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Peasants Quotes

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Peasants Quotes

“Not only in peasant homes, but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside the twentieth century, the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic powers of signs and exorcisms . . . movie stars to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery!”

PeopleMenBelieveStillsUseHomeStarsCitiesMillionsDarknessMagicCenturyIgnoranceGeniusHundredMediumsPilotsMechanismReservesElectricityMovie StarMiraculousTwentieth CenturyPeasantsSweatersSavagerySkyscraperAviatorExorcismAmuletsMagic Powers
Author:Leon Trotsky
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“The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gruel made from various grains. The grain diet of the peasant warriors stunted their bones, rotted their teeth, and left them weak and prone to disease. In contrast, the poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones.”

MenGivingMadeLeftStrongProductsDiseaseWeakSoldierVariousBonesTeethWarriorMeatDietsSteadyMilkContrastGrainConsumedPeasantsPoorestProteinDairyYogurtMongolsDairy Products
Book:Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
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“Though freedom and wealth are both good things which most of us desire and though we often need both to obtain what we wish, they still remain different. Whether or not I am my own master and can follow my own choice and whether the possibilities from which I must choose are many or few are two entirely different questions. The courtier living in the lap of luxury but at the beck and call of his prince may be much less free than a poor peasant or artisan, less able to live his own life and to choose his own opportunities for usefulness.”

NeedsMayStillsTwoDifferentAbleDesireChoicesOpportunityWishWealthMy OwnPoorPossibilityMastersGood ThingsLuxuryLapPeasantsUsefulnessArtisansCourtiersBeck And Call
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“With time environmental issues got much more complicated. It is pretty easy, if you know what you are doing, to stop a company from pouring poison into a lake where kids swim. It is much harder to address all the myriad greenhouse gases emitted by different sources - from petrochemical refineries to hundreds of millions of peasants cutting down trees for their incredibly inefficient cook stoves.”

IfsKnowsDifferentKidsEasyCompanyMillionsIssuesCuttingTreeSourceHarderEnvironmentalComplicatedCooksPoisonAddressesLakesSwimPeasantsPouringGreenhousesGreenhouse GasesStovesEnvironmental IssuesCutting DownRefinery
Author:Denis Hayes
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“Much of the criticism of economic globalization has centered on factory labor abuses. But the majority of the world's poor are not employed in factories; they are self-employed - as peasant farmers, rural peddlers, urban hawkers, and small producers, usually involved in agriculture and small trade in the world's vast "informal" economy .”

WorldSelfPoorEconomyEconomicInvolvedLaborCriticismAbuseTradeMajorityProducersFarmersFactoriesAgricultureUrbanEmployedGlobalizationPeasantsEconomic GlobalizationPeddlerHawkers
Book:How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
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“In England, the population explosion can be linked very clearly with the enclosure of the commons that uprooted the peasants from their land. In India, it was the same thing: the population increased at the end of the 18th century when the British took over and Indian lands were colonized. Instead of the land feeding Indian people it started to feed the British empire. So we had destitution. Destitute people who don't have their own land to feed themselves can only feed themselves by having larger numbers, therefore they multiply. It's the rational response of a dispossessed people.”

PeopleEndsNumbersLandCenturyIndiaEnglandResponsePopulationBritishRationalIndianEmpiresFeedingLinkedExplosionsPeasantsBritish Empire18th CenturyDestituteEnclosurePopulation Explosion
Author:Vandana Shiva
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“For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are sufficient - for this we have the testimony of the history of our revolution. For the definitive victory of Socialism, for the organization of Socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient - for that are required the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries.”

CountryEffortRevolutionVictoryOrganizationProductionsRussiaSocialismSufficientSocialistTestimonyPeasantsInsufficientBourgeoisie
Author:Leon Trotsky
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“If this government can send 20 billion dollars to Latin America to some peasants who have never fought for this country or worked for this country or have - or - and is sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Africa and Asia to try and buy friendship of people who will never be friendly toward them, then they should be even more quick to spend some - whatever amount of money is necessary to get inside of their house straight, before it's too late.”

PeopleIfsShouldTryingCountryGovernmentAmericaHouseMillionsAmountLateDollarsBillionsToo LateFriendlyLatinAsiaPeasantsLatin AmericaBefore It's Too Late
Author:Malcolm X
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“Like everyone else, I was at least peripherally involved in the antiwar movement. You woke up every morning feeling tormented about what was going on in Vietnam. It seemed to a lot of us like a catastrophe from the very beginning, inflicting immense and needless suffering on not only the American soldiers but on a lot of innocent peasants who were caught in a Cold War proxy battle - two million Vietnamese died during those years, and you woke up every morning knowing that that was going on.”

YearsTwoWarFeelingsSufferingMorningMillionsKnowingMovementColdInvolvedBattleDiedSoldierCaughtInnocentVietnamAntiwarImmenseEvery MorningCold WarCatastrophePeasantsVietnameseAmerican SoldierProxy
Author:Robert Hass
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“There were no "unemployed" in the impoverished Polish countryside before the Second World War. Not a single unemployed. Every child that was born in the peasant family had his room at the table and his job in the field, stable or pigsty... If there was not enough food, everybody got less. If food was plentiful, everybody ate better. In such a setting, we may say, the problem of security couldn't even arise... One was born with life-long rights; the only thing that one could not do was to change them. A setting good on the side of security, though bad on the side of freedom.”

IfsWorldMayChildrenLongWarEnoughProblemJobsSidesBornRoomsRightsSecurityFieldsTablesAriseSettingSettingsWar Of The WorldsStableLong LifePolishPeasantsUnemployedCountrysideSecond World WarPlentiful
Author:Zygmunt Bauman
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“If you have an area where high-income receivers concentrate, you have a higher fiscal capacity. That fiscal capacity is a valuable resource and will create rent-seeking. People will trying to get that resource one way or the other, including immigration. It is very much like the medieval peasants putting their sheep on the commons pasture. It is better than the open range, and if you let them have open access they will, in fact, put too many sheep on the pasture and waste the value that the pasture has.”

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Author:James M. Buchanan
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“One of the reasons why we started the Green Belt Movement is to work with these ordinary peasant farmers so as to educate them that, despite the fact that they are poor, it is in their interest to protect the soil that they have, to protect the forest they have, to protect the land that they have, because if they don't do it, things can be only worse tomorrow for them for them and for their children.”

IfsChildrenReasonFactsInterestPoorLandMovementTomorrowProtectOrdinaryGreenForestsDespiteReason WhySoilFarmersEducateBeltsPeasants
Author:Wangari Maathai
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“Every night I get many letters, and after every talk I get many questions from people who say, "I want to change things. What can I do?" I never hear these questions from peasants in southern Colombia or Kurds in southeastern Turkey under miserable repression or anybody who is suffering. They don't ask what they can do; they tell you what they're doing.”

PeopleWantNightSufferingAsksCan DoLettersMiserableSouthernEvery NightTurkeysPeasantsRepressionColombiaKurds
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“There have, for years, been comparative studies of religious fanaticism and factors that correlate with it. By and large, it tends to decline with increasing industrialization and education. The US, however, is off the chart, ranking near devastated peasant societies. About 1/2 the population believe the world was created a few thousand years ago: the justification for the belief is that that is what they were ordered to believe by authority figures to whom they were taught one must subordinate oneself. And on, and on.”

WorldYearsBelieveBeliefReligiousStudyFiguresTaughtThousandAuthorityYears AgoOneselfPopulationFactorsDeclineJustificationThousand YearsPeasantsFanaticismSubordinatesDevastatedRankingIndustrializationAuthority Figures
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“I still believe that workers must be the basic force which must organize and eventually transform society (along with peasants in poor countries). This is because they are the source of the profits which make capitalism what it is. They can shut the system down, and at the same time they possess the unique knowledge needed to make it work in everyone's interests.”

BelieveStillsCountryForceInterestPoorSourceNeededUniqueCapitalismDown AndWorkersProfitOrganizePeasantsI Still BelievePoor Countries
Author:Michael Yates
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“While certain coastal cities have become very prosperous, the rest of China has a per capita income of $200 a year. The coast wants to have nothing to do with the interior; it wants to work with Tokyo and New York. This is an old story in China. It is why Mao succeeded in 1927. He wanted [coastal] Shanghai to throw the foreigners out, but Shanghai was doing too well financially [to expel foreigners]. So Mao went to the interior and raised a peasant army. He came back to Shanghai and sealed off the country.”

WantYearsWellsCountryStoriesWantedCertainCitiesNew YorkArmyRaisedChinaIncomeCoastInteriorsProsperousPeasantsForeignersTokyoMaoCoastalShanghai
Author:George Friedman
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“What worker or peasant can pay 80 - 90 million dollars to elect a senator or 4 billion to elect a president? Only great capital can do that. That is why we say that bourgeois democracy has been evolving in the last years into dollar democracy, this is not the democracy of sovereignty, and only the people can determine that.”

PeopleYearsHas BeensLastsPresidentCan DoPayMillionsDemocracyDollarsWorkersDetermineBillionsEvolveLast YearSenatorsSovereigntyPeasantsMillion DollarsBourgeoisDemocracies Have
Author:Alejandro Castro Espin
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