Antonio Gramsci

"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."

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

"All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals."

"To know oneself is true progress, for it leads to the conquest of the self."

"The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is."

"Everyone is a philosopher in their own way."

"Common sense is not so common."

"Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will."

"The intellectuals are the dominant group's deputies in the exercise of subaltern functions."

"State = political society + civil society."

"Cultural hegemony precedes physical force."

"The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence but in active participation in practical life."

"An intellectual is someone who has the capacity to believe things that intelligent people would never accept."

"Revolution is not an event, but a process."

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

"The tradition of all past generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living."

"Freedom is not something to be given; it is something to be taken."

"What is political is not always social, and what is social is not always political."

"Art is to create beauty and emotion within the human soul."

"Education forms the basis of society."

"Men are made by their struggles, not by their birth."

"The modern prince must be and cannot but be the proclaimer and organizer of an intellectual and moral reform."

"To be without utopia is to be a machine."

"Each man must know his own darkness before he can find light."

"The new cannot be born if the old does not die."

"Language is power and the language we use shapes our reality."

"Consciousness is not something that preexists and is then realized in practice; rather it is something that is produced and develops with practice."

"Every relationship of hegemony is necessarily a pedagogical relationship."

"The crisis consists in this: that which is old is dying and that which is new cannot yet be born."

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."