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Peasants Quotes

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Peasants Quotes

“He watched the villagers at their work and tried to get to know their ways: how they made their stores and divided them for consumption, how they bred their animals and made tools for the field, plows, harrows, rakes, shovels, as well as weapons, tubs, baskets and the like. He watched them making repairs and improving their houses with saws, hammers, and axes, or bringing wood to their homes by the easier method of using sleighs, or satisfying the other necessities of life in their few trades.”

WorkPeasantsFarming Tools
Book:Witiko
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“Thanks to its strong and broadly diffused organizational hubs, the Fasci spread quickly across Sicily. By January 1893 collectives had begun to appear in the island's smallest towns and villages. In the countryside, where less than 15 percent of the population were literate, participants in the movement generally expressed their grievances and demands by appeal to religious icons. During demonstrations, for example, while some participants would chant secular Marxist rhetoric about the need for radical redistribution, others would wield figures of saints and sing patriotic songs. Sometimes these influences even fused in an unlikely manner. Hundreds in the ranks carried crucifixes and candles while, at the same time, arguing that a rich and corrupt clergy had co-opted the fundamental truth of the faith, and that Jesus was an archetype for socialism. The composition of the cells was similarly diverse. Adolfo Rossi, a journalist who covered the revolts for the Roman newspaper La Tribuna, was particularly struck by the extensive female participation. Women, he reported, not only filled the ranks, rejecting their "usual" position in the background, they were leaders too. Girls as young as fifteen years old were on the frontlines of the movement. The single factor that enabled the Fasci to contain such a diverse political constituency within their ranks was the strength of their internal democratic process. Each of the bundles decided their policy proposals and direct actions based on a popular majority vote.”

RevolutionSocialismMarxismItalyPeasantsSicilySiclianFasci Siciliani
Book:The Invention of Sicily: A Mediterranean History
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“What infinite heart's-ease Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy! And what have kings, that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idle ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What are thy rents? what are thy comings in? O ceremony, show me but thy worth! What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd Than they in fearing. What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure! Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, That play'st so subtly with a king's repose; I am a king that find thee, and I know 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running 'fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world, No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread; Never sees horrid night, the child of hell, But, like a lackey, from the rise to set Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn, Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse, And follows so the ever-running year, With profitable labour, to his grave: And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king. The slave, a member of the country's peace, Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages.”

LifeValuesHumanityWorkSocietyMankindKingsSatisfactionEqualityFulfillmentEmptinessFlatteryCeremonyRoyaltyPeasantsExaltationMeaninglessnessPurpose In LifeBurdensAdulationHonorsFeudal SocietyPompEmpty Form
Book:Henry V
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“The perspiration of kings is just froth of the decanter. But the pawis of peasants dries up, becomes lead that weighs them down the ages. The master wears a necktie; the slave, a grindstone. Between them no relationship is possible except that which exists between mill and grist. And what is private property without public toil? Yet the world perpetuates only the pyramids, only their pharaohs. Nobody remembers or even likes to admit that both came into existence only through brawn and blood that issued from millions upon millions of nameless serfs. You weep over sunken armadas but not over their galleon slaves. You weep over fallen crowns, not for those beheaded. This must stop! We shall stop you! Labor has a face, labor has a name! You don’t romanticize it. . . you feed its belly . . . heal its sores and sons. All written history glorifies the power of men, not the sweat of man. . . . All this feudal nonsense about lilac-strewn palaces and Cleopatra’s bath! Well, the new chronicle will smell as the tao smells. It shall be carpenter over architect, farmer over agrarianist, citizen over president....”

HistoryLaborPropertyOppressionInequalityExploitationPeasantsClass StruggleSlavesFeudalism
Book:But for the Lovers
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“You idolize peasants. You look up to island savages living “at one with Nature,” I ask you to see what happened to Margaret Mead, and how the Polynesians punked her—most of the things she wrote about their views on life, about their sexual freedom, was nonsense they made up to make her look foolish. In same way the fools like Gimbutas and others who believe that mankind at some remote point lived under a benevolent matriarchy, again, “at one with Nature,” in balance with the needs of the soil and such: sheer nonsense. Everywhere historians, archaeologists find what we thought was matriarchy was really no such thing.”

FeminismPeasantsArcheologySexual FreedomMatriarchyPolynesiansMargaret MeadGimbutasGynocracyNoble Savages
Book:Bronze Age Mindset
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“The master and mistress of the house and the rest of the Blood -even the Crux himself- brought our food, poured the wine, did our bidding. The centerpiece was a roasted stag. crowned with gilded antlers and stuffed with songbirds; they had hunted well. We were forbidden to kill the deer that fattened on our coleworts and stole our grain, and the venison tasted all the better for the salt of revenge.”

RevengePeasantsDeerFeastVenison
Book:Firethorn
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“What had been a region of model farming became almost a desert, for more than half the population was exiled or sent to concentration camps. The young people left the villages, the boys to go to the factories if they could get jobs, or to become vagabonds if they couldn’t. *** An echo of the tragic fate of Russia’s German Protestant population reached the world when the Mennonites flocked to Moscow and sought permission to leave the country. Some of these Germans had tried to obey the government and had formed collective farms, only to have them liquidated as Kulak collectives. Being first-class farmers, they had committed the crime of making even a Kolkhoz productive and prosperous. Others had quite simply been expropriated from their individual holdings. All were in despair. Few were allowed to leave Russia. They were sent to Siberia to die, or herded into slave labor concentration camps. The crime of being good farmers was unforgivable, and they must suffer for this sin. *** Cheat or be cheated, bully or be bullied, was the law of life. Only the German minority with their strong religious and moral sense—the individual morality of the Protestant as opposed to the mass subservience demanded by the Greek Orthodox Church and the Soviet Government—retained their culture and even some courage under Stalin’s Terror.”

ReligionCommunismIndividualismSoviet UnionPeasantsProtestantismUssrClass WarGermansKulaks
Book:Lost Illusion
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“And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.”

PeasantsViceTerreEart
Book:The Earth
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“These romantic visions of the peasantry were constantly undone by contact with reality, often with devastating consequences for their bearers. The populists, who invested much of themselves in their conception of the peasants, suffered the most in this respect, since the disintegration of that conception threatened to undermine not only their radical beliefs but also their own self-identity.”

PeasantsPopulists
Book:A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924
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“I wouldn't worry about it too much, son. Certainly not about the peasants and the servants. They don't feel things as we do.” “They're human.” “Barely. They might as well be another species. What would happen without us to keep them in check? They wouldn't work the land. They would be at each other's throat if we weren't there to restrain them. Face it, they are driven by their instincts. Granted, that is a generalization, and there are some individuals who rise above that. Personally I think that is how the nobility originated. Even today, with the help of the Gods, hard work and some luck such a man can rise above his station. But as a group…”

OppressionNobilityPeasants
Book:The Invisible Chains - Part 2: Bonds of Fear
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“Only a few miles from any city centre one would find oneself already in the backwoods, where there were bandits living in the forests, where roads turned into muddy bogs in spring, and where the external signs of life in the remote hamlets had remained essentially unchanged since the Middle Ages. Yet, despite living so close to the peasants, the educated classes of the cities knew next to nothing about their world. It was as exotic and alien to them as the natives of Africa were to their distant colonial rulers.”

RussiaPeasants
Book:A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924
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“The peasants are not concerned about ideology: no one can frighten them with stories of the evils of communism. With their property already destroyed, they do not fear that the Communists will take their property. And if one speaks to them of freedom and democracy, they say, "Of what use is freedom and democracy if one is not alive to enjoy them?" So it is clear that the first problem of the Vietnamese peasant is a problem of life itself: how to survive in the midst of all the forces that threaten them; how to cling to life itself.”

LifeIdeologyPeasants
Book:Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire
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“What I’m talking about is the order of chosen men who inherit power. From Pharaohs and kings to bankers and executives. Their path is paved for them, and life is but a child’s lavish play pen. It used to be that the peasants would toil in meaningless servitude, unable to see the big picture, without a chance to break the cycle. Now we have computers to help us do our research. Suddenly, the rhythms and patterns of oppression and deceit since time immemorial come into startling focus.”

PowerKingsOppressionDeceitExecutivesBankersPeasantsPharaohsOppression Quotes
Book:Sabrina
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“Stability, the deep, cushiony ability to take blows, and yet to keep things as they were, came from the special place of these people on the land. The peasants were agriculturalists; their livelihood sprang from the earth. Americans they met later would have called them "farmers", but that word had a different meaning in Europe. The bonds that held these men to their acres were not simply the personal ones of the husbandman who temporarily mixes his sweat with the soil. The ties were deeper, more intimate. For the peasant was part of a community and the community was held to the land as a whole.”

American HistoryPeasantsPermacultureBroken HomesVillage LifeTerroirDerelict HousesBack To Landers
Book:Children of the Uprooted
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“The spirit of patriotism among the peasants is very high. They are not informed about world history or ideological struggles; what they see is a large force of white Westerners doing their best to kill their fellow countrymen, many of whom previously fought against the French. The peasants do not see the victims of the American military as dead Communists, but as dead patriots.”

PatriotismVietnamPeasants
Book:Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire
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“Almost overnight, Soviet peasants needed to become factory workers and miners. Industrialization was to be financed by domestic means, given the absence of any meaningful foreign investments in the country; this meant that the peasantry that did not join the industrial workforce had to foot much of the bill. Herding them into collective farms seemed a promising way to force them to pay this bill. Stalin would state, not long after he unleashed the full brunt of his modernization program, that the Soviet Union was at least half a century behind the industrialized world, and needed to catch up with it within a decade. Every sacrifice toward this goal was justified. This, then, was the broader context in which Soviet daily life played itself out between 1928 and 1933.”

Soviet UnionPeasantsIndustrializationModernizationJoseph StalinCollective FarmsSoviet Daily Life
Book:Life in Stalin's Soviet Union
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“– All strong independent farmers are driven into unbearable conditions. Sooner or later, following the Party’s orders, they will come and eliminate us as a class — within an hour.”

PeasantsUkraine1930sClass StrugglePolitical ViolenceCollectivizationUssr HistoryRepressionsHistorical TraumaState Terror
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.
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“– Independent farmers are arrested and deported somewhere to the Urals or Siberia. I fear we may be the next to be labeled ‘kulaks’. — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Two Context note: During the forced collectivization in the USSR, millions of peasants were forcibly deported to remote regions such as Siberia and the Urals as part of state repression against on wealthy peasants (nicknamed "kulaks" by the Soviet authorities).”

Soviet UnionTotalitarianismPeasantsUkraineClass WarfarePolitical ViolenceCollectivization1930 SState TerrorismRepression Books
Book:Камень. Биографический роман. Книга вторая. Непростые дороги в ад: Выживание в условиях насилия
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“That’s how we’ve ended up,” Ivan said with a bitter smile. “We work, as in the proverb: Enough trading, father — there’s no change left to give. ‘Why did they suddenly increase the grain procurement plan?’ Vasyl protested. ‘Everything seems the same — but it isn’t,’ Danylo explained. ‘The status of our land has changed, and so has the status of the collective farmers. What grew last year is now taxed differently. Even the poor peasants who joined the collective are no longer considered poor — and the taxes rise accordingly.’ ‘Clever,’ Ivan muttered angrily. ‘They’ve laid out their accounting traps well.’ — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Two Context note: In Soviet collective farms, taxes and grain quotas were often increased not because of real agricultural growth, but due to bureaucratic reclassification. Accounting became a tool of pressure that made normal farming impossible.”

InjusticeBureaucracyFarmingPeasantsUkraine1930sSoviet HistoryCollectivizationState TerrorFarming Economy
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.
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“Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village-green, With magic tints to harmonize the scene. Stilled is the hum that through the hamlet broke When round the ruins of their ancient oak The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play, And games and carols closed the busy day.”

PlayGamesMagicSceneGreenRoundsBusyAncientStealingRuinsBrokeVillageTwilightPeasantsDewOaksCarolsMinstrelsBusy Day
Book:The complete poetical works of Samuel Rogers: with a biographical sketch, and notes
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“Dispossessed peasants slash-and-burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America, hungry nomads turn their herds out into fragile African rangeland, reducing it to desert, and small farmers in India and the Philippines cultivate steep slopes, exposing them to the erosive powers of rain. Perhaps half the world's billion-plus absolute poor are caught in a downward spiral of ecological and economic impoverishment. In desperation, they knowingly abuse the land, salvaging the present by savaging the future.”

WorldWayAmericaTurnsPoorHalfEconomicLandRainAbuseIndiaAbsolutesCaughtBillionsHungryForestsDesertPlusLatinFarmersFragileDesperationReducingPeasantsHerdsLatin AmericaEcologicalExposingSpiralsPhilippinesSlopesSteepNomadDownward Spiral
Author:Alan Thein Durning
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“Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen-the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will-are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them.”

WantPersonsLife IsNamesComfortBlessingNakedEnjoymentFedsShelterPeasantsPossessingTolerableFreemanLordship
Author:Fanny Kemble
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“Who shall say that those poor peasants were not acting in the spirit we most venerate, most adore; that theirs was not the true heart language which we cannot choose but love? And what has been their reward? They have sent down their name to be the by-word of all after ages; the worst reproach of the worst men a name convertible with atheism and devil-worship.”

MenHeartHas BeensAgeSpiritNamesLanguagePoorActingAtheismWorstWorshipDevilRewardsAdorePeasantsReproachTrue HeartDevil Worship
Book:Fraser's Magazine
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“There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.”

FirstsHumansDoeInstrumentsHistoricalBlowBritishNakedIndianFedsOffendedNobilityHuman HistoryMonarchyPeasantsRevoltRetributionForgedOffendersPampered
Book:India, National Liberation and Class Struggles: A Collection of Classical Marxist Writings
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