Antonio Gramsci Quotes

“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”

— Antonio Gramsci

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

— Antonio Gramsci

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born”

— Antonio Gramsci

“Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.”

— Antonio Gramsci

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

— Antonio Gramsci

“All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”

— Antonio Gramsci

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

— Antonio Gramsci

How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant
has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?

— Antonio Gramsci

Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously "born" in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion-a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality.

— Antonio Gramsci

“The crisis creates situations which are dangerous in the short run, since the various strata of the population are not all capable of orienting themselves equally swiftly, or of reorganizing with the same rhythm. The traditional ruling class, which has numerous trained cadres, changes men and programmes and, with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from its grasp. Perhaps it may make sacrifices, and expose itself to an uncertain future by demagogic promises; but it retains power, reinforces it for the time being, and uses it to crush its adversary and disperse his leading cadres, who cannot be be very numerous or highly trained.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“Is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one' own personality?”

— Antonio Gramsci

“Common sense is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that one like.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture; language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and civilisations.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organisational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic "men of destiny".”

— Antonio Gramsci

The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.

— Antonio Gramsci

“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

“To tell the truth is revolutionary.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“The brain is not nourished on beans and truffles but rather the food manages to reconstitute the molecules of the brain once it has been turned into homogeneous and assimilable substances, which potentially have the "same nature", as the molecules of the brain”

— Antonio Gramsci

“Since defeat in the Struggle must always be envisaged, the preparation of one's own successors is as important as what one does for victory.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“It should never be forgotten that, in the struggle between the nations, it is in the interest of each one of them that the other should be weakened by internal struggle. Hence it is always possible to pose the question of whether the parties exist by virtue of their own strength, as their own necessity, or whether rather they only exist to serve the interests of others.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space. It is the "folklore" of philosophy, and, like folklore, it takes countless different forms. Its most fundamental character is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“It is in their interests to have a stable, skilled labour force, a permanently well-adjusted complex, because the human complex (the collective worker) of an enterprise is also a machine which cannot, without considerable loss, be taken to pieces too often and renewed with single new parts.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“The principle must always rule that ideas are not born of other ideas, philosophies of other philosophies; they are a continually renewed expression of real historical development. The unity of history (what the idealists call unity of the spirit) is not a presupposition, but a continuously developing process.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“At the limit it could be said that every speaking being has a personal language of his own, that is his own particular way of thinking and feeling. Culture, at its various levels, unifies in a series of strata, to the extent that they come into contact with each other, a greater or lesser number of individuals who understand each other's mode of expression to varying degrees, etc.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“A man of politics writes about philosophy: it could be that his "true" philosophy should be looked for rather in his writings on politics. In every personality there is one dominant and predominant activity: it is here that his thought must be looked for, in a form that is more often than not implicit and at times even in contradiction with what is professly expressed.”

— Antonio Gramsci

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters

— Antonio Gramsci

Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. ... In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.

— Antonio Gramsci

“The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“The philosophy of praxis does not aim at the peaceful resolution of existing contradictions in history and society, but is the very theory of these contradictions. It is not the instrument of government of the dominant groups in order to gain the consent and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes. It is the expression of subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the impossible deceptions of the upper class, and even more their own.”

— Antonio Gramsci

What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be.

— 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

“Indifference is the dead weight of history.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“It indicates a person who has not only good manners but who possesses a sense of balance, a sure mastery of himself, a moral discipline that permits him to subordinate voluntarily his own selfish interest to the wider interests of the society in which he lives. The gentleman, therefore is a cultural person in the noblest sense of the word, if by culture we mean not simply wealth of intellectual knowledge but also the ability to fulfil one's duty and understand one's fellow man by respecting / every principle, every opinion, every faith that is sincerely professed.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“A social group can, indeed must, already exercise 'leadership' before winning governmental power (this is indeed one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to 'lead' as well.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“I would like you to understand completely, also emotionally, that I'm a political detainee and will be a political prisoner, that I have nothing now or in the future to be ashamed of in this situation. That, at bottom, I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I've always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison. That therefore I can only be tranquil and content with myself.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“I give culture this meaning: exercise of thought, acquisition of general ideas, habit of connecting causes and effects ... I believe that it means thinking well, whatever one thinks, and therefore acting well, whatever one does.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.”

— Antonio Gramsci

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.

— Antonio Gramsci

“Every State is a dictatorship.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“The abolition of the class struggle does not mean the abolition of the need to struggle as a principle of development.”

— Antonio Gramsci

“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.”

— Antonio Gramsci

Destruction is difficult. It is as difficult as creation.

— Antonio Gramsci

“From the moment when a subordinate class becomes really independent and dominant, calling into being a new type of State, the need arises concretely, of building a new intellectual and moral order, i.e. a new type of society, and hence the need to elaborate the most universal concepts, the most refined and decisive ideological weapons.”

— Antonio Gramsci

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.

— Antonio Gramsci

“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 ...”

— Antonio Gramsci

“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.”

— Antonio Gramsci

This is really the common mentality of prisoners: they read with great attention all the articles that deal with illnesses and send away for treatises and "be your own doctor" or "emergency treatments" and end up by discovering that they have at least 300 or 400 illnesses, whose symptoms they are experiencing.

— Antonio Gramsci

“History is at once freedom and necessity.”

— Antonio Gramsci

Driving forward is the chief characteristic of western man since the Sumerians. His dread triad of vices is property-holding, voraciousness, and lust.

— Antonio Gramsci