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<cite class="book">Letters of Insurgents</cite> Ben quotes 2020-10-18T16:44:15+00:00 /quotes/letters-of-insurgents/
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Shes a commie, he said, as matter-of-factly as if he were saying, Shes tall. He had considered and rejected this possibility as well. She started being one during the depression. She likes to talk about it, but I never understood any of that shit about workers wanting commies to run the unions and factories. I never met any who wanted that. But she thought thats what they wanted and the union paid her to organize workers to want that. After the war the union threw her out on her ass and not one worker stood up for her. She still thinks thats what everyone wants.

Sophia Nachalo and Ron

But my good fellow. Zdenek shouted, dont you see that its impossible to overthrow a ruling social order with organisation and discipline? What youre talking about is the reinstatement of the ruling order, not its overthrow.

Yarostan Vochek and Zdenek

I cant formulate either my goals or my means. I can tell you neither where Im going nor how Ill get there. Yet I feel more vibrant, more alive, than I felt when I thought I knew my direction and my destination because I had words for them. I feel alive precisely because I dont know what the next moment will bring.

Yarostan

Despite all thats happened during the past fourteen years, Daman has somehow managed not to change a single one of his ideas!…He could have put all his views on a phonograph record fourteen years ago and anyone who wanted to meet him could simply play the record. Thats eerie. Daman isnt altogether a living person.

Sophia

A prisoner whose helplessness leads him to seek out guards who are on our side is terribly similar to the worker who thinks a politician is on our side. The prisoners justification is that the guards are armed. The prisoners human prospects do in fact reside in the guard. But a worker who thinks his human prospects reside in the politician is deluded.

Yarostan

I know that the only way youd ever go to a university building would be with a stick of dynamite in your hand.

Tina

You have your reasons. But your reasons arent good enough for me. They dont grow out of my own life. I do things for Sabinas reasons and I do others for Sophias but I never do anything for my own reasons. I dont even know what my own reasons are. And thats all I want right now. To discover my own reasons. To become me, Tina, a human entity, someone whos neither Sophia nor Sabina.

Tina

Finally I admitted, Im completely lost. I dont understand you, Sabina…And I dont see how I fit into it all!
Sabina reached for my hand and said, looking straight into my eyes, Theres nothing to understand, Sophia, and nothing to fit into. Its your life to do with as you will. Theres no structure. Nothing is banned. Everything is allowed. No holds are barred.
Whats everything? I asked hesitantly.
Letting go of my hand, she said, My life, my desires, my capacities; those are my axioms.

Sophia and Sabina

A person freely creates her own life, but in circumstances not of her own choosing.

Sabina

Every person who comes into this room has an altogether different account of whats happening; each person has different stories to tell. And its precisely this that makes every encounter so stimulating.

Sophia

I wouldnt feel bad for having a bad memory, Sophia, but for having to take someone elses word about an event I had experienced. How can you let everything in your head just lie where it falls, without ever moving it around? Theres no such thing as a bad memory; youre just lazy!

Sabina

Its easy to have reservations, Sophia. I didnt act on them, and thats all that counts.

Sabina

Alberts affirmed technology; he rebelled against everything that constrained the further development of productive forces. Thats why he ended up considering human beings reactionary. Human beings constrain the development of productive forces; human beings have to be overcome. The beings who would inhabit the crystal palace wouldnt be human beings.

Sabina

Yara showed me that what my mother had called the devil is whats most natural in all of us, what we feel; its our desires and our passions; its what we are. No sword is needed to embed the devil in us; the devil is already there; its the removal of the devil that requires a sword.

Mirna

Was I really what Yara had called me: a hypocrite who applauded at a great distance acts which I dared not undertake in my own home and neighborhood?

Yarostan

According to official accounts, an army of four million men is massed at our frontiers. Four million! In some circles theyre described as barbarian hordes, but Im sure the vast majority of them are workers, exactly like the people theyre coming to repress…It would be more comforting to think the invaders were creatures from another planet, or insects. What is so terrifying is the thought that the invaders are workers like ourselves, workers who may next week be repressed by armies consisting of some of the very workers they are repressing now. It isnt they, the enemy, who are driving those tanks and carrying those rifles. Its we — we comrades, fellow workers, brothers, we who failed to communicate with each other, we who failed to destroy the schools where were taught to produce the tanks — the schools where were taught to obey the commanders who order us to assassinate each other.

Yarostan

What kind of system can afford to support a permanent force of four million trained assassins? Can you even imagine how much of societys activity has to be concentrated on war-related work to supply an army of four million — in peace time?

Yarostan

I dont have the instincts of ants or bees; I cant function in a hive.

Yarostan

My very dreams were contaminated by the monstrosity he [Titus Zabran] stood for: the will to impose mental constructs on living people — which as Zdenek so perceptively pointed out can only be done by means of historically available instruments: guns, tanks, police and armies.

Sophia

I think the split was between the world of those who, like Ted, Jan and Mirna, sought to realize their own potentialities among others realizing theirs, and the world of those who, like Luisa and Daman and Titus Zabran, sought to fit human beings into what Sabina called a crystal palace, which in practice was always the same regimented barracks, the hive youve rejected. Like Sabina, and like me, you had a foot in both worlds.

Sophia