Antonio Gramsci citáty

„Jsem pesimista kvůli inteligenci, ale optimista kvůli vůli.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

19. prosince 1929

„Jediný a oprávněný entuziasmus je takový, jenž je provázen rozumem, řízenou vůlí a činností, bohatstvím invence v konkrétním počínání.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

„Economy and ideology. The claim (presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism) that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete political and historical works.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).

„To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications.

„All men are intellectuals: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Zdroj: Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).

„Man is above all else mind, consciousness -- that is, he is a product of history, not of nature.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

„Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Varianta: Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

„I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Letter from Prison (19 December 1929); also attributed to Romain Rolland.
Zdroj: Gramsci's Prison Letters

„If you beat your head against the wall, it is your head that breaks and not the wall.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

„History is at once freedom and necessity.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).

„To tell the truth is revolutionary.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

The first number of L'Ordine Nuovo, edited by Gramsci, appeared in 1921 with this motto of Ferdinand Lassalle on the first page. It is often misattributed to Gramsci.
Misattributed

„The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.“

—  Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

Originál: (it) La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.
Zdroj: :s:Pagina:Gramsci - Quaderni del carcere, Einaudi, I.djvu/318 § (34). Passato e presente.
English translation Selections from the Prison Notebooks, “Wave of Materialism” and “Crisis of Authority” (NY: International Publishers), (1971), pp. 275-276.
Prison Notebooks Volume II, Notebook 3, 1930, (2011 edition) SS-34, Past and Present 32-33,

„The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned“

—  Antonio Gramsci

„The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Loose translation, commonly attributed to Gramsci by Slavoj Žižek, presumably formulation by Žižek (see below).
Presumably a translation from a loose French translation by Gustave Massiah; strict English with cognate terms and glosses:
Le vieux monde se meurt, le nouveau monde tarde à apparaître et dans ce clair-obscur surgissent les monstres
The old world is dying, the new world tardy (slow) to appear and in this chiaroscuro (light-dark) surge (emerge) monsters.
“ Mongo Beti, une conscience noire, africaine, universelle http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, août 2002 ( archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160304061734/http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration, 2016-03-04)
“Mongo Beti, a Black, African, Universal Conscience”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, August 2002
Collected in: Remember Mongo Beti, Ambroise Kom, 2003, p. 149 https://books.google.com/books?id=6YgdAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Le+vieux+monde+se+meurt,+le+nouveau+monde+tarde+%C3%A0+appara%C3%AEtre+et+dans+ce+clair-obscur+surgissent+les+monstres%22.
Original, with literal English translation (see above):
La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
Similar sentiments are widespread in revolutionary rhetoric; see: No, Žižek did not attribute a Goebbels quote to Gramsci http://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/07/03/no-zizek-did-not-attribute-a-goebbels-quote-to-gramsci/, Ross Wolfe, 2015-07-03
Misattributed
Zdroj: Selections from the Prison Notebooks

„For two years I have lived outside the world: in a dream world. One by one, I let each strand tying me to the world and to my fellow men be cut. I live entirely for the mind, for the. heart not at all …. I turned myself into a bear, inside and outside … other people did not exist for me. For perhaps two years, I didn’t laugh once and I didn’t cry … but I never hurt anyone but myself.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 70.

„I can’t think why Delio [son] has not been told that I’m in prison, and why no one reflected that he might then find out about it indirectly, that is, in the most disagreeable way for a child, who then begins to doubt the truthfulness of those educating him, to think about it on his own account and draw apart. At least, that was my experience as a child: I remember it perfectly... I believe in treating children as rational creatures with whom it is possible to discuss even the most serious matters. This makes a very profound impression on them, it strengthens their character and above all it avoids leaving their development at the mercy of random environmental pressures and casual, impersonal encounters. It really is very strange how grown-ups forget they were children themselves, and make no use of their own experiences. For my part, I recall vividly how offended I was at every discovery of a subterfuge, even if it was meant to keep painful facts from me, and how this shut me up within myself and made me withdraw.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci cited in Fiori, 1970, pp. 22-23.

„History teaches, but it has no pupils.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications.

„My practicality consists in this: in the knowledge that if you beat your head against the wall it is your head which breaks and not the wall … that is my strength, my only strength.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

The Modern Prince and other Writings, quoting a letter to his sister

„We can see that in putting the question "what is man?" what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he "make himself," can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process and, more exactly, the process of his actions. If you think about it, the question itself "what is man?" is not an abstract or "objective" question. It is born of our reflection about ourselves and about others, and we want to know, in relation to what we have thought and seen, what we are and what we can become; whether we really are, and if so to what extent, "makers of our own selves," of our life and of our destiny. And we want to know this "today," in the given conditions of today, the conditions of our daily life, not of any life or any man“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).