1. "Critical self-consciousness
means, historically and politically, the creation
of an �lite of intellectuals. A
human mass does not 'distinguish' itself, does
not become independent in its own right without,
in the widest sense, organising itself: and there
is no organisation without intellectuals, that is
without organisers and leaders... But the process
of creating intellectuals is long and difficult,
full of contradictions, advances and retreats,
dispersal and regrouping, in which the loyalty of
the masses is often sorely tried.... So one could
say that each one of us changes himself, modifies
himself to the extent that he changes the complex
relations of which he is the hub. In this sense
the real philosopher is, and cannot be other
than, the politician, the active man who modifies
the environment, understanding by environment the
ensemble of relations which each of us enters to
take part in. If one's own individuality means to
acquire consciousness of them and to modify one's
own personality means to modify the ensemble of
these relations." Gramsci, Prison
Notebook
2. "..A feeling or a thought
...the aspiration towards liberty, cannot be
estimated in the terms of concrete power, in so
many fighting men, so many armed police, so many
guns, so many prisons, such and such laws,
ukases, and executive powers. But such feelings
and thoughts are more powerful than fighting men
and guns and prisons and laws and ukases. Their
beginnings are feeble, their end is mighty. But
of despotic repression the beginnings are mighty,
the end is feeble...". Sri Aurobindo in
Bande Mataram, 1907
3. "...Demands for 'national
self�determination' are in
one sense, a struggle for a higher form of
democracy...It must then be recognised that
'post-colonial liberation movements', far from
being inherently 'undemocratic', 'subversive',
'terrorist' ad infinitum, are often the most
effective medium for democratic assertion by
social groups who have been deprived of equal
citizenship rights, who have been subjected to
denial and state oppression..." Sumantra Bose
in Reconceptualising State, Nation and
Sovereignty, 1994
4. "..the people's patience is
not endless. The time comes in the life of any
nation when there remain only two choices: submit
or fight. That time has now come to South Africa.
We shall not submit and we have no choice but to
hit back by all means within our power in defence
of our people, our future and our freedom.
...Refusal to resort to force has been
interpreted by the government as an invitation to use armed force
against the people without any fear of
reprisals..." Nelson Mandela, December
1961
5."...Justice and righteousness are the
atmosphere of political morality, but the justice
and righteousness of a fighter, not of the
priest. Aggression is unjust only when
unprovoked; violence, unrighteous when used
wantonly or for unrighteous ends. It is a barren
philosophy which applies a mechanical rule to all
actions, or takes a word and tries to fit all
human life into it.." Sri
Aurobindo on The Morality of the Boycott, May
1908
6.
"...It is the common habit of established
governments and especially those which are
themselves oppressors, to brand all violent
methods in subject peoples and communities as
criminal and wicked. When you have disarmed your
slaves and legalised the infliction of bonds...
it is natural and convenient to try and lay a
moral as well as a legal ban on any attempt to
answer violence by violence..." Sri
Aurobindo, Early Political Writings,
1907
7.. "..Political division, based
on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it
disappears, so will the domination of one colour
group by another...This then is what the ANC is
fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one.
It is a struggle of the African people, inspired
by their own suffering and their own
experience...During my lifetime I have dedicated
myself to this struggle of the African people. I
have fought against white domination, and I have
fought against black domination. I have cherished
the ideal of a democratic and free society in
which all persons live together in harmony and
with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I
hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be,
it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die..."
"I am
Prepared to Die" - Nelson Mandela Dock Statement,
20 April 1964
8. "A race of people is like an
individual man; until it uses its own talent,
takes pride in its own history, expresses its own
culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never
fulfil itself. Our history and our culture were
completely destroyed when we were forcibly
brought to America in chains. And now it is
important for us to know that our history did not
begin with slavery. We came from Africa, a great
continent, wherein live a proud and varied
people, a land which is the new world and was the
cradle of civilization. Our culture and our
history are as old as man himself and yet we know
almost nothing about it... We want freedom by any
means necessary. We want justice by any means
necessary. We want equality by any means
necessary. We don't feel that in 1964, living in
a country that is supposedly based upon freedom,
and supposedly the leader of the free world, we
don't think that we should have to sit around and
wait for some segregationist congressmen and
senators and a President from Texas in
Washington, D. C., to make up their minds that
our people are due now some degree of civil
rights. No, we want it now or we don't think
anybody should have it. " Malcolm X -
Speech at Founding Rally of Organization of
Afro-American Unity (OAAU)
9."..When in the course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the Powers
of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the
causes which impel them to the separation...
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the
governed... whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it..." US
Declaration of Independence, 1776
10. "..Resistance to oppression
is the consequence of the other rights of man.
There is oppression against the social body when
a single one of its members is oppressed: there
is oppression against each member when the social
body is oppressed. When the government violates
the rights of the people, insurrection is for the
people and for each portion of the people the
most sacred of rights and the most indispensable
of duties..." French Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen 1793
11. "....We declare the right of
the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland
and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies,
to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long
usurpation of that right by a foreign people and
government has not extinguished the right, nor
can it ever be extinguished except by the
destruction of the Irish people..." Proclamation of the Provisional
Government of the Irish Republic,
1916
12. ..." (Gaelic) is for us what
no other language can be. It is our very own. It
is more than a symbol, it is an essential part of
our nationhood. It has been moulded by the
thought of a hundred generations of our
forebearers. In it is stored the accumulated
experience of a people - our people who, even
before Christianity was brought to them, were
already cultured and living in a well ordered
society. The Irish language spoken in Ireland
today is the direct descendant without break of
the language our ancestors spoke in those far off
days. A vessel for three thousand years of our
history, the language is for us precious beyond
measure. As the bearer to us of a philosophy, of
an outlook on life deeply Christian and rich in
practical wisdom, the language today is worth far
too much to dream of letting it go. To part with
it would be to abandon a great part of ourselves,
to loose the key to our past, to cut away the
roots from the tree. With the language gone we
could never again aspire to being more than half
a nation..." On Language & the Irish Nation -
Eamon de Valera, 1943
13. "...The whole Vietnamese
people, animated by a common purpose, are
determined to fight to the bitter end against any
attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer
their country..... we, members of the Provisional
Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,
solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has
the right to be a free and independent country
and in fact it is so already. The entire
Vietnamese people are determined to mobilise all
their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice
their lives and property in order to safeguard
their independence and liberty. " Vietnam
Declaration of Independence, 1945
14. "...This convention resolves
that the restoration and
reconstitution of the Free, Sovereign, Secular
Socialist State of Tamil Eelam based on the
right of self determination
inherent to every nation has become inevitable in
order to safeguard the very existence of the
Tamil Nation in this Country..." Vaddukodai Resolution for
Independent Tamil Eelam, 1976
15. "..If Indians outside and
inside India will do their duty, it is possible
for the Indian people to throw the British out of
India and liberate 388 millions of their
countrymen...It is our duty to pay for our
liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we
shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we
shall be able to preserve with our own
strength...'" - Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose July
1943
16. "We are
proud of the history of our country... We were taught to venerate the
glorious example of our heroes and
martyrs.... We were taught ... that liberty
is not begged for but won with the blade of a
machete. We were taught that for the guidance of
Cuba's free citizens, the Apostle wrote in his
book The Golden Age: 'The man who abides by
unjust laws and permits any man to trample and
mistreat the country in which he was born is not
an honorable man ... In the world there must be a
certain degree of honor just as there must be a
certain amount of light. When there are many men
without honor, there are always others who bear
in themselves the honor of many men. These are
the men who rebel with great force against those
who steal the people's freedom, that is to say,
against those who steal honor itself. In those
men thousands more are contained, an entire
people is contained, human dignity is
contained ...' ... We were taught to cherish
and defend the beloved flag of the lone star, and
to sing every afternoon the verses of our
National Anthem: 'To live in chains is to live in
disgrace and in opprobrium,' and 'to die for
one's homeland is to live forever!' All this we
learned and will never forget... " Fidel Castro Ruz,
October 1953
17 "..I want to say to you,
friends, that the Jewish community in Palestine
is going to fight to the very end. If we have
arms to fight with, we will fight with those, and
if not, we will fight with stones in our
hands...The issue is that if these 700,000 Jews
in Palestine can remain alive, then the Jewish
people as such is alive and Jewish independence
is assured. If these 700,000 people are killed
off, then for many centuries, we are through with
this dream of a Jewish people and a Jewish
homeland..." Golda Meir, January 1948
18. "I lead no party; I follow no
leader.. I propose, not to guide you in your
decision, but to attempt the humbler task of
bringing clearly to your consciousness the main
principle which, in my opinion, should determine
the general character of these decisions...There
are communalism and communities. A community
which is inspired by a feeling of ill-will
towards other communities is low and ignoble. I
entertain the highest respect for the customs,
laws, religious and social institutions of other
communities....The unity of an Indian nation,
therefore, must be sought, not in the negation,
but in the mutual harmony and cooperation of the
many...In view of India�s
infinite variety in climates, races, languages,
creeds and social systems, the creation of
autonomous states based on the unity of language,
race, history, religion and identity of economic
interests, is the only possible way to secure a
stable constitutional structure in India...
... If these demands are not
agreed to, then a question of a very great and
far-reaching importance will arise for the
community. Then will arrive the moment for
independent and concerted political action by the
Muslims of India. If you are at all serious about
your ideals and aspirations, you must be ready
for such action... In the near future our
community may be called upon to adopt an
independent line of action to cope with the
present crisis. And an independent line of
political action, in such a crisis, is possible
only to a determined people, possessing a will
focalized by a single purpose. ... Rise above
sectional interests and private
ambitions....Pass from matter to spirit.
Matter is diversity; spirit is light, life and
unity....one lesson I have learnt from the
history of Muslims. " Allama Muhammad Iqbal , The
Poet, Philosopher & Prophet of Pakistan,
1930
19. "...Various meanings and
significances are attributed to this word
(Revolution), according to the interests of those
who use or misuse it. For the established
agencies of exploitation it conjures up a feeling
of blood stained horror. To the revolutionaries
it is a sacred phrase...Revolution does not
necessarily involve sanguinary strife....A
rebellion is not a revolution. It may ultimately
lead to that end...Bombs and pistols do not make
revolution. That is not our understanding. The
sword of revolution is sharpened on the
whetting-stone of ideas... (It is) the
longing for a change for the better. A people
generally get accustomed to the established order
of things and begin to tremble at the very idea
of a change. It is this lethargic spirit that
needs be replaced by a revolutionary spirit...
The spirit of Revolution should always permeate
the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary
forces may not accumulate (strength) to check its
eternal onward march. The old order should
change, always and ever, yielding place to new,
so that one "good" order may not corrupt the
world. It is in this sense that we raise the
shout "Long Live Revolution" " Bhagat
Singh, June
1929
20."... It is not possible to
enslave men without logically making them
inferior through and through. And racism is only
the emotional, affective, sometimes intellectual
explanation of this inferiorization.."
Racism
and Culture - Frantz Fanon, 1956
21. "The Peace cannot exist without equality:
This is an intellectual value desperately in need
of reiteration, demonstration and reinforcement.
The seduction of the word itself -peace -is that
it is surrounded by, indeed drenched in, the
blandishments of approval, uncontroversial
eulogizing, sentimental endorsement. ..The
intellectual's role generally is to uncover and
elucidate the contest, to challenge and defeat
both an imposed silence and the normalized quiet
of unseen power, wherever and whenever possible.
For there is a social and intellectual
equivalence between this mass of overbearing
collective interests and the discourse used to
justify, disguise or mystify its workings while
at the same time preventing objections or
challenges to it. In this day, and almost
universally, phrases such as "the free market,"
"privatization," "less government" and others
like them have become the orthodoxy of
globalization, its counterfeit universals. They
are staples of the dominant discourse, designed
to create consent and tacit approval. From that
nexus emanate such ideological confections as
"the West," the "clash of civilizations,"
"traditional values" and "identity" (perhaps the
most overused phrases in the global lexicon
today). All these are deployed not as they
sometimes seem to be--as instigations for
debate--but quite the opposite, to stifle,
pre-empt and crush dissent whenever the false
universals face resistance or questioning. .."
The
Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals - Edward
W. Said
22 "...Compromise is attractive to the
nationalist bourgeoisie, who since they are not
clearly aware of the possible consequences of the
rising storm, are genuinely afraid of being swept
away by this huge hurricane and never stop saying
to the settlers: ' we are still capable of
stopping the slaughter; the masses still have
confidence in us; act quickly if you do not want
to put everything in jeopardy.' One step more,
and the leader of the nationalist party keeps his
distance with regard to that violence. He loudly
proclaims that he has nothing to do with these
Mau-Mau, these terrorists, these throatslitters.
At best, he shuts himself off in a no-man's-land
between the terrorists and the settlers and
willingly offers his services as go-between; that
is to say, that as the settlers cannot discuss
terms with these Mau-Mau, he himself will be
quite willing to begin negotiations... Thus it is
that the rear-guard of the national struggle,
that very party of people who have never ceased
to be on the other side in the fight, find
themselves somersaulted into the vanguard of
negotiations and compromise - precisely because
that party has taken very good care never to
break contact with colonialism... National
liberation, national renaissance, the restoration
of nationhood to the people, commonwealth:
whatever may be the headings used or the new
formulas introduced, decolonization is always a
violent phenomenon..." Concerning Violence - Frantz
Fanon, 1963
23. "...The guerrilla force is independent of
the civilian population, in action as well as in
military organisation; consequently it need not
assume the direct defence of the peasant
population. The protection of the population
depends on the progressive destruction of the
enemy's military potential. It is relative to the
overall balance of forces: the populace will be
completely safe when the opposing forces are
completely defeated....... the political and the
military are not separate, but form one organic
whole, consisting of the people's army, whose
nucleus is the guerrilla army... the guerrilla
force is the party in embryo...." Regis Debray,
1967
24. "..Carrying cyanide on our person is a
symbolic expression of our determination, our
commitment, our courage. It gives our fighters an
extra measure of belief in our cause, a special
edge; the cyanide has instilled in us a
determination to sacrifice our lives and our
everything for our cause..." Velupillai Pirabaharan
25. "...From the earliest days, they were
incapable of justifying what they nevertheless
found necessary, and conceived the idea of
offering themselves as a justification and of
replying by personal sacrifice to the question
they asked themselves. For them as for all rebels
before them, murder is identified with suicide...
therefore they do not value any idea above human
life, though they kill for the sake of ideas. To
be precise, they live on the plane of their idea.
They justify it, finally, by incarnating it to
the point of death... They will then put an
abstract idea above human life, even if they call
it history, to which they themselves have
submitted in advance, and to which they will
decide, quite arbitrarily, to submit every one
else... The greater the value the estimator
places in this final realisation, the less the
value of human life. At the ultimate limit, it is
no longer worth anything at all." Albert Camus in The
Rebel quoted by Sumantra Bose in Forging
Nationhood Through Struggle, Suffering and
Sacrifice , 1994
26. " .. (Altruistic suicide), Durkheim
argued, is imposed by society for social
purposes; and for society to be able to do
this, the individual personality must have
little value, a state Durkheim called altruism,
and whose corresponding mode of self-inflicted
death was called obligatory altruistic suicide.
Like all suicides, the altruist kills himself
because he is unhappy; but this unhappiness is
distinctive both in its causes and in its
effects... the egoist sees no goal to which he
might commit himself, and thus feels useless
and without purpose while the altruist commits
himself to a goal beyond this world, and
henceforth this world is an obstacle and burden
to him...." Emile Durkheim on Altruistic
Suicide
27."...Milgram's book summarizes his now
famous laboratory studies of the early 1960s. The
situation involves a naive subject who is placed
in the position of teacher and is commanded to
administer severe electric shocks to a "learner."
In effect, the teacher is commanded to carry out
an experiment even though great harm is done to
the learner. The "teachers" proved to be obedient
far beyond the expectations of experts. Indeed, a
large proportion of teachers applied such severe
shocks that they thought that the learner had
died as a result. The subjects did not shock the
learner because they were sadistic or inhumane.
Almost all of the subjects were upset at what
they were doing - yet they did it. They did it
because they believed they were required to do so
in their role as a teacher. They assumed that the
person in authority had a worthy goal in mind and
they wanted to help the authority figure. In a
sense, they did harm by trying to do good. They
were obedient..." Obedience to Authority -
Stanley Milgram
28."... As it is we have played at war . . .
we play at magnanimity and all that stuff. Such
magnanimity and sensibility are like the
magnanimity and sensibilities of a lady who
faints when she sees a calf being killed; she
is so kind-hearted that she can't look at
blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up
with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of
war, of chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy
to the unfortunate and so on. It's all rubbish.
I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805. They
humbugged us and we humbugged them. They
plunder other peoples' houses, issue false
paper money, and worst of all they kill my
children and my father, and then talk of rules
of war and magnanimity to foes ! Take no
prisoners but kill and be killed ! . . . If
there was none of this magnanimity in war, we
should go to war only when it was worth while
going to certain death, as now....
war is not courtesy but the
most horrible thing in life; and we ought to
understand that, and not play at
war.... The air of war is murder; the
methods of war are spying, treachery, and their
encouragement, the ruin of a country's
inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to
provision the army, and fraud and falsehood
termed military craft.... " (The fictional
Prince Andrew Bolkhonsky in *Tolstoy's War &
Peace , Book 10, Chapter 25, pp
486-7)
29. "Over the past few years I have
consistently preached that non-violence demands
that the means we use must be as pure as the ends
we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is
wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.
But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong,
or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to
preserve immoral ends." - Martin Luther
King, Letter from Birmingham Jail, April,
1963
30. "Show us not the aim without the way. For
ends and means on earth are so entangled, That
changing one, you change the other too. Each
different path brings other ends in view."
German
socialist Lasalle, quoted by Reggie Siriwardene
in the Kanthasamy Memorial Lecture - Violence
& Human Rights,1989
31. "...We must forever conduct our struggle
on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We
must not allow our creative protest to degenerate
into physical violence. Again and again we must
rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical
force with soul force. The marvellous new
militancy which has engulfed the Negro community
must not lead us to distrust of all white people,
for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by
their presence here today, have come to realize
that their destiny is tied up with our destiny
and their freedom is inextricably bound to our
freedom. We cannot walk alone..." - Martin Luther
King - I Have a Dream, August 1963
32. "...In my view, politics is
concerned only formally with power and government
and fundamentally with the moral development of
human beings. Politics is about people, and how
they endeavour to face the challenge of their
times. M.N. Roy... put, his beliefs this way:
"When a man really wants freedom and to live in a
democratic society he may not be able to free the
whole world . . . but he can to a large extent at
least free himself by behaving as a rational and
moral being, and if he can do this, others around
him can do the same, and these again will spread
freedom by their example." I don't think I can
put it any better. If that is the goal, then
Gandhi is more relevant than ever, both in India
and in the West..." - Non Violence
as a Political Strategy: Gandhi & Western
Thinkers - Hugh Tinker, 1980
33. "Nonviolence is the law of
our species as violence is the law of the brute.
The spirit lies dormant in the brute,
and he knows no law but that of physical might.
The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher
law - to the strength of the spirit.. The best
and most lasting self-defense is
self-purification....It is open to a war resister to judge between the
combatants and wish success to the one who has
justice on his side. By so judging he is more
likely to bring peace between the two rather than
remaining a mere spectator..."" - Mahatma Gandhi
