Historical Materialism Quotes & Sayings

I knew a woman who went about bragging of her troubles, so, of course, she always had something to brag about. — Florence Scovel Shinn

In truth, it is no more clear in our time than it was in Marx's how socialism will come about in either developed or undeveloped countries; what is clear is that for humanity to have a decent future, it must come about. — Benjamin Kunkel

The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism — Nancy Hartsock

I want to work with great directors. I want to work on good material with good actors. I've probably done 20 movies at this point and a lot of independents. It's been an incredible ride and I love it and I'm just going to keep going and doing what I'm doing. — Famke Janssen

They all spoke kindly of my dead mother, who had been a slave merely in name, but in nature was noble and womanly. — Harriet Jacobs

Technologies that change society are technologies that change interactions between people — Cesar Hidalgo

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

The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you. — Mao Tse-tung

The base-superstructure metaphor when misunderstood as a causal rather than reciprocal relationship often leads to characterisations of historical materialism as determinist. The superstructure doesn't just reflect the base but has a reciprocal relation with the superstructure often enabling the base, i.e. the forces of production require property rights which are reliant upon political decisions at the level of the superstructure. The material base of every society is capped by an "ideological superstructure" that serves to legitimise and justify the arrangements and institutions in that society. It is from this superstructure that emanates ruling-class ideas and ultimately social consciousness, and thus we can see that the consciousness determined by the superstructure justifies and maintains the economic structure found in the base. — Anonymous

The way people used to kiss before the age of historical materialism. — Ilya Ilf

Voting is merely a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable ... It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the bully, and the bullet. — Benjamin Tucker

So what was in this building before historical materialism?'
'Before what?'
'You know, back then, under the old regime?'
'Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.'
'A bourgeois?'
'You're a bourgeois yourself! He wasn't a bourgeois. He was a marshal of the nobility.'
'So he was a proletarian, then?'
'You're a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a marshal.'
The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague understanding of the class structure of society would have lasted god knows how long if the young man hadn't made a decisive move. — Ilya Ilf

I was 13. And on my own for about 10 months, but those were long months. My stepdad wanted me out of his hair and tried to put me in a home, a hospital kind of place for kids with drug problems, which I absolutely did not belong in. So I left that place and struck out on my own . — Rose McGowan

Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations. — John Ciardi

The program is already funded. Everything is in place. — Kenneth Williams

I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed. — Val McDermid

And he knew something else as a social evolutionist that he might stress someday in his 'Every Change Is for the Worse' should he ever find time to write it: Gold knew that the most advanced and penultimate stage of a civilization was attained when chaos masqueraded as order, and he knew we were already there. — Joseph Heller

When I was a Marxist, I did not hold my opinions as a matter of faith but I did have the conviction that a sort of unified field theory might have been discovered. The concept of historical and dialectical materialism was not an absolute and it did not have any supernatural element, but it did have its messianic element in the idea that an ultimate moment might arrive, and it most certainly had its martyrs and saints and doctrinaires and (after a while) its mutually excommunicating rival papacies. It also had its schisms and inquisitions and heresy hunts. — Christopher Hitchens

In pure mathematics the mind deal only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learned to count, that is, to carry out the first arithmetical operation, may be anything else, but they are certainly not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered other than their number-and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience. Like the idea of number, so the idea of form is derived exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind as a product of pure thought. — Friedrich Engels

Historical materialism has every reason to distinguish itself sharply from bourgeois habits of thought. Its founding concept is not progress but actualization. — Walter Benjamin

History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends. — Karl Marx

Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him. — Leon Trotsky

All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Truth doesn't need your cooperation to exist. All forms of cult, all forms of hype, all forms of delusion do require your participation in order to exist. I've looked into marginal areas of human experience -historical and otherwise- with a rational mind, and what I've found is that doorways into the miraculous are far fewer than the publicists of the New Age would have us believe. On the other hand, they are not as rare as the proponents of radical reductionism and materialism would have us believe. There are doorways out of the mundane ... — Terence McKenna

As the sun does not wait for prayers and incantations tob e induced to rise, but immediately shines and is saluted by all, so do you also not wait for clappings of hands and shouts of praise tob e induced to do good, but be a doer of good voluntarily and you will be beloved as much as the sun. — Epictetus