Antonio Gramsci

“Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space. It is the 'folklore' of philosophy.”

“To tell the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.”

“The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is.”

“History teaches, but it has no pupils.”

“Every revolution has been preceded by an intense labour of criticism, by the diffusion of culture and the spread of ideas.”

“Destruction is difficult. It is as difficult as creation.”

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

“The popular element 'feels' but does not always know or understand; the intellectual element 'knows' but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel.”

“I have never wanted to swamp the consciousness of my readers, or to force their minds.”

“An intellectual's error consists in believing that one can know without understanding and even more without feeling and being impassioned.”

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

“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.”

“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

“The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor.”