Quotessence
Home / Topics / Leftism Quotes

Leftism Quotes

Browse 87 quotes about Leftism.

Leftism Quotes

“The question regularly resurfaces in leftist circles: "Will sex work exist after the revolution?" Maybe, and maybe not. Regardless of the answer to that question, two things remain true: people who trade sex for resources deserve to live free from state violence right now, and people trading sex by choice, circumstances, or coercion know best about what they need to be safe.”

PoliticsRevolutionSex WorkLeftism
Book:Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex
Create image

“Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe. In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.”

GovernmentPoliticsCorruptionSouth AfricaElectionsZimbabweLeftism2009KleptocracyJacob ZumaRobert MugabeAfrican National CongressVoluntarismSa General Election 2009Zanu Pf
Author:Mark Gevisser
Create image

“...Bad behavior is bipartisan, but the Left seems to have an instinct for violence. This makes perfect sense for a worldview with revolutionary underpinnings....But yet, they claim oppression due to their inability to control the words and minds of others. That is why the Left is a threat to both freedom and democracy: Because at the end of the day, they don't really believe in either.”

DemocracyViolenceLiberalismDisagreementLeftismFreespeechLeftwingers
Author:Jonathon von Maren
Create image

“In our age, the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy. Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution. The sort of things that are working against him are the concentration of the press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of monopoly on radio and the films, the unwillingness of the public to spend money on books, making it necessary for nearly every writer to earn part of his living by hackwork, the encroachment of official bodies… Everything in our age conspires to turn the writer, and every other kind of artist as well, into a minor official, working on themes handed down from above and never telling what seems to him the whole of the truth. But in struggling against this fate he gets no help from his own side; that is, there is no large body of opinion which will assure him that he’s in the right.”

WritingTruthLiteratureLibertyCensorshipTotalitarianismPolitical CorrectnessLeftismPublishing Industry
Book:The Prevention of Literature
Create image

“Guerrillas of Desire' offers a contentious hypothesis: the fundamental assumptions underlying Left and radical organizing, including many strains of anarchism, is wrong. I do not mean organizationally dishonest, ideologically inappropriate, or immoral. I mean empirically incorrect. ... Strategies ... are predicated on the assumption that working class and poor people are unorganized and not resisting. Illustrating that everyday resistance is a factor in revolution and a form of politics, maintaining that its effects on overt rebellion and crises are measureable, requires the reversal of this assumption. Working class and poor people ... are already organized and resisting.”

ResistanceSocial ChangeAnarchismLeftismResistRadical Politics
Book:Guerrillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible
Create image

“it's vital to avoid a longtime error of leftist politics, starting with Marxism: failure to understand the powerful role in human society of subjective forces such as spirituality. That failure has opened the door wide to right-wing manipulation of spiritual hunger. That failure undermines the possibility of mobilizing masses of Latinos/as for whom faith has been an affirmation of heart in a heartless world. The bottom line in any organizing for social justice needs to be respect for others' needs, including spiritual needs.”

SpiritualityMarxismLeftismOrganizingLatinosLatinasLeftist Politics
Book:De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century
Create image

“Het huwelijk tussen links Nederland en lichtgetint-orthodox-Nederland is er een dat barst van de ongerijmdheden en dat niet te doorgronden valt. Een gemeenschap die voor het leeuwendeel een geïmporteerd Staphorst is, een soort oriëntaalse SGP, met gesluierde vrouwen, vrouwen die achter de mannen bidden in de moskee, tegen abortus, tegen homo's en transgenders, tegen genderneutraliteit, tegen vrijheid van meningsuiting in de vorm van satire, tegen godslastering, vóór besnijdenis, vóór nationalisme en een eigen-volk-en-geloof-eerst-mentaliteit, met duidelijke rollen voor de geslachten, waarbij de vrouwen de piepers schillen en de mannen brood op de plank brengen, moderniteit-sceptisch en anti-feministisch, wat had die gemeenschap in godesnaam te zoeken bij het inclusieve links met de geheven regenboogvlaggen? Wie stemt er nu Erdoğan in het ene land en PvdA in het andere?”

ReligionIslamHypocrisyLeftismNetherlands
Book:Ik ga leven
Create image

“The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic, and this even though they loathed Clinton, because the battle against religious and ethnic dictatorship in the Balkans took precedence. This, by the way, was partly a battle to save Muslims from Catholic and Christian Orthodox killers. That impressed me. The neo-cons also took the view, quite early on, that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was impossible as well as undesirable. They were dead right about that. They had furthermore been thinking about the menace of jihadism when most people were half-asleep. And then I have to say that I was rather struck by the way that the Weekly Standard and its associated voices took the decision to get rid of Trent Lott earlier this year, thus removing an embarrassment as well as a disgrace from the political scene. And their arguments were on points of principle, not 'perception.' I liked their ruthlessness here, and their seriousness, at a time when much of the liberal Left is not even seriously wrong, but frivolously wrong, and babbles without any sense of responsibility. (I mean, have you read their sub-Brechtian stuff on Halliburton....?) And revolution from above, in some states and cases, is—as I wrote in my book A Long Short War—often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.”

WarReligionPoliticsChristianityRevolutionIslamLiberalismCatholicismDictatorshipPersecutionEthnicityJihadLeftismBosniaKosovoBalkansBosnian WarBill ClintonSaddam HusseinBertolt BrechtNeoconservatismKosovo WarSlobodan MilosevicA Long Short WarHalliburtonPersecution Of MuslimsThe Weekly StandardTrent Lott
Book:Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
Create image

“This is not hyperbole. It is possible for the average professor to have been taught by leftists, grown up in a left-leaning city, read only left-leaning books, entertained by leftists in pop culture and became a professor without holding a job outside academia. How can we expect these professors to adequately explain what people who oppose them believe?”

CollegeConservativeBiasIndoctrinationLiberalLeftismPolitical Bias
Book:Please Enroll Responsibly: Avoid Indoctrination at College
Create image

“Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, el hombre que puso a finales de los ochenta y principio de los noventa la institucionalidad del Estado colombiano contra la pared, asesinando sin contemplación a todo aquel que se le opusiera, se definió en su juventud como un ciudadano de izquierda. No hay duda de que en este sentido fue coherente con su posición, pues un hombre que venía de abajo, que vivió en carne propia la desigualdad enorme que divide profundamente a un 80% de los colombianos que no tiene nada y un 20% que lo tiene todo, no tenía razones para defender a esa minoría privilegiada que había dirigido los destinos del país desde mucho antes de la independencia.”

PoliticsLeftismNarcs
Book:Los buenos muchachos del expresidente
Create image

“The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete, whether it is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, “ultramodern.” Old truths can be rediscovered, entirely new ones found. The Man of the Right does not have a time-bound, but a sovereign mind[...] The right stands for liberty, a free, unprejudiced form of thinking, a readiness to preserve traditional values (provided they are true values), a balanced view of the nature of man, seeing in him neither beast nor angel, insisting also on the uniqueness of human beings who cannot be transformed into or treated as mere numbers or ciphers; but the left is the advocate of the opposite principles. It is the enemy of diversity and the fanatical promoter of identity. Uniformity is stressed in all leftist utopias, a paradise in which everybody should be the “same,” where envy is dead, where the “enemy” either no longer exists, lives outside the gates, or is utterly humiliated. Leftism loathes differences, deviation, stratifications. Any hierarchy it accepts is only “functional.”

ConservatismLeftismTraditionalismRightism
Book:Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot
Create image

“La cosa ya estaba muy consolidada en los ambientes de la izquierda desde que Stalin instruyera a sus hordas para que cuando debatiesen con un conservador le llamasen fascista y así este tuviera que emplear parte de su tiempo y de sus palabras en desembarazarse de tan pesada etiqueta. La táctica dichosa está muy extendida en España desde los años treinta y cobró renovados furores con la llegada de la democracia en 1978. Desde entonces, la izquierda y los separatistas mantienen inmovilizada y acomplejada a la derecha española, que en cuanto osa defender una sola de sus posiciones es inmediatamente situada en el averno del fascismo y de la ultraderecha.”

PoliticsHistoryFascismSpainConservatismPolitical CorrectnessLeftismStalinPolitically Incorrect
Author:Santiago Abascal Conde
Create image

“24. (fr) Psychologists use the term "socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. 25. (fr) The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a nonmoral origin. We use the term "oversocialized” to describe such people. 26. (fr) Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society’s expectations.”

ShameGuiltPrivilegePostmodernismSelf HatredLeftismActivistsSocial ConformityOversocialization
Book:Industrial Society and Its Future
Create image

“The effect of the mortification of the domestic affections upon the general character was probably very pernicious. The family circle is the appointed sphere, not only for the performance of manifest duties, but also for the cultivation of the affections; and the extreme ferocity which so often characterised the ascetic was the natural consequence of the discipline he imposed upon himself. Severed from all other ties, the monks clung with desperate tenacity to their opinions and to their Church, and hated those who dissented from them with all the intensity of men whose whole lives were concentrated on a single subject, whose ignorance and bigotry prevented them from conceiving the possibility of any good thing in opposition to themselves, and who had made it a main object of their discipline to eradicate all natural sympathies and affections.”

ReligionPoliticsChristianityIdeologyBigotryFamily LifeLeftismDomesticityMonasticismSjws
Book:History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne
Create image

“Not long ago, having expressed some disagreements in print with an old comrade of long standing, I was sent a response that he had published in an obscure newspaper. This riposte referred to my opinions as ‘racist.’ I would obviously scorn to deny such an allegation on my own behalf. I would, rather, prefer to repudiate it on behalf of my former friend. He had known me for many years and cooperated with me on numerous projects, and I am quite confident that he would never have as a collaborator anyone he suspected of racial prejudice. But it does remind me, and not for the first time, that quarrels on the left have a tendency to become miniature treason trials, replete with all kinds of denunciation. There's a general tendency—not by any means confined to radicals but in some way specially associated with them—to believe that once the lowest motive for a dissenting position has been found, it must in some way be the real one.”

FriendshipRacismDissentTreasonLeftismEdward SaidRace CardPolitical Radicalism
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“Although I’m what is called a progressive, it isn’t out of dislike for the past. I don’t reject our yesterdays. I wish that parts of our dead past were more alive. If I’m capable of originality, it’s not because I want to knock down idols or be ahead of the times. If there’s anything rigid about me, it’s a distaste for being in vogue. I would much rather be thought old-fashioned than “with it.” But in general, I still belong to the liberal leftist world as it exists in the West. I vote that way and stand with those people. We may disagree on one issue or another, but that is where I belong.”

ProgressiveLeftismOrson Welles
Author:Orson Welles
Create image

“[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their previous enthusiasm? Will Republicans stop their vicious attacks because Obama is lashing out to his left? It was pure self-indulgence; even if he feels aggrieved, he has to judge his words by their usefulness, not by his desire to vent. This isn't about him.”

ActivismCompromiseLiberalismLeftismBarack Obama2010Republican Party United StatesBush Tax Cuts
Author:Paul Krugman
Create image

“When we look at the archives, we find no statement other than Ercan Kanar's condemnation concerning Şimel Aydın. We encounter a Human Rights Association (İHD) that becomes silent when it comes to the execution by left-wing organizations. This silence is not limited to İHD alone. Primarily the press and media of the time, as well as institutions and individuals advocating human rights, have remained silent when it comes to organizational executions.”

PoliticsHuman RightsActivismLeftismFar Left
Book:Yoldaşını Öldürmek
Create image

“The morning after the next night, a dance of revolution took place in the barracks. At the head of the line was likely the comrade Şimel referred to as "sister". Years later, I learned that while those who executed Şimel were dancing, two female guards on the other side of the door were crying. Torture marks were found in the autopsy report. Şimel was a 17-year-old girl when she was killed. It seems they didn't even wait for her to grow up. Both the state and 11 leftist organizations knew Şimel would be killed. Neither the state nor the organizations prevented it. Those who annually commemorate Erdal Eren, whose age was increased for his execution, did not see, hear, or acknowledge Şimel. Yet, Şimel's age was not altered. She remained forever 17.”

Human RightsTerrorismActivismLeftismFar LeftPkkDhkpcSimel Aydin
Book:Yoldaşını Öldürmek
Create image

“After a while, I realized that I was not alone in this matter. There were many among us who had experienced similar problems in other prisons. Most of them were broken for similar reasons, had lost their enthusiasm, and were spending their days like me. Among us, those who were most broken were those who, like me, had entered the struggle attaching exaggerated romantic meanings to the revolution but realized that the revolution they imagined was not what it turned out to be.”

RevolutionIdealsActivismRevolutionaryLeftismFar Left
Book:Yoldaşını Öldürmek
Create image