1968 Quotes

“There’s a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It’s a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I’d take advantage of it while you can.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976

“The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility—based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men—is in danger, whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“A fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents, but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient. Terror as we know it today strikes without any preliminary provocation, its victims are innocent even from the point of view of the persecutor. This was the case in Nazi Germany when full terror was directed against Jews, i.e., against people with certain common characteristics which were independent of their specific behavior. In Soviet Russia the situation is more confused, but the facts, unfortunately, are only too obvious. On the one hand, the Bolshevik system, unlike the Nazis, never admitted theoretically that it could practice terror against innocent people, and though in view of certain practices this may look like hypocrisy, it makes quite a difference. Russian practice, on the other hand, is even more "advanced" than the German in one respect: arbitrariness of terror is not even limited by racial differentiation, while the old class categories have long since been discarded, so that anybody in Russia may suddenly become a victim of the police terror. We are not concerned here with the ultimate consequence of rule by terror—namely, that nobody, not even the executors, can ever be free of fear; in our context we are dealing merely with the arbitrariness by which victims are chosen, and for this it is decisive that they are objectively innocent, that they are chosen regardless of what they may or may not have done.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“It is harsh enough for each man to bear his own wound. But he who leads bears the wounds of all who follow him.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“Once," he added, "you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain.”
― Lloyd Alexander , The High King

“That's why there's a devil—to judge the priests.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

“In other words, neither oppression nor exploitation as such is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated. Antisemitism reached its climax when Jews had similarly lost their public functions and their influence, and were left with nothing but their wealth.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Ah, Princess," Dallben said, with a furrowed smile, "a crown is more discomfort than adornment. If you have learned that, you have already learned much.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“A lady doesn't insist on having her own way. Then, next thing you know, it all works out somehow, without one's even trying. I thought I'd never learn, though it's really quite easy once you get the knack.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

“In other words, if a patent forgery like the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is believed by so many people that it can become the text of a whole political movement, the task of the historian is no longer to discover a forgery. Certainly it is not to invent explanations which dismiss the chief political and historical facts of the matter: that the forgery is being believed. This fact is more important than the (historically speaking, secondary) circumstance that it is a forgery.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“It is beyond any man's wisdom to judge the secret heart of another... for in it are good and evil mixed.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“There is, therefore, a temptation to return to an explanation which automatically discharges the victim of responsibility: it seems quite adequate to a reality in which nothing strikes us more forcefully than the utter innocence of the individual caught in the horror machine and his utter inability to change his fate. Terror, however, is only in the last instance of its development a mere form of government. In order to establish a totalitarian regime, terror must be presented as an instrument for carrying out a specific ideology; and that ideology must have won the adherence of many, and even a majority, before terror can be stabilized. The point for the historian is that the Jews, before becoming the main victims of modern terror, were the center of Nazi ideology. And an ideology which has to persuade and mobilize people cannot choose its victim arbitrarily.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Significantly, it was Disraeli who said, "What is a crime among the multitude is only a vice among the few"—perhaps the most profound insight into the very principle by which the slow and insidious decline of nineteenth-century society into the depth of mob and underworld morality took place. Since he knew this rule, he knew also that Jews would have no better chances anywhere than in circles which pretended to be exclusive and to discriminate against them; for inasmuch as these circles of the few, together with the multitude, thought of Jewishness as a crime, this "crime" could be transformed at any moment into an attractive "vice." Disraeli's display of eroticism, strangeness, mysteriousness, magic, and power drawn from secret sources, was aimed correctly at this disposition in society.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“The position of sun and moon on the Feast of Beltane" is one, with a list if two hundred paired figures laid out beneath. Similar tables existed for Hogmanay and Midsummer's Day, and Samhainn, the Feast of All Hallows. The ancient feasts of fire and sun, and Beltane's sun would rise tomorrow.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“... skepticism is a way of freeing the dogmatic mind, and that's where its value lies.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

“But he knew his Boss. One must never work full force for Stalin, never go all out. He did not tolerate the flat failure to carry out his orders, but he hated thoroughly successful performance because he saw in it a diminution of his own uniqueness. No one but himself must be able to do anything flawlessly.

So even when he seemed to be straining in harness, Abakumov was pulling at half-strength—and so was everyone else.

Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

“Chelnov directed Rubin's attention to the geography of Moses' crossing. From the Nile to Jerusalem the Jews had at most 250 miles to go, and that meant that even if they rested on the Sabbath they could have easily covered the distance in three weeks. Wasn't it necessary therefore to assume that for the remaining forty years Moses did not simply lead them but misled them all over the Arabian desert?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

“... the very concept of happiness is conditional, a fiction.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

“The birth and growth of modern antisemitism has been accompanied by and interconnected with Jewish assimilation, the secularization and withering away of the old religious and spiritual values of Judaism. What actually happened was that great parts of the Jewish people were at the same time threatened by physical extinction from without and dissolution from within. In this situation, Jews concerned with the survival of their people would, in a curious and desperate misinterpretation, hit on the consoling idea that antisemitism, after all, might be an excellent means for keeping the people together so that the assumption of external antisemitism would even imply an external guarantee of Jewish existence. This superstition, a secularized travesty of the idea of eternity inherent in a faith in chosenness and a Messianic hope, has been strengthened through the fact that for many centuries the Jews experienced the Christian brand of hostility which was indeed a powerful agent of preservation, spiritually as well as politically. The Jews mistook modern anti-Christian antisemitism for the old religious Jew-hatred—and this all the more innocently because their assimilation had by-passed Christianity in its religious and cultural aspect. Confronted with an obvious symptom of the decline of Christianity, they could therefore imagine in all ignorance that this was some revival of the so-called "Dark Ages." Ignorance or misunderstanding of their own past were partly responsible for their fatal underestimation of the actual and unprecedented dangers which lay ahead. But one should also bear in mind that lack of political ability and judgment have been caused by the very nature of Jewish history, the history of a people without a government, without a country, and without a language. Jewish history offers the extraordinary spectacle of a people, unique in this respect, which began its history with a well-defined concept of history and an almost conscious resolution to achieve a well-circumscribed plan on earth and then, without giving up this concept, avoided all political action for two thousand years. The result was that the political history of the Jewish people became even more dependent upon unforeseen, accidental factors than the history of other nations, so that the Jews stumbled from one role to the other and accepted responsibility for none.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“...I began pulling out old pictures and yearbooks from our Los Angeles high schools and UC Berkeley. Suddenly there we were, thousands of trim-haired, neatly-dressed, conservative-looking youngsters, with perky, forced smiles, encased in identical inch by inch-and-a-quarter boxes for our children to snicker at. Only they did not snicker.
“Mom, this isn’t the 60s, is it?”
― Elise Frances Miller, A Time to Cast Away Stones

“Alcune caratteristiche dell'ondata rivoluzionaria - in primo luogo gli aspetti di sincronia e concatenazione tra i processi - hanno motivato e in parte giustificano il confronto con alcuni precedenti come il 1848, il 1968 o il 1989, che hanno coinvolto e scosso diverse aree regionali o continentali - e per certi versi sovra-continentali. Tuttavia una delle tesi principali di questa opera è che il valore della rivoluzione della gente comune cui abbiamo assistito - e, per quanto ci riguarda, intensamente vissuto - risieda come in tutte le rivoluzioni autentiche innanzitutto nell'aver messo al centro alcune fondamentali questioni umane e nel come e quanto esse abbiano iniziato a cercare e suggerire risposte all'insegna della vivibilità, in un'ottica possibilmente aggregante e complessivamente migliorativa per tutte e tutti. Questi processi sono preziosi per chi cerca la liberazione e l'autoemancipazione, mentre sono stati ritenuti pericolosi dagli oppressori di tutto il mondo per il principio di rivoluzione umana che hanno incarnato, soprattutto in Egitto e in Siria, in termini diversi nell'enigmatico quanto importante Yemen. In ciò si trovano delle differenze significative rispetto alle rivoluzioni del Novecento, in cui spesso sin dall'inizio sono prevalse le logiche politiche, politico-religiose e/o politico-militari. Questi processi presentano tratti nuovi e di grande valore in cui abbiamo rintracciato un filo conduttore che ce ne ha fatto formulare un'idea sintetica e un'analisi, nonché trarre insegnamenti utili alla ricerca di un bene comune in chiave universale. Al principio e al centro ci sono le persone e le personalità - non gli Stati e i partiti -, le donne e gli uomini coinvolti di tutte le età e generazioni, ciò che hanno sentito, pensato ed espresso operando ancora prima che facendo: le persone e le idee, di cui valutare il valore e le contraddizioni, i meriti e i deficit.”
― Mamadou Ly, Dall'Egitto alla Siria. Il principio di una Rivoluzione Umana e i suoi antefatti

“hungry for breath
like a kite falling stray,
the wire grows slack
the child within pulls at the empty air.”
― Jack Campbell

“L'émeute est le langage de celui qui n'est pas entendu.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Pobre de aquel país que no tenga una minoría en un Parlamento que se sepa levantar con valentía a defender los derechos de la Nación, porque cuando llegue ese momento no estaremos en el mundo libre, no estaremos en una República donde tendremos el derecho a hablar y exponer nuestras ideas libre y francamente. Eso es lo grande y lo bello en una democracia, donde podemos expresar nuestras ideas y tratar de conseguir los votos para aprobar un Proyecto de Ley.”
― Guillermo E. Quijano Castillo, Vivencias, recuerdos y hechos políticos: 1948 a 2009