Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian neo-Marxist theorist and politician. He wrote on political theory, sociology and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how states use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth23 January 1891
CountryItaly
Driving forward is the chief characteristic of western man since the Sumerians. His dread triad of vices is property-holding, voraciousness, and lust.
History is at once freedom and necessity.
The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is 'knowing thyself'as a product of the historical processes to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.
After puberty the personality develops impetuously and all extraneous intervention becomes odious.... Now it so happens that parents feel the responsibility towards their children precisely during this second period, when it is too late.
Before puberty the child's personality has not yet formed and it is easier to guide its life and make it acquire specific habits of order, discipline, and work...
All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals
What are the "maximum" limits of acceptance of the term "intellectual"?
Destruction is difficult. It is as difficult as creation.
If you beat your head against the wall, it is your head that breaks and not the wall.
The people themselves are not a homogeneous cultural collectivity but present numerous and variously combined cultural stratifications which, in their pure form, cannot always be identified within specific historical popular collectivities.
Every State is a dictatorship.
Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.
Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.
I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.