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Peasants Quotes

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Peasants Quotes

“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”

IdeasUseAgeTermSimpleClassVirtueGraceStageIgnoranceHabitCivilizationSimplicityVicesNo IdeaPeasantsCoarseRural Life
Book:Democracy in America - Vol. I. and II.
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“The peasant of early modern France inhabited a world of step-mothers and orphans, of inexorable, unending toil, and of brutal emotions, both raw and repressed.The human condition has changed so much since then that we can hardly imagine the way it appeared to people whose lives really were nasty, brutish, and short. This is why we need to reread Mother Goose.”

PeopleWorldWayNeedsHumansMotherEmotionStepsImagineModernConditionsChangedFranceHuman ConditionBrutalNastyToilPeasantsOrphanGeeseRepressedUnendingInexorableMother GooseStep Mother
Author:Robert Darnton
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“Some people have read a few Marxist books and think themselves quite learned but what they have read has not penetrated, has not struck root in their minds, so that they do not know how to use it and their class feelings remain as of old. Others are very conceited and having learned some book-phrases, think them terrific and are very cocky; but whenever a storm blows up, they take a stand very different from that of the workers and the majority of the peasants. They waver while the latter stand firm, they equivocate while the latter are forthright.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsMindBookDifferentUseFeelingsClassKnow HowStudyRootsMajorityWorkersBlowStormFirmPhrasesLatterTerrificPeasantsMarxistCockyConceitedStand Firm
Book:Speech at the Chinese Communist Party's National Conference on Propaganda Work: March 12, 1957
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“The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class forced them into numerous uprisings against its rule.... It was the class struggles of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars that constituted the real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society.”

WarRealPoliticalForceClassStruggleEconomicDevelopmentHistoricalOppressionChineseMotiveExploitationRuthlessPeasantsUprisingClass StruggleLandlordPolitical OppressionClasses Of Society
Book:Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works
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“Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.”

WantTryingHumansHomeHappensDesireOpportunityWishExistencePoetBehaviorBeatsDignityTestsScientistMadPsychologicalProductiveOblivionBankersPeasantsPigeonsBombersMeddlingTycoonsProductive Work
Book:The Chomsky Reader
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“It was too difficult. People weren't prepared to put in the hours on the donkey work - you know, dates and facts and so on. I think in retrospect my generation will be seen as a turning point. From now on there'll be a net loss of knowledge in Europe. The difference between a peasant community in fourteenth-century Iran and modern London, though, is that if with their meager resources the villagers occasionally slipped backward, it was not for lack of trying. But with us, here in England, it was a positive choice. We chose to know less.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsTryingFactsChoicesDifficultCommunityHoursDifferencesLossGenerationsModernCenturyResourcesEuropeEnglandPreparedLondonIranPeasantsMy GenerationTurning PointsRetrospectDonkeyPositive Choices
Author:Sebastian Faulks
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“By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat... Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier... Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.”

ShouldCountryCoursesForceEconomyRevolutionVictoryEasierBasesTownsDuesDrivingFactorsProgressiveDestroyingUsualCapitalistFeedingStarvingPeasantsFamineSentimentalityProletariatDemolish
Author:Vladimir Lenin
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“I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.”

IfsWayShouldMightYoungThreeGroupsProduceMonthsBirthPressureVictimMereSpeciesConvincedDiscriminationImpulseWealthyNervesLackingConsentPeasantsThree MonthsBundlesUnder PressureProcreationStudsReproducingReasonablenessTahiti
Book:Pavannes and Divagations
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“I have often caught sight of myself, my spine humped over, defining my hollowness, my head too heavy for my body, swinging like the oversized blossom of some cruelly bred plant; admiration for the world spread for the world to see on my gullible face-unlike my other face with the sour look of a starved peasant.”

WorldLooksBodyFacesSightPlantCaughtAppearanceHeavySpreadAdmirationDefiningPeasantsSpineSourGullibleHollowness
Book:Bridgeport Bus
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“The mistake the world is making with the simple peoples is to try and hurry them into political concepts they don't understand and aren't prepared to cope with. I know. I am a peasant myself. ... I say, Spit on the big, fancy schemes. I want all the little things first. Then perhaps we can get on to the bigger things.”

KnowsWorldWantTryingFirstsLittlesBigsPoliticalSimpleMistakeConceptsBiggerPreparedFancyLittle ThingsSchemesPeasantsSpit
Author:Ramon Magsaysay
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“When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: "It is the trade entering his body." Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.”

WorldBodyPainOrderUniverseHurtExpressionFineTradeTiredComplainingObedienceEnteringPeasantsApprenticeWorkmenBeauty Of The World
Author:Simone Weil
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“Only in America, Rabbi Golden, do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedalpushers and mink stoles - and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn't their fault they were given a gift like speech - look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.”

IfsLooksAgeAmericaMotherGivenWalksOpinionSunSubjectsHairSpeechHumorousAgingFaultsMotherhoodCowsSixtyFloridaUp And DownAvenuesPeasantsIdioticPedalsPlatinumMinkOnly In America
Author:Philip Roth
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