Il costume di casa (1973); as translated in Travels in Hyperreality (1986)
Context: Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the whole scene changes. The day after the fall of Khrushchev, the editors of Pravda, Izvestiia, the heads of the radio and television were replaced; the army wasn't called out. Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.
“The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches. And they have the political power still, if they only had the sense to use it for their preservation.”
Source: The Secret Agent (1907), Ch. 2
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Joseph Conrad 127
Polish-British writer 1857–1924Related quotes
Source: The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999), p. 7
Massad, in his book Desiring Arabs (2008).
Desiring Arabs
Conversations with a Christian Lady (1774)
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!
“All political action aims at either preservation or change.”
"What Is Political Philosophy" in The Journal of Politics, 19(3) (Aug. 1957) by the Southern Political Science Association, p. 343
Context: All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change for the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse.
"Of Architecture", Parentalia; or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, comp. by his son Christopher (1750, reprinted 1965), Appendix, p. 351.
Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926) on the General Strike, quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 167.
1926
(1847)
p 85, describing his swim at Deception Island (2005)
21 Yaks And A Speedo (2013)
Context: I knew now that I had to stand up and start speaking about protecting our environment. From that moment on, every swim should have the aim of inspiring people to protect and preserve the world’s oceans and all that live in them.