Top 100 Quotes About Proletariat
#1. Crime fiction, especially noir and hardboiled, is the literature of the proletariat.
Adrian McKinty
#2. This republic represents the greatest basis for that universal socialist order, the creation of which is at the present time the historic task of the International Proletariat.
Karl Liebknecht
#3. One of the surest signs of the estimated changes in the consciousness of the American proletariat is to be found in the character of the demands now being put forward by the leadership.
C.L.R. James
#4. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interest of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.
Karl Marx
#5. You're gonna have to keep on saying that - I am the proletariat, I am the people. I am not the pig. You've got to make a distinction.
Fred Hampton
#6. As a schoolboy I liked to draw the leaders of the world proletariat - especially Marx. Just start smearing an ordinary splotch of ink around and you've already got a resemblance ...
Sergei Dovlatov
#7. The controversies between the proletariat and the middle class had to be smoothed out and bridged over by each getting to know and understand the other.
Fritz Sauckel
#8. If I can't have the proletariat as my chosen people any longer, at least capitalism remains my Satan.
T.J. Clark
#9. Karl Marx, himself a denizen of one of the most congested of all London districts, was equally impressed by the dismal conditions of the new proletariat. he sent Darwin a copy of 'Das Kapital' (which was found unread after his death).
Steve Jones
#10. Social democracy ... is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh.
Rosa Luxemburg
#11. Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.
Rosa Luxemburg
#12. Karl Marx predicted the eventual withering away of the state and the 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' when the people would rule, which was sheer fantasy because it was sheer fantasy because it was based on grossly erroneous assumptions about human nature, as history would repeatedly demonstrate.
David Limbaugh
#13. By Revolution, we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society which may not be threatened by such breakdown, and in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognized and a world federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and misery of imperial wars.
Bhagat Singh
#14. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party are indispensable conditions for the triumph of the Socialist revolution and the building of Socialism.
Nikita Khrushchev
#15. The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
Friedrich Engels
#16. Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat.
Vladimir Lenin
#17. Yet internally, poverty, the proletariat, wages, education,
Victor Hugo
#18. The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.
Karl Marx
#19. God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own ... by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#20. When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of all revolutionary parties; at the same time, when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse.
Theodor Herzl
#21. The failure of the Russian Socialist Republic will be the defeat of the proletariat of the whole world.
Karl Liebknecht
#23. Civilisation cannot survive if it rests on a propertyless proletariat.
Ernest Bevin
#24. The faceless, sexless, raceless proletariat. The faceless, raceless, classless category of "all women". Both creations of white Western self-centeredness. -Notes Toward a Politics of Location.
Adrienne Rich
#25. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other - bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Karl Marx
#26. Where are the heroes and the saints, who keep a clear vision of man's greatest gift, his freedom, to oppose not only the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also the dictatorship of the benevolent state, which takes possession of the family, and of the indigent, and claims our young for war?
Dorothy Day
#27. In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape.
J.G. Ballard
#28. Lenin thought abstract art was a conspiracy by the bourgeois to demoralize the proletariat. Yeah, socialist realism!
Carl Andre
#29. Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.
Vladimir Lenin
#31. The embourgeoisement of China's proletariat may be the inevitable result of its industrialization, but 'inevitable' isn't the same as 'speedy.'
Timothy Noah
#32. If the leading Negro classes cannot assume and bear the uplift of their own proletariat, they are doomed for all time. It is not a case of ethics; it is a plain case of necessity. The method by which this may be done is, first, for the American Negro to achieve a new economic solidarity.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#33. Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Ronald Wright
#34. The deterioration of the intelligentsia is as much a symptom of disease as the corruption of the ruling class or the sleeping sickness of the proletariat.
Arthur Koestler
#35. [In case of zombie uprising] Marxists and Feminists would likely sympathize more with zombies. To Marxists, the undead symbolize the oppressed proletariat. Unless the zombies were all undead white males, feminists would likely welcome the posthuman smashing of existing patriarchal structures.
Daniel W. Drezner
#36. What figure does the man of letters cut in a country where his employer is the proletariat ?
Walter Benjamin
#37. The major reason for Keynes's rejection of communism was simply that he could scarcely identify with the grubby proletariat.
Murray Rothbard
#38. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat live correctly.
Oscar Wilde
#39. If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation.
Johann Most
#40. It is there, in the final moments, for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over.
Ernesto Che Guevara
#41. The Italian proletariat needs a blood bath for it force to be renewed.
Benito Mussolini
#42. The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.
Victor Hugo
#43. Trade unionism is not socialism. It is the capitalism of the proletariat.
George Bernard Shaw
#44. When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.
Vladimir Lenin
#45. The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie have armed themselves against the rising proletariat with, among other things, 'culture.'
George Grosz
#46. Penal law was not created by the common people, nor by the peasantry, nor by the proletariat, but entirely by the bourgeoisie as an important tactical weapon in this system of divisions which they wished to introduce.
Michel Foucault
#47. The country has undergone a profound social upheaval, the greatest the proletariat has ever known.
C.L.R. James
#48. The task of the proletariat is to create a still more powerful fatherland with a far greater power of resistance, the Republican United States of Europe, as the foundation of the United States of the World.
Leon Trotsky
#49. Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Friedrich Engels
#50. The national question is purely a peasant question ... the best way to eliminate nationality is a massive factory with thousands of workers ... , which like a millstone grinds up all nationalities and forges a new nationality. This nationality is the universal proletariat.
Mikhail Kalinin
#51. This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
H.L. Mencken
#52. Most of my characters aren't hillbillies anyway. Let's just call them proletariat with a disposition towards criminal activity.
Daniel Woodrell
#53. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed.
Karl Marx
#54. I believe that the rising of the proletariat, if it ever comes in this country, will end in a colossal victory for capitalism - that capitalism, as at present and in the past, will play off one mob against another, and pick the pockets of both.
Franklin Foer
#55. Our stand is that of the proletariat and of the masses. For members of the Communist Party, this means keeping to the stand of the Party, keeping to Party spirit and Party policy.
Mao Zedong
#56. The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic.
Vladimir Lenin
#57. The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.
Friedrich Engels
#58. Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Karl Marx
#59. The anarchists, on behalf of the proletariat, therefore consider it necessary to show the proletariat that it will have to win a gigantic battle before it realizes its goals.
Johann Most
#60. Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.
Gene Kelly
#61. A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery.
Vladimir Lenin
#62. The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848.
C.L.R. James
#63. What does it mean with regard to tactics, this fact that the proletariat of Western Europe stands all alone: that it has no prospect of any help whatsoever from any other class?
Herman Gorter
#64. At the crash of economic collapse of which the rumblings can already be heard, the sleeping soldiers of the proletariat will awake as at the fanfare of the Last Judgment and the corpses of the victims of the struggle will arise and demand an accounting from those who are loaded down with curses.
Karl Liebknecht
#65. I marveled a bit at the feat Lubianka re-education. I also began to understand more clearly what was meant by rewriting history for the proletariat and how it could be arranged that young people would hear nothing whatsoever of God.
Walter Ciszek
#66. I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
Joseph Brodsky
#67. My personal influence in the Revolutionary Governing Council is such that the dictatorship of the proletariat is firmly established, since the masses are backing me.
Bela Kun
#68. Litigation: A form of hell whereby money is transferred from the pockets of the proletariat to that of lawyers.
Kin Hubbard
#69. How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected? The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution.
Friedrich Engels
#70. Victory or defeat? It is the slogan of all-powerful militarism in every belligerent nation. And yet, what can victory bring to the proletariat?
Rosa Parks
#71. The Russian revolution was to an unprecedented degree the cause of the proletariat of the whole world becoming more revolutionary.
Karl Liebknecht
#72. This is the absolute truth: and on this truth our tactics must be based. All tactics that are not based on this are false, and lead the proletariat to terrible defeat.
Herman Gorter
#73. How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?
John Maynard Keynes
#74. We are the party of the Czechoslovak proletariat and our general headquarters are in Moscow.
Klement Gottwald
#75. Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
Bertrand Russell
#76. History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.
Rosa Luxemburg
#77. If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat; what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.
Bertrand Russell
#78. With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.
Leon Trotsky
#79. Fascism is the punishment inflicted on the proletariat for not having continued the revolution begun in Russia.
Clara Zetkin
#80. There are no circumstances imaginable, not even victory, under which the proletariat should give up its possession of arms.
Karl Marx
#81. The most disastrous phenomenon of the current situation is the factor that imperialism is employing for its own ends all the powers of the proletariat, all of its institutions and weapons, which its fighting vanguard has created for its war of liberation.
Clara Zetkin
#82. The working class is my home country, and my future is linked with the proletariat.
Andrei Platonov
#83. She is a waitress at his lordships club.
My God! The Proletariat!
The lower middle classes, sir.
Well, yes, by stretching it a bit, perhaps.
P.G. Wodehouse
#84. The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some super-personal force: the Race, the Party, History, the Proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.
Lloyd Billingsley
#85. The revolution in Russia was terrible for the proletariat in the long years of its development and it is terrible now, after the victory. But at the actual time of revolution it was easy, and this was due to the peasants.
Herman Gorter
#86. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.
Friedrich Engels
#87. Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same thing.
Graham Greene
#88. Though the Floundering Fathers didn't intend it, we now see that representative government quickly turns into the dictatorship of the proletariat. If you doubt this, I congratulate you on not having a television.
Fred Reed
#89. We thought that the proletariat would eventually run the world. But it is the Americans who have assumed that position ... The American people have changed.
Mengistu Haile Mariam
#90. The tin-sheep and wooden-melon proletariat produced their papers and named their places of work. The madman with the white beard plucked at the sleeve of the policemen, opened up his folded handkerchief, and said: professor of philosophy.
Herta Muller
#91. The Woman is the Proletarian of the Proletariat
Flora Tristan
#92. The main form of struggle is war; the main form of organization is the army ... Without armed struggle there would be no place for the proletariat, there will be no place for the people, there will be no place for the Communist Party, and there will be no victory in revolution.
Mao Zedong
#93. The unity of the bourgeoisie can be shaken only by the unity of the proletariat.
Karl Marx
#94. The head of this emancipation is philosophy; its heart is the proletariat. Philosophy cannot be realized without the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat cannot abolish itself without realizing philosophy.
Karl Marx
#95. They see in the political apathy of the proletariat only the apathy, not the protest against a system that has nothing to offer them.
Red Army Faction
#96. Historically and politically, the petit-bourgeois is the key to the century. The bourgeois and proletariat classes have become abstractions: the petite-bourgeoisie, in contrast, is everywhere, you can see it everywhere, even in the areas of the bourgeois and the proletariat, what's left of them.
Roland Barthes
#97. School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.
Ivan Illich
#98. Precisely because Marx was convinced that the cause of the proletariat was of decisive importance for the whole future of mankind, he wanted to create for that cause not a flimsy platform of rhetorical invective or wishful thinking, but the rock-like foundation of scientific truth.
Ernest Mandel
#99. Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society.
Joseph Stalin
#100. ...a "proletarian" world, with no variety, no "quality", nothing noble, ancient, memorial in it, but in theory simply a gigantic sty of evenly-fed swine, in practice a den of fratricidal and cannibalic monsters.
George Saintsbury
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