“I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down.”

— Stephen Jay Gould , book Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle

Source: Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1987), p. 64

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Stephen Jay Gould 274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

Patrick Carman book The Dark Hills Divide

Source: The Dark Hills Divide

“Evolution was Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s problem. Lenin lead the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and took over Russia. He killed the Zar and his family in cold blood. There would not be communism in Russia today if had not been for Charles Darwin's book on evolution.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

“By 1921 it had become clear to all but the more incorrigible optimists that there would be no repetition of October 1917 anywhere else and that for an indeterminate period the revolution would remain confined to Russia and her possessions. The concept of ‘socialism in one country’ was not launched by Stalin in his conflict with Trotsky, but earlier by Lenin himself.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1995), p. 72

“The odd thing is, despite The Permanent Revolution being on the bookshelves, they would explain everything by going back and finding a quote from Trotsky or from Lenin in order to explain things, as opposed to explaining how things were in the real world.”

Henry Spira (1927–1998) American activist

Context: It was very dispiriting because a lot of things needed to be done. One of the things that happened was, if you had a good rank-and-file activist in a trade union situation, they would make them an offer to become part of the staff—at which point the person was totally lost to the campaign where they were a catalyst and became part of an apparatus that was basically going nowhere. The odd thing is, despite The Permanent Revolution being on the bookshelves, they would explain everything by going back and finding a quote from Trotsky or from Lenin in order to explain things, as opposed to explaining how things were in the real world.... They were basically just living in their own universe as opposed to making real life connections.

“Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Section II: “What Is Progress?”, p. 47
1910s, The New Freedom (1913)

“All previous revolutions have been political—in them the have-not majority has attempted revengefully to pull down the economically advantaged minority. If realized, this historically greatest design revolution will joyously elevate all humanity to unprecedented heights.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

“When I was little, I had this science book. There was a section on 'What would happen to the world if there was no friction?' Answer: 'Everything on earth would fly into space from the centrifugal force of revolution.' That was my mood.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

“Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians' preparation for revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Foundations of Leninism

“When we go up to the shelves in the reading-room of the British Museum, how like it is to wasps flying up and down an apricot tree that is trained against a wall, or cattle coming down to drink at a pool!”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Mental and Physical Pabulum
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter

“When the X500 revolution comes, your name will be lined against the wall and shot.”

John Gilmore (1955) Internet activist, software programmer and contributor to the GNU project

As quoted in Peter Gutmann's X509 style guide http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/x509guide.txt

“I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down.”

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