The 70 most famous phrases of Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian philosopher, politician, sociologist and journalist born during the year 1891 in the city of Ales, Sardinia.

His Marxist-based ideology and his own ideas caused him to be imprisoned by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. Undoubtedly, Antonio Gramsci is a reference within communist ideology, since he created a good part of the ideology that is currently used by supporters of this ideological current.

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Famous phrases and quotes by Antonio Gramsci

If you are interested in communism or Marxism and want to know a little more about the figure that was this notable celebrity, below you can discover the 70 most famous phrases of Antonio Gramsci, a thinker who, without a doubt, is worth knowing.

1. Often the one who wants to comfort, be affectionate, etc., he is actually the fiercest of executioners. Even in affection it is necessary to be, above all, intelligent.

How we show our affection towards others, can show to some extent the intelligence that we have.

2. The old world is dying. The new one takes time to appear. And in that chiaroscuro monsters emerge.

It is during the most difficult moments when people show their authentic way of being.

3. When will work be joyful? When will love be safe?

We all hope that in life, our future will be better than the present.

4. Man is above all spirit, that is, historical creation, and non-nature.

Men have the ability, with their own actions, to change the course of history.

5. The transition from utopia to science and from science to action. The founding of a ruling class is equivalent to the creation of a world view.

In order to become the ruling class, we must perform certain acts that allow us to gain control of society.

6. The present historical moment is of indescribable gravity, its consequences can be very serious, let us do it in such a way that resolve as many of the issues left unresolved by the past as possible and that humanity can resume its path.

The Second World War was caused by the mistakes of the past, which had been left unresolved during the first Great War.

7. Time is the most important thing: it is a simple synonym for life itself.

Time is the only thing in the world that never stops, we cannot do anything to change this fact.

8. Educate yourselves, because we will need all your intelligence. Get excited, because we will need all your enthusiasm. Prepare yourselves, because we will need all your strength.

As a member of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci was a fervent revolutionary ideologue.

9. Culture is a very different thing. It is organization, discipline of the inner Self, empowerment of one's own personality, conquest of superior consciousness by which one comes to understand the historical value that one has, his role in life, his rights and the duties of him.

Culture is necessary to be able to lead an orderly life, being aware of our own role within society.

10. Indifference acts powerfully in history. It acts passively, but it acts.

When we are indifferent towards a third party problem, we make a mistake; because these problems one day can affect us.

11. Indifference is the dead weight of history.

Indifference can cause a lot of damage to third parties and to ourselves.

12. Life is like that, very hard, children have to give their mothers great pain from time to time if they want to preserve the honor and dignity of men.

Life during the first half of the 20th century was undoubtedly very complicated. Gramsci, as a contemporary of the time, was fully aware of this.

13. You can't talk about non-intellectuals, because non-intellectuals don't exist. All men are intellectuals.

We all have our own way of understanding life, a very particular vision of which only we are its spectator.

14. Pessimism of the spirit, optimism of hope.

We must always keep hope, without it we will be lost.

15. Being in favor of freedom in the abstract is useless; It is simply a position of a cabinet man who studies the events of the past, but not of modern man, a participant in the struggles of his time.

We must support the freedom of people with all our being, freedom must be an inalienable right of all human beings.

16. All men are intellectuals; but not all fulfill the function of intellectuals in society.

Although we have our own ideas, many times we do not show them to others. We must know how to share our ideas.

17. Every revolutionary movement is romantic, by definition.

The revolution always begins driven by a romantic ideology, but over time these romantic ideas give way to pragmatic ideas, which are the ones that last over time.

18. Since we must build the country, let's build directories, encyclopedias, dictionaries.

By ensuring the education of our children, we will ensure the future of our nation or country.

19. The abolition of the class struggle does not mean the abolition of the need to fight as a principle of development.

In order to develop the economy of any nation, we must fight hard for it. The struggle will always be present in our lives.

20. My pragmatism consists in knowing that if you hit your head against the wall, it is your head that will break and not the wall.

We must act intelligently in our lives. Mistakes can be very expensive.

21. Most men are philosophers insofar as they operate in practice, and in their practical work a conception of the world, a philosophy, is implicitly contained.

We are all perhaps a bit of a philosopher within ourselves, it's just that many times we don't show it in public.

22. Indifference is apathy, parasitism and cowardice, it is not life.

We must be brave in our lives and always act for the common good.

23. Illusion is the most tenacious weed of collective consciousness: history teaches but has no students.

Our illusions can often be somewhat far-fetched, we must learn from historical mistakes so as not to make them again.

24. The conquest of cultural power is prior to that of political power and this is achieved through concerted action of the so-called organic intellectuals infiltrated in all the means of communication, expression and university students

In order to obtain political control of a country, we must first have obtained control of the media.

25. In the beginning was the Word... No, in the beginning was sex.

Sex is a very important aspect of anyone's life, and for Gramsci, without a doubt, it was too.

26. The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without being disillusioned.

The modern world can be complex for many but we should not get discouraged, in the future we will achieve personal success.

27. Pessimism is a matter of intelligence; optimism, of the will.

The smarter we are, the more pessimistic we tend to be. We must remain strong and with high morale in any circumstance.

28. The revolutionary fire spreads, burns new hearts and brains, makes burning embers of new light, of new flames, devouring laziness and fatigue. The revolution continues, until its complete realization. And life is always revolution.

Revolutions are very difficult to stop once they have started, during them the proletariat forcibly gains control of the institutions.

29. Telling the truth is always revolutionary.

The truth should always be our flag in life, lies will always bring problems in the future.

30. Joining a movement means assuming a part of the responsibility for the events that are being prepared, becoming the direct architects of those events themselves.

Once we are part of a political party, we will also be complicit in a certain way in everything that this party does.

31. The intellectual's mistake consists in believing that one can know without understanding and, especially, without feeling and being passionate (not only of knowing in yes, but of the object of knowledge), that is, that the intellectual can be such (and not a pure pedant) if he is separated from the people-nation, that is, without feel the elementary passions of the people, understanding them and, therefore, explaining and justifying them by the historical situation determined; linking them dialectically to the laws of history, to a superior conception of the world, scientifically elaborated: knowledge. Politics-history is not done without this passion, without this sentimental link between intellectuals and people-nation.

In order to understand how a society acts and why it does so, we must be in contact with that society.

32. It's too easy to be original by simply doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing; this is just mechanical. What is really difficult is insisting on discipline and sociality, and continuing to profess sincerity, spontaneity, originality and personality.

We must be who we really are, regardless of what others think. We must be faithful to our thoughts.

33. Take education and culture, and the rest will follow.

Education and culture are totally fundamental aspects within any society. These two aspects create two of your strongest pillars of support.

34. Revolutionaries see history as the work of their own spirit, as made by a series of violent pushes against the other both active and passive forces of society, and provide the maximum of favorable conditions for the definitive push (the revolution).

The French and Russian revolutions set a precedent within society that had never occurred before, the united people can seize power very quickly.

35. My state of mind makes the synthesis of those states called "optimism" and "pessimism" and exceeds them: I am pessimistic by intelligence, but optimistic by will.

We ourselves are the ones who have to decide between pessimism and optimism, so we must know that being negative will not help our cause at all.

36. What is called public opinion is closely linked to political hegemony, that is, it is the point of contact between civil society and political society, between consensus and force. The State, when it wants to initiate an unpopular action, preemptively creates the appropriate public opinion, that is, it organizes and centralizes certain elements of civil society.

The government has always tried to manipulate public opinion so that it is favorable to it, at the beginning of the 20th century this was already a very common fact.

37. The content of the press is influenced by one idea: the service of the ruling class, which inevitably translates into one thing: fighting the working class. In fact, from the first to the last line, the bourgeois newspaper adopts and reveals this concern.

Whoever has more power will try to gain control of the media by all means, possessing them is essential to be able to manipulate the population.

38. The fact that a mass of men is led to think coherently and in a unitary way about the real present is a much more important and fundamental philosophical fact. original than the rediscovery, by some philosophical genius, of a new truth that remains within the patrimony of small groups intellectuals.

Having the power to convince the masses is a gift that, without a doubt, we would all like to possess.

39. Man is a historical creation, an expression of the relationship between the human will and the economic structure of society. The school or, more generically, education plays a very important role in the development of these relationships by ensuring the transmission of the cultural heritage from one generation to the next.

Education is totally essential within any rule of law, it ensures that our children can be more efficient than us in the future.

40. Misfortune produces two effects: it often extinguishes all affection towards the unfortunate, and no less often it extinguishes among the unfortunate all affection towards others.

When fortune is not with us, everyone around us seems to turn its back on us, we must know how to take care not to give it to them too.

41. The Catholics would want the interventionist State totally in their favor; in the absence of this, or where they are a minority, they demand the indifferent State, so that it does not support its adversaries.

Religion had in the past a very significant role within society and when it lost it, it fought to be able to keep those assets it had.

42. Every state is ethical insofar as one of its most important functions is to raise the great mass of the population to a certain cultural level and moral, level (or type) that corresponds to the development needs of the productive forces and therefore to the interests of the classes dominant.

Society can grant us a basic education, but it depends on our efforts that this education reaches the desirable levels for us, the working class.

43. The soul is not saved by words alone. Works are necessary, and how!

Facts are much more relevant than words, because only with facts is the life we ​​want to lead in the future truly created.

44. Every State is a dictatorship.

This quote may seem like an exaggeration, but it is also self-evident that any government is in complete control of the society it represents.

45. The individual is not an atom, but the historical identification of the whole society.

As individuals we are profoundly influenced by the society in which we live.

46. Whoever is not capable of constructing hypotheses will never be a scientist.

In order to be successful scientists we must learn to think for ourselves.

47. Marx predicted what was possible to predict.

Karl Marx certainly created a turning point, following his ideas about how society should be.

48. If there is a riddle, it is not about "unknown" things, but simply unknown.

On most occasions, we are not even remotely aware of the true enigmas.

49. It is easier to raise an army than to train its captains.

Those who lead an army are the main causes of its subsequent victory or defeat.

50. There are two types of politicians: those who fight to consolidate the distance between the rulers and the ruled, and those who fight to overcome this distance.

Politicians defend both the bourgeois class and the working class, we must know which one really represents our interests.

51. The present contains all the past.

We have reached the moment we are in, through all the actions we did in the past.

52. Being passionate means having the gift of loving others.

When we are passionate about what we do, we will necessarily do it more efficiently. Passion can allow us to improve professionally.

53. In politics, the siege is reciprocal.

Within politics, its main actors must closely monitor each other.

54. Ideas are excellent as long as they are feasible.

The genius of an idea consists to a large extent in its feasibility.

55. The state is the economic and political organization of the bourgeois class. The state is the bourgeois class in its current concrete strength.

All the leaders of a State or its main leaders will always be a bourgeois class, with which the State will always look after this class in the first instance.

56. In mass politics, telling the truth is a political necessity.

The truth must always accompany us during our lives, the lie can be very expensive in the long run.

57. Study is also a very tiring job.

Studying can be mentally exhausting, we must take down time during our study days.

58. We condemn the past in everything when we do not differ from it.

We tend to think that we are better than our predecessors, but the reality is that this is not the case.

59. The nature of man is history.

Since the beginning of civilization, man has always tried to write his own history.

60. All the men of the world to the extent that they unite with each other in society, work, fight and improve themselves.

Society can allow us to improve our daily lives, obtain a better quality of life than we would have without it.

61. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying, and the new cannot yet be born. Meanwhile, a wide variety of morbid symptoms appear.

In the most difficult situations is where man is really put to the test, we must show what we are capable of.

62. Marx means the entry of intelligence into the history of humanity, it means the kingdom of consciousness.

With the arrival of Karl Marx the men changed their way of thinking, beginning to think that a better future for all may be possible.

63. We are creators of ourselves, of our life, of our destiny and we want to know it today, in current conditions, in current life and not just any life and no man.

A great quote that we should all remember, we are capable of everything we set our minds to.

64. The principle that must be taught is journalism and that it is not rational to let the journalist form himself.

In order to have decent media, the training of journalists is essential.

65. In the devaluation of the past, there is an implicit justification for the nullity of the present.

Historically we tend to devalue the past, but this is something we really shouldn't do. We must learn from our past in order to be better.

66. Is it possible to love the community without ever having deeply loved individual human creatures?

In order to love a society, we must first love the people who make it up.

67. A truth bears fruit when an effort is made to earn it.

The truth always comes to light, but it depends on us and our efforts that this fact be so.

68. The authority of the communist party, or the party leading the process, will be omnipresent and invisible as a divine decree. Most will obey without knowing that they obey.

The communist party in the USSR obtained full control of the institutions, and it also infiltrated all the layers that make up society.

69. Newspapers are ideological devices whose function is to transform a class truth into common sense, assimilated by the other classes as a collective truth, that is, it has a cultural role of propagating the ideology. It implies ethics, but ethics is not innocent either: it is class ethics.

Through the use of the media, we can get people to think what we want.

70. This is the question of the university teaching method: should one study at the university, or study to know how to study? Should one study facts or the method of studying facts?

In order to study efficiently, we must first know how we should study. How we study largely determines our success in studying.