“There were sometimes in our own ranks comrades who thought themselves cleverer and more capable of judging various questions than was done in the definite decisions of our World Party. Here I stress with the greatest emphasis: our relations with the Comintern, this close, indestructible, firm confidence between the C. P. G. and the C. I. and its Executive—this is one of our Party, the inner-political struggles and disputes in the past and of the higher political maturity of our Party generally.”

— Ernst Thälmann

Ernst Thälmann in address to the KPD Party on the October Conference, 1932; as cited in: Wilhelm Pieck. " Ernst Thaelmann, Fifty Years Old https://www.marxists.org/archive/pieck/1936/07/thaelmann.htm," The Communist Review, Vol. 3, No. 7, July 1936, pp. 12-17.

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There were sometimes in our own ranks comrades who thought themselves cleverer and more capable of judging various ques…" by Ernst Thälmann?

Ernst Thälmann 2

leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during much … 1886–1944

Related quotes

“It is one of the misfortunes of our political system that parties are formed more with reference to controversies that are gone by than to the controversies which these parties have actually to decide.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Statement of an uncredited reviewer in The Quarterly Review [London] (January 1866), p. 277
Misattributed

“Our only "crime" is that in Bucharest we did not agree that a fraternal communist party like the Chinese Communist Party should be unjustly condemned; our only "crime" is that we had the courage to oppose openly, at an international communist meeting (and not in the marketplace) the unjust action of Comrade Khrushchev, our only "crime" is that we are a small Party of a small and poor country which, according to Comrade Khrushchev, should merely applaud and approve but express no opinion of its own. But this is neither Marxist nor acceptable. Marxism-Leninism has granted us the right to have our say and we will not give up this right for any one, neither on account of political and economic pressure nor on account of the threats and epithets that they might hurl at us. On this occasion we would like to ask Comrade Khrushchev why he did not make such a statement to us instead of to a representative of a third party. Or does Comrade Khrushchev think that the Party of Labor of Albania has no views of its own but has made common cause with the Communist Party of China in an unprincipled manner, and therefore, on matters pertaining to our Party, one can talk with the Chinese comrades? No, Comrade Khrushchev, you continue to blunder and hold very wrong opinions about our Party. The Party of Labor of Albania has its own views and will answer for them both to its own people as well as to the international communist and workers' movement.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

“We come more and more frequently into momentary unions, or momentary relations with other parties. But these momentary relations must never become momentary alliances. We must never bind the party. We must always keep our hand free; exploit the conditions; let our opponents do the dirty work for us; and with the goal of the party firmly in mind, keep in the middle of the road, and go our own way, only going along with opposing parties when our way happens to be the same as theirs. That we are a party of the class struggle, who have nothing in common with any other party, and who have to fight and conquer all other parties, in order to attain our goal, is something which we must never for a moment lose sight of.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“This is not a confrontation between ‘left’ and ‘right’. I am trying to represent the deep feelings of those many thousands of rank-and-file Tories in the country—and potential Conservative voters, too—who feel let down by our party and find themselves unrepresented in a political vacuum.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in Finchley (31 January 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102605
Shadow Secretary for Environment

“The enemies of the Soviet state calculate that the heavy loss we have borne will lead to disorder and confusion in our ranks. But their expectations are in vain: bitter disillusionment awaits them. He who is not blind sees that our party, during its difficult days, is closing its ranks still more closely, that it is united and unshakable.”

Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953) Georgian Soviet NKVD police chief under fellow Georgian and Soviet leader Stalin

Quoted in “The Current Digest of the Soviet Press – Page 9 – by Joint Committee – World Politics – 1953

“To succeed, we have to be the party of change, we have to root out corruption in our own ranks and we have to be the party of solutions.”

Bobby Jindal (1971) American politician; two-term Governor of Louisiana

"Governors Know Best" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110703146.html, The Washington Post, November 9, 2008

“Ideological education is the key link to be grasped in uniting the whole Party for great political struggles. Unless this is done, the Party cannot accomplish any of its political tasks.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

“If one political party believes "heads we win, tails you cheated," if one political party believes that when you lose an election, the answer isn't to win more votes, but rather to try to prevent the other side from voting, then we have serious and existential threats to our democracy on our hands.”

Chuck Schumer (1950) U.S. Senator from the State of New York

interview reported on March 20, 2021
Source: GOP warns HR 1 could be 'absolutely devastating for Republicans', Karson, Kendall and Meg Cunningham, 20 March 2021, abcnews.go.com, ABC News, 20 March 2021 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-warns-hr-absolutely-devastating-republicans/story?id=76555647,

“For our party and for our party tactics there is but one valid basis: the basis of the class struggle, out of which the Social Democratic party has sprung up, and out of which alone it can draw the necessary strength to bid defiance to every storm and to all its enemies.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“All parties without exception recognize us as a political power, and exactly in proportion to our power. Even the craziest reactionary that denies us the right of existence courts our favor and by his acts gives the lie to his words. From the fact that our assistance is sought by other parties, some of our comrades draw the strange conclusion that we should reverse the party tactics, and in place of the old policy of the class struggle against all other parties, substitute the commercial polities of log rolling, wire pulling and compromise. Such persons forget the power which makes our alliance sought for, even by our bitterest enemies, would have had absolutely no existence were it not for the old class struggle tactics. If Marx, Engels and Lassalle had accepted from Bernstein and his modest or not modest fellow thinkers the tactics of compromise and dependence upon bourgeois parties, then there never would have been any Social Democracy; we would have been simply the tail of the Progressive party.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Ernst Thälmann 2

Related quotes

Related topics