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
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.
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.
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.
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.