Gramsci, Antonio

"Freedom is not given but is won through struggle, sacrifice, and the development of collective will."

"The people's creativity and imagination are their most precious resources for building a new world."

"Understanding requires us to study the particular struggles and cultures of specific peoples."

"The organic intellectual must be simultaneously a student and a teacher of the people."

"A revolutionary movement must be rooted in the deepest feelings and aspirations of the people."

"The conquest of power by a new class requires first the conquest of cultural hegemony."

"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."

"Intellectuals are the dominant group's deputies in the exercise of subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government."

"The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is 'known thyself' as a product of the historical process to date."

"Common sense is not something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself."

"To know oneself is the beginning of all wisdom, especially for a revolutionary."

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

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

"The old order dies hard; it does not go gentle into that good night."

"A revolutionary movement must critically understand culture, not merely reject it wholesale."

"Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will—this is my motto."

"The intellectuals are the dominant group's 'deputies' for maintaining hegemony."

"Tradition and the individual talent are constantly in dialogue."

"The revolutionary must be both a pessimist and an optimist."

"One should therefore respect and even revere the difficulties of one's country."

"The beginning of all true understanding lies in the understanding of what is."

"The function of the intellectual is to organize human experience and construct meaning."

"Every man is in some way an intellectual, though not all have the social position of intellectuals."

"Religion is the opium of the people, but philosophy must be the caffeine of the intellectual."

"The modern prince must be a new type of intellectual whose political and philosophical formation is his distinctive quality."

"Hegemony is not just political dominance but cultural and intellectual leadership."

"To be an intellectual means to take responsibility for reality and the future."

"The working class must create its own intellectuals from within."

"One must be deeply pessimistic about the world and yet work as though victory were inevitable."