Antonio Gramsci: To tell the truth is revolutionary.

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

Antonio Gramsci

struggle class mean

I would like you to understand completely, also emotionally, that I'm a political detainee and will be a political prisoner, that I have nothing now or in the future to be ashamed of in this situation. That, at bottom, I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I've always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison. That therefore I can only be tranquil and content with myself.

Antonio Gramsci

political would-be giving

Economy and ideology. The claim (presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism) that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete political and historical works.

Antonio Gramsci

political expression practice

Before puberty the child's personality has not yet formed and it is easier to guide its life and make it acquire specific habits of order, discipline, and work.

Antonio Gramsci

discipline order children

Destruction is difficult. It is as difficult as creation.

Antonio Gramsci

difficult creation destruction

Driving forward is the chief characteristic of western man since the Sumerians. His dread triad of vices is property-holding, voraciousness, and lust.

Antonio Gramsci

vices lust men

Common sense is the folklore of philosophy.

Antonio Gramsci

common-sense common philosophy

The people themselves are not a homogeneous cultural collectivity but present numerous and variously combined cultural stratifications which, in their pure form, cannot always be identified within specific historical popular collectivities.

Antonio Gramsci

historical culture people

History is at once freedom and necessity.

Antonio Gramsci

If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.

Antonio Gramsci

fathers-day simple son

How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?

Antonio Gramsci

parent strong people

Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

Antonio Gramsci

pessimism optimism spirit

I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.

Antonio Gramsci

turns cells prison

Is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one' own personality?

Antonio Gramsci

work-out personality brain

Revolutionaries see history as a creation of their own spirit, as being made up of a continuous series of violent tugs at the other forces of society - both active and passive, and they prepare the maximum of favourable conditions for the definitive tug (revolution).

Antonio Gramsci

creation revolution spirit

The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is 'knowing thyself'as a product of the historical processes to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.

Antonio Gramsci

leaving historical knowing

After puberty the personality develops impetuously and all extraneous intervention becomes odious.... Now it so happens that parents feel the responsibility towards their children precisely during this second period, when it is too late.

Antonio Gramsci

responsibility personality children

This is really the common mentality of prisoners: they read with great attention all the articles that deal with illnesses and send away for treatises and "be your own doctor" or "emergency treatments" and end up by discovering that they have at least 300 or 400 illnesses, whose symptoms they are experiencing.

Antonio Gramsci

emergencies doctors attention

What are the "maximum" limits of acceptance of the term "intellectual"?

Antonio Gramsci

limits intellectual acceptance

In the life of children there are two very clear-cut phases, before and after puberty. Before puberty the child's personality has not yet formed and it is easier to guide its life and make it acquire specific habits of order, discipline, and work after puberty the personality develops impetuously and all extraneous intervention becomes odious, tyrannical, insufferable. Now it so happens that parents feel the responsibility towards their children precisely during this second period, when it is too late then of course the stick and violence enter the scene and yield very few results indeed. Why not instead take an interest in the child during the first period

Antonio Gramsci