Antonio Gramsci quotes

„To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications.

„All men are intellectuals: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Source: Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).

„Man is above all else mind, consciousness -- that is, he is a product of history, not of nature.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

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

—  Antonio Gramsci

Variant: Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

„I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Letter from Prison (19 December 1929); also attributed to Romain Rolland.
Source: Gramsci's Prison Letters

„If you beat your head against the wall, it is your head that breaks and not the wall.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

„History is at once freedom and necessity.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).

„To tell the truth is revolutionary.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

The first number of L'Ordine Nuovo, edited by Gramsci, appeared in 1921 with this motto of Ferdinand Lassalle on the first page. It is often misattributed to Gramsci.
Misattributed

„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.“

—  Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

Original: (it) La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.
Source: :s:Pagina:Gramsci - Quaderni del carcere, Einaudi, I.djvu/318 § (34). Passato e presente.
English translation Selections from the Prison Notebooks, “Wave of Materialism” and “Crisis of Authority” (NY: International Publishers), (1971), pp. 275-276.
Prison Notebooks Volume II, Notebook 3, 1930, (2011 edition) SS-34, Past and Present 32-33,

„The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned“

—  Antonio Gramsci

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

—  Antonio Gramsci

Loose translation, commonly attributed to Gramsci by Slavoj Žižek, presumably formulation by Žižek (see below).
Presumably a translation from a loose French translation by Gustave Massiah; strict English with cognate terms and glosses:
Le vieux monde se meurt, le nouveau monde tarde à apparaître et dans ce clair-obscur surgissent les monstres
The old world is dying, the new world tardy (slow) to appear and in this chiaroscuro (light-dark) surge (emerge) monsters.
“ Mongo Beti, une conscience noire, africaine, universelle http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, août 2002 ( archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160304061734/http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration, 2016-03-04)
“Mongo Beti, a Black, African, Universal Conscience”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, August 2002
Collected in: Remember Mongo Beti, Ambroise Kom, 2003, p. 149 https://books.google.com/books?id=6YgdAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Le+vieux+monde+se+meurt,+le+nouveau+monde+tarde+%C3%A0+appara%C3%AEtre+et+dans+ce+clair-obscur+surgissent+les+monstres%22.
Original, with literal English translation (see above):
La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.
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.
Similar sentiments are widespread in revolutionary rhetoric; see: No, Žižek did not attribute a Goebbels quote to Gramsci http://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/07/03/no-zizek-did-not-attribute-a-goebbels-quote-to-gramsci/, Ross Wolfe, 2015-07-03
Misattributed
Source: Selections from the Prison Notebooks

„For two years I have lived outside the world: in a dream world. One by one, I let each strand tying me to the world and to my fellow men be cut. I live entirely for the mind, for the. heart not at all …. I turned myself into a bear, inside and outside … other people did not exist for me. For perhaps two years, I didn’t laugh once and I didn’t cry … but I never hurt anyone but myself.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 70.

„I can’t think why Delio [son] has not been told that I’m in prison, and why no one reflected that he might then find out about it indirectly, that is, in the most disagreeable way for a child, who then begins to doubt the truthfulness of those educating him, to think about it on his own account and draw apart. At least, that was my experience as a child: I remember it perfectly... I believe in treating children as rational creatures with whom it is possible to discuss even the most serious matters. This makes a very profound impression on them, it strengthens their character and above all it avoids leaving their development at the mercy of random environmental pressures and casual, impersonal encounters. It really is very strange how grown-ups forget they were children themselves, and make no use of their own experiences. For my part, I recall vividly how offended I was at every discovery of a subterfuge, even if it was meant to keep painful facts from me, and how this shut me up within myself and made me withdraw.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci cited in Fiori, 1970, pp. 22-23.

„History teaches, but it has no pupils.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications.

„My practicality consists in this: in the knowledge that if you beat your head against the wall it is your head which breaks and not the wall … that is my strength, my only strength.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

The Modern Prince and other Writings, quoting a letter to his sister

„We can see that in putting the question "what is man?" what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he "make himself," can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process and, more exactly, the process of his actions. If you think about it, the question itself "what is man?" is not an abstract or "objective" question. It is born of our reflection about ourselves and about others, and we want to know, in relation to what we have thought and seen, what we are and what we can become; whether we really are, and if so to what extent, "makers of our own selves," of our life and of our destiny. And we want to know this "today," in the given conditions of today, the conditions of our daily life, not of any life or any man“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).

„The history of education shows that every class which has sought to take power has prepared itself for power by an autonomous education. The first step in emancipating oneself from political and social slavery is that of freeing the mind. I put forward this new idea: popular schooling should be placed under the control of the great workers’ unions. The problem of education is the most important class problem.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Cited in Davidson's (1977) Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. London: Merlin Press., p. 77.

„Revolutionaries see history as a creation of their own spirit, as being made up of a continuous series of violent tugs at the other forces of society - both active and passive, and they prepare the maximum of favourable conditions for the definitive tug“

—  Antonio Gramsci

revolution
Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).

„When I was a child the boys of the town never came near me except to make fun of me. I was almost always alone. Sometimes, finding me by chance among them, they hurled themselves against me, and not only with words. One day – and while he told me this his great eyes shone with an inner light - … they started to throw stones at me with more violence than usual, with the evilness which is found among children and the weak. I lost patience, and grabbing stones I too started to defend myself with such energy that my attackers were put to flight. Mario, I succeeded in beating them: I terrified them to such an extent that from that day they respected me and no longer annoyed me. I ran to my mother … and told her of my first victorious battle: she kissed me tenderly and it was the best prize that I could have wanted.“

—  Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci cited in Garuglieri's Garuglieri, 'Ricordo di Gramsci.' Societa, 691-701., 1946, p. 700.