Antonio Gramsci

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born

To tell the truth is revolutionary.

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).

Man is above all else mind, consciousness -- that is, he is a product of history, not of nature.

History is at once freedom and necessity.

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

Indifference is the dead weight of history.

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.

Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

A social group can, indeed must, already exercise 'leadership' before winning governmental power (this is indeed one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to 'lead' as well.

All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.