate of all who suffer from national oppression. In the new, socialist Yugoslavia the existing equality of rights for all nationalities has made it impossible for one national group to impose economic exploitation upon another. That is because hegemony of one national group over another no longer exists in this country. Any such hegemony must inevitably bring with it, to some degree or other, in one form or another, economic exploitation; and that would be contrary to the principles upon which socialism rests. Only economic, political, cultural, and universal equality of rights can make it possible for us to grow in strength in these tremendous endeavours of our community."

"What Mach calls a thought experiment is of course not an experiment at all. At bottom it is a grammatical investigation."

"The new historiography on Logical Empiricism sets in with the rediscovery of Ernst Mach (1838-1916) as a precursor of Gestalt theory, evolutionary epistemology, (possibly radical) constructivism and the modern historically oriented philosophy of science. But already in Mach’s reception of the Vienna Circle one can see not only a certain pluralism of views but also a polarization of the various positions (Mach’s influence on Carnap’s Aufbau / Logical Construction, the critical distancing to “psychologism” in the manifesto, the alternative to the principle of economy in Karl Menger, etc.) Nevertheless, this research program, which was interpreted differently by the Vienna Circle, actually represented a sort of prototype for Logical Empiricism in the interwar years – irrespective of whether one backs the bold claim as to the existence of a “typical Austrian philosophy” (as opposed to German idealism)."

"Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science... One need only open the eyes to see that the conquests of industry which have enriched so many practical men would never have seen the light, if these practical men alone had existed and if they had not been preceded by unselfish devotees who died poor, who never thought of utility, and yet had a guide far other than caprice. As Mach says, these devotees have spared their successors the trouble of thinking."

"...Intellectually, the dominating figure...was Ernst Mach, the physicist. That was the principle of thinking in which we all grew up, and at first all adopted it. But some of us—My psychological thinking begins directly with Ernst Mach. Mach in his famous book The Analysis of Sensations explains or assumes that while all our individual sensations have an original pure quality, they are constantly modified by experience. There is only an original order and then the experiential change. Which led me to the conclusion that if you can show that experience can change the thing, why need there be an original quality? The original quality may have arisen in the same fashion. So it was only a step beyond Mach, which turns against him with the result that my own psychology developed. In this sense I began from the same thing on which the logical positivist [movement]—Schlick, Neurath, Carnap, and so on—developed from Vienna; but split at the base, led us apart very much. But these two apparently absolutely contrary trends come from a common initial viewpoint."

":...Vienna is the origin of so many schools of its own which were dominant in the 1920s. And one of the most fundamental and influential, in which we all were partially caught, was logical positivism. In fact, Mises’ brother, Richard von Mises, became one of the leading figures. Now he and I all grew up in this Ernst Mach philosophy that ultimately everything must be rationally justified…"

"In the philosophy of Mach a world without matter is unthinkable. Matter in Mach's philosophy is not merely required as a test body to display properties of something already there ...it is an essential feature in causing those properties which it able to display, Inertia, for example, would not appear by the insertion of one test body in the world; in some way the presence of other matter is a necessary condition. It will be seen how welcome to such a philosophy is the theory that space and the inertial frame come into being with matter, and grow as it grows."

"There was a loud echo of Hume in Mach’s work, as both emphasized the tangibility of all knowledge—ultimately, all knowledge is based in the senses. Mach also emphasized the internal nature of all knowledge, in that it is experienced in the mind. Finally, he emphasized the importance of quantitative and mathematical methods and models to understand sensory experience."

"To a contemporary reader, nonetheless, Mach’s Analysis of Sensations (1886) disappoints. There is a loud echo of Hume in the work, for Mach, like Hume, emphasized the tangibility of all knowledge—ultimately, all knowledge is based in the senses."

"Some Machians were sufficiently impressed by Einstein's interpretations of Brownian movement to accept atomism. Mach himself brushed such objections aside, and also emphatically rejected Einstein's relativity theory."

"Mathematical and physiological researches have shown that the space of experience is simply an actual case of many conceivable cases, about whose peculiar properties experience alone can instruct us."

"The aim of research is the discovery of the equations which subsist between the elements of phenomena."

"The student of mathematics often finds it hard to throw off the uncomfortable feeling that his science, in the person of his pencil, surpasses him in intelligence,—an impression which the great Euler confessed he often could not get rid of. This feeling finds a sort of justification when we reflect that the majority of the ideas we deal with were conceived by others, often centuries ago. In a great measure it is really the intelligence of other people that confronts us in science.—Mach, Ernst."

"Thought-economy is most highly developed in mathematics, that science which has reached the highest formal development, and on which natural science so frequently calls for assistance. Strange as it may seem, the strength of mathematics lies in the avoidance of all unnecessary thoughts, in the utmost economy of thought-operations. The symbols of order, which we call numbers, form already a system of wonderful simplicity and economy. When in the multiplication of a number with several digits we employ the multiplication table and thus make use of previously accomplished results rather than to repeat them each time, when by the use of tables of logarithms we avoid new numerical calculations by replacing them by others long since performed, when we employ determinants instead of carrying through from the beginning the solution of a system of equations, when we decompose new integral expressions into others that are familiar,—we see in all this but a faint reflection of the intellectual activity of a Lagrange or Cauchy, who with the keen discernment of a military commander marshalls a whole troop of completed operations in the execution of a new one."

"The mental operation by which one achieves new concepts and which one denotes generally by the inadequate name of induction is not a simple but rather a very complicated process. Above all, it is not a logical process although such processes can be inserted as intermediary and auxiliary links. The principle effort that leads to the discovery of new knowledge is due to abstraction and imagination."

"Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". … The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world."

"Not bodies produce sensations, but element-complexes (sensation-complexes) constitute the bodies. When the physicist considers the bodies as the permanent reality, the `elements' as the transient appearance, he does not realise that all `bodies' are only mental symbols for element-complexes (sensation-complexes)"

"I see the expression of... economy clearly in the gradual reduction of the statical laws of machines to a single one, viz. , the principle of virtual work: in the replacement of Kepler's laws by Newton's single law... and in the [subsequent] reduction, simplification and clarification of the laws of dynamics. I see clearly the biological-economical adaptation of ideas, which takes place by the principles of continuity (permanence) and of adequate definition and splits the concept 'heat' into the two concepts of 'temperature' and 'quantity of heat'; and I see how the concept 'quantity of heat' leads on to 'latent heat', and to the concepts of 'energy' and 'entropy'."

"There is no problem in all mathematics that cannot be solved by direct counting. But with the present implements of mathematics many operations can be performed in a few minutes which without mathematical methods would take a lifetime."

"In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted."

"Personally, people know themselves very poorly."

"I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to provide confusion."

"Botvinnik grew up in an assimilated family, but encountered antisemitism in daily life. He displayed courage in the dark years of Stalin and after, and published warm words about Israel, Pinhas Rutenberg, and the kibbutz, defending the right of the Jews to live in their ancient homeland. In contrast to other Jewish cultural activists, he never signed letters condemning Israel."

"There is no longer any religion when there is no longer any privileged religion. Take from religion its exclusive power and it will no longer exist."

"If he believes time has run its course, A man is a sad thing too."

"Is anything sadder than a train That leaves when it’s supposed to, That has only one voice, Only one route? There’s nothing sadder. Except perhaps a cart horse, Shut between two shafts And unable even to look sideways."

"What to do now? How to detach yourself? With every work that’s born you die a little."

"I'm a libertine, but it's not my specialty."