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The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935 QUOTES

The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935 QUOTES

1 " We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopedia knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world. This form of culture really is harmful, particularly for the proletariat. It serves only to create maladjusted people, people who believe they are superior to the rest of humanity because they have memorized a certain number of facts and dates and who rattle them off at every opportunity, so turning them almost into a barrier between themselves and others. "

― Antonio Gramsci , The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935

2 " Culture is something quite different. It is organization, discipline of one’s inner self, a coming to terms with one’s own personality; it is the attainment of a higher awareness, with the aid of which one succeeds in understanding one’s own historical value, one’s own function in life, one’s own rights and obligations. "

― Antonio Gramsci , The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935

3 " Freedom is not utopia, because it is a basic aspiration; the whole history of mankind consists of struggles and efforts to creates social institutions capable of ensuring a maximum of freedom. "

― Antonio Gramsci , The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935

4 " The discipline imposed on citizens by the bourgeois state makes them into subjects, people who delude themselves that they exert an influence on the course of events. "

― Antonio Gramsci , The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935

5 " Culture is a privilege. Education is a privilege. And we do not want it to be so. All young people should be equal before culture. "

― Antonio Gramsci , The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935