Random Quotes

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English playwright.

William Shakespeare (1611): The Tempest.

In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, Caliban, an indigenous man from a fictional island and son of the witch Sycorax who is referred to in the quote, organises an uprising against the Europeans of the island together with two European workers. The uprising fails. Black poet Aimé Césaire wrote the play A Tempest in 1969 in order to confront Western ideologies. The quote represents the European spirit of the 16th and 17th centuries. During this period especially, femininity was portrayed as depraved and dangerous. This was in part because women played a major role in the movements of heretics, which questioned the authority and power of the church and thus represented a threat to order in that period. One of the defining features of this campaign of vilification was the burning of witches. Between 1550 and 1650, a particularly large number of women in Europe were burned as witches (Federici 2009: 229).

*Silvia Federici (2014): Caliban und die Hexe. Frauen, der Körper und die ursprüngliche Akkumulation. Wien: Mandelbaum.
*Aimé Césaire (1969): A Tempest. New York: Ubu Repertory Theater Publications.
* Sarah Richt (2019): A Tempest by Aimé Césaire: Curriculum Guide for Postcolonial Educators.

Charles Sturt (1795-1869) was a so-called explorer in south-eastern Australia.

Charles Sturt (1849): Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia. London: T. and W. Boone. S. 76

Europeans did not always describe “others” as cultureless. In addition, as in this quote, non-Europeans were often described as polite, friendly, hospitable, simple and good. These “noble savages” often served as role models for “civilised” Europeans (Hall 1992: 131f.). However, this paternalistic characterisation of “good primitive peoples” constituted a gross generalisation that did not allow for any individuality and only served Europeans in their own process of reflection. Nonetheless, these comparisons often held up a critical mirror to Europeans.

*Stuart Hall (1992): The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In: Stuart Hall & Bram Gieben: Formations of Modernity. Understanding Modern Societies: An Introduction. Trowbridge: Redwood Books, S. 275–320.

Sitting Bull (ca. 1831-1890) whose actual name was Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake. He was a leader and healer of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux.

Bob Blaisdell (2014): The Dover Anthology of American Literature. From 1865 to 1922. p. 77.

Today’s USA was populated by European migrants as a settler colony. Here, Sitting Bull was speaking as a Native American about the experience of genocidal policies during that colonisation. The Sioux leader, who is admired to this day, mourned the dispossession of the Native Americans. At the same time, through the analysis it presents, the quote also provides information about how Sitting Bull perceived and analysed settlement policies, mass murder and wars, as well as the new culture that was brought to his country with the white man.

*Dee Brown (1970): Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Unknown author. The text was adopted after a peasant assembly in Memmingen during the German Peasants’ War (1524-26).

Quote: Twelve Articles of the Peasants
Picture: Cleveland Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons,

In the aftermath of the Reformation, many peasants saw their belief confirmed that the previous legal order did not represent God’s will and that it was unjust. Drawing from the Bible they argued against the church-sanctioned order. The Twelve Articles of the Peasantry are considered to be an early claim for human rights and freedoms in Europe. In addition to the abolition of serfdom, the claims included the right to hunt and fish, the freedom to elect and depose a pastor, and an independent judiciary. The rebels explicitly referred to Martin Luther (1483-1546), who, however, rejected the uprising and called for the crackdown of the peasant uprisings. The crackdown followed and the Twelve Articles of the Peasantry did not come into force.

*Translation of the entire text here.
*Joshua J. Mark (2022): Twelve Articles. World history encyclopedia.

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a critical, political publicist of Jewish origin. He was banned from publishing in Prussia in 1833 and 1835, which is why he moved to Paris. He was treated with hostility throughout his life for his Jewish origins and his political stance.

Quote translated after: Heinrich Heine (1823): Almansor. Eine Tragödie, DHA, Vol. 5, p. 3.
Picture: By Moritz Daniel Oppenheim. Wikimedia. Creative Commons.

The quote comes from Heine’s tragedy “Almansor”. In the present day, it is often referred to the book burnings of 1933. The chronologically closer context is the Wartburg Festival in 1817, where around 500 students gathered. Inspired by the French Revolution and the declaration of human and civil rights in 1789, these were also demanded here. The Wartburg Festival is regarded as an important event of early political liberalism and the German national movement. In contrast to these liberal aspirations, books by unpopular authors were symbolically burned at the festival. These included the book “Die Germanomanie” by the Jewish publicist Saul Ascher (1767-1822), which was critical of nationalism. Heine and others criticized the Wartburg Festival for the reactionary and anti-Semitic views spread there.

*Shlomo Avineri (2017): Where They Have Burned Books, They Will End Up Burning People.
*Willi Goetschel (2019): Heine and Critical Theory. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Charlotte Wiedemann (*1954) is a journalist and author currently working on memory cultures and postcolonial thinking.

Quote translated after: Charlotte Wiedemann (2022): Den Schmerz der Anderen begreifen. Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, p. 54.
Picture: Anette Daugardt

The quote points out that Europeans see themselves as the founders of equality for all people, while at the same time, as former colonial powers, they refuse to come to terms with and compensate for colonial crimes. Every step must be claimed, fought for and negotiated by the victims. The quote is located in more recent discussions about global cultures of remembrance, in which the relationship between colonialism and National Socialism in particular is being debated. In her journalistic book, Wiedemann reconstructs concrete entanglements, simultaneities and contradictions between (post-)colonialism and (post-)National Socialism.

*Charlotte Wiedemann (2022): Repairing the Damage to Our Ethical Categories. A Conversation with Charlotte Wiedemann. Interview by Ferenc Laczó, in: The Review of Democracy.

Poland, Gusta Dawidsohn-Draenger (1917-1943)
Gusta was born in Cracow to an Orthodox Jewish family. In her youth she joined the Zionist youth group Akiva, for whose newspaper she wrote articles and was on the board of directors.

Jochen Kast (ed.), The diary of the partisan Justyna, Berlin 1999.

After the outbreak of World War II, she played a key role in coordinating the Jewish resistance against the Nazis. Together with others – among them her husband Shimshon Draenger – she smuggled weapons, organized hiding places and fought with partisans in the surrounding forests. In November 1943 she and her husband were murdered by the Germans. Between January and March 1943 she recorded her extensive memories on a roll of toilet paper in prison.

Gustav Davidson | Penny’s poetry pages Wiki | Fandom

Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1679) was originally a clothes merchant who went bankrupt in the Civil War and thereafter became a Protestant reformer and political activist in England.

Gerrad Winstanley (1649): A declaration from the poor oppressed people of England.

Even before Winstanley, there were many heretic movements in France and Italy in the 11th century, most of them founded by women, that rebelled against the omnipotence of church and state (Federici 2014: 48, German edition). Centuries later, once women had been ousted from public life, Winstanley was one of England’s most notorious reformers (or diggers). Diggers are often referred to as the predecessors of the communists. They occupied and tilled public lands, distributing the proceeds freely to those in need, promoting comprehensive land reform and common ownership. Winstanley based this early communism exclusively on the Bible. The digger communes that had formed throughout England were finally crushed in 1651. Local landowners were mostly responsible for this.

*The Guardian (1999): Levels of Optimism.
*Silvia Federici (2014): Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Automedia.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen) is one of the fundamental texts of the French Revolution.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

The French Revolution’s motto was liberté, egalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity). It abolished the absolutist monarchy (Louis XIV: ‘I am the state’) and established a new system of rule. Feudal power structures were replaced with governance by the majority population and the royal family was executed. The revolution is seen as one of the Enlightenment’s decisive events, and its importance extends to how it addressed human rights, democracy and forms of government. However, the period of revolutionary terror, which sent all perceived enemies of the revolution within France to the guillotine, is usually judged critically. For example, Olympe de Gouges was executed in 1793 when she demanded universal human rights for women as well as men. In 1799, General Napoléon Bonaparte assumed the rank of First Consul of the republic, asserting absolute dictatorial power, which he later confirmed by declaring himself Emperor. At the same time, France had colonies. In fact, in the 19th century, it was the second largest colonial power in the world. Neither equality nor inalienable human rights applied to these areas.

*Edmundo Murray (2008): Review of Jean Ziegler’s “La haine de l’Occident”.

Christopher Columbus (ca. 1451-1506) was an Italian sailor and human trafficker. The search for a sea route to India led him to the Americas. Columbus played an important role in the colonisation of the continent.

Andres Bernaldez (1930): The Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Being the Journals of his First and Third, and the Letters Concerning his First and Last Voyages, to Which is Added the Account of his Second Voyage. London: The Argonaut Press.

European colonial expansion is often divided into three phases: [1] Spanish and Portuguese colonialism, mainly that of the Americas from the late 15th century, which was based on resource exploitation; [2] The British, French and Dutch colonisation of Asia and parts of the Americas and South Africa from the 17th century (with the support of the British East India Company and the Dutch West and East India Companies), together with settler colonialism in the Americas; and [3] the colonial division of Africa into European zones of influence at the end of the 19th century. Although the phases differed from each other, they all included the violent subjugation of local populations and a belief in white superiority that is already clear in Columbus’ quote. Colonisation was met with great resistance in many areas: in South Africa there were wars with the Xhosa from 1779 to 1879. The British conquest of India also lasted 100 years. In Algeria, it took the French 20 years to occupy the country.

*Al Jazeera (2019): Because Colonialism. 25min.
*Raoul Peck (2021): Exterminate All the Brutes. Trailer.
*Göran Olsson (2014): Concerning Violence. Trailer.

Walter Rodney (1942-1980) was a Guyanese Marxist historian and politician who was murdered in a Guyana Army bomb attack.

Quote: Walter Rodney (1979): People’s Power, no Dictator. Georgetown, Guyana: Working People’s Alliance.
Picture: By Unknown. Wikimedia. Creative Commons.

The quote comes from the speech “People’s Power, no Dictator”, which Walter Rodney gave in 1979. Rodney was a pan-African, Marxist historian and political activist. He came from southamerican Guyana and, after studying in Mona (Jamaica) and London (UK), worked as a university lecturer in Tanzania until he became a professor in Georgetown, Guyana in 1974. He was politically active against the increasingly authoritarian government of Forbes Burnham. In various speeches, he developed the ideas of self-emancipation of the working people, people’s power and multi-racial democracy. In the quote, Rodney opposes the increasingly dictatorial government of Forbes Burnham and emphasizes self-defence as a universal human right.

*Massimiliano Tomba (2019): Insurgent Universality. An Alternative Legacy of Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press.

The electoral association of the German Conservatives, founded at the end of the 19th century, was characterized by a strictly Christian, national-conservative program.

Electoral Association of the German Conservatives (ed.), Shorthand report on the General Conservative Party Congress, Berlin 1893, 21-22.

Part of it was a pronounced hostile attitude towards social democracy, anarchists and Jews, each of whom they described as subversives without a fatherland or as disintegrators of German-Christian popular life. The Protestant theologian and politician Adolf Stoecker had no small influence on the anti-Semitic and anti-socialist thrust of the association.

Adolf Stoecker – Eine deutsche Karriere: Dorfpfarrer, Hofprediger, Politiker und Antisemit – harz-saale.de

Jürgen Elsässer (born 1957) is a journalist, publicist and activist. In 2009 he founded the “popular initiative against finance capital”, one of the most powerful circles of the New Right. Since 2010 he has been editor-in-chief of Compact Magazin, one of the most important media for the New Right.

speech on April 15, 2021 in Berlin.

In 2014 and 2015 he appeared as a spokesman for the Pegida movement, in 2020 and 2021 for the lateral thinking movement. He openly represents cross-hostile, racist and sexist narratives and regularly uses conspiracy myths in his arguments.

Jürgen Elsässer, der Chefideologe der Neuen Rechten – DER SPIEGEL

William Gumede is a journalist and professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a former ANC activist and leader of the student movement during apartheid.

Interview with Naomi Klein (2007: 205).

According to Gumede, during the transition from apartheid to democracy in the early 1990s, everyone looked to the political negotiations as a guarantee of political freedom for the non-white South African population as a whole. Economic regulations did not receive much attention from ANC fighters. This enabled the white South African elite to secure economic power and therefore their wealth. The ANC government was disempowered in terms of economic policy, it could neither distribute land or water for free because these had been privatised, nor raise the minimum wage because of an agreement with the IMF (Klein 2010: 283, German edition).

*William Gumede (2005): Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. Cape Town: Zebra Press.
*Naomi Klein (2007): The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Toronto: Knopf Canada.

Abel Alier (born in 1933) was Vice President of Sudan from 1971 to 1982.

Vincent Tucker (1999): 11

This quote from the former Sudanese Vice President clearly articulates the violence that is often inherent in major development projects. The sentence was a response to the Dinka and Nuer peoples’ opposition to the Jonglei Canal Project which threatened their entire way of life. Construction was started in 1974 by Egypt and Sudan, but the giant canal was never completed. The damage that it would likely have produced included droughts and groundwater pollution in South Sudan (sudantribune.com, 26.05.2007).

Vincent Tucker (1999): The Myth of Development. A Critique of a Eurocentric Discourse. In: Ronaldo Munck / Denis O’Hearn (Hrsg.): Critical Development Theory. Contributions to a New Paradigm. London: Zed Books, S. 1-26.

Walden Bello (born 1945) is a Filipino sociologist and director of the NGO Focus on the Global South. Bello was in the resistance against dictator Marcos (who ruled the Philippines from 1965-1986), and was one of the first critics of globalisation. Bello broke into the World Bank office in the early 1980s and stole some 3,000 pages of confidential documents to prove collaboration between the International Monetary Fund (the World Bank’s sister organisation) and Marcos.

Walden Bello (2019): „We Have to Move to a Post-Capitalist System“. In: Jacobinmag 28.10.2019

In recent decades, there has been an increasing financialisation of the economy. Today, rather than through the production of goods or services, vast amounts of money can be made or lost in very short intervals through financial transactions. In his book Dark Victory (1994), Bello describes how financialisation was implemented as a strategy by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s in order to re-subjugate the decolonising Global South, for example, through currency speculation. Thus in 1997, thanks to rumours about a lack of dollar reserves in Thailand, banks and investors immediately withdrew their money not only there, but also in other countries, which then went bankrupt as a result.

*Walden Bello (1994): Dark Victory. The United States and Global Poverty. Amsterdam: Transnational Institut.

Dr Nise da Silveira, born on 15 February 1905 in Maceió; died on 30 October 1999 in Rio de Janeiro, was one of Brazil’s most important scientists*, psychiatrist, alchemist of the psyche and Marxist, who resolutely defined new paths through the fields of medicine, philosophy and art. Her work was characterised by her rejection of the invasive methods of psychiatry that were common at the time. She was the only female graduate alongside 157 men. Nise da Silveira completed her specialist training as a psychiatrist at the Antonio Austregésilo Neurological Clinic and in the same year won a national competition for a post in psychopathology and mental health care at Praia Vermelha Hospital.
When she was employed at the Pedro II Psychiatric Centre in Engenho de Dentro, Nise da Silveira rejected the practices of lobotomy, insulin shock or cardiazole shock therapy and was then transferred to the occupational therapy department. There she enabled her patients to develop personally and artistically. In particular, she led art therapy sessions, through which, according to her understanding, subconscious states of the psyche became accessible. Nise da Silveira, the “psiquiatra rebelde”, revolutionised the history of psychiatry beyond the borders of her country and was a forerunner in the worldwide movements of psychiatric forms in Brazil, England, Italy and Germany between the 1960s and 1980s. She advocated the humanisation of treatment methods for chronically mentally ill patients and created the “Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente”, which was also her study and research centre. After her death, her private archive was included in UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” programme as a heritage of humanity, a digital collection of historical documents of exceptional value to human history.

Image/source: Arquivo Nise da Silveira, https://revistacult.uol.com.br

Livro –MELLO, L.. Encontros. Nise da Silveira. São Paulo: Azougue Editorial, 2009. Entrevistas e depoimentos que Nise da Silveira concedeu entre 1976 e 1997

In the wake of the Communist uprising in 1935, da Silveira founded the organisation “Uniao Feminina do Brasil” (UFB) together with intellectual and feminist activists. The women demanded legal changes that would grant women custody of their children after a divorce, equal pay with men and the right to maternity leave. These demands brought the UFB close to left-wing organisations, which in turn were linked to the Communist Party. On 19 July 1935, the ruling dictator President Getúlio Vargas signed Decree 246, which immediately ordered the closure of the UFB as an illegal organisation – less than two months after it was founded. A year later, Nise da Silveira was denounced by a nurse who had discovered Marxist literature in da Silveira’s locker. This was followed by 18 months in prison and a ban on practising her profession. In 1944, with the end of the dictatorship of President Getúlio Vargas after 15 years, democratic processes gained the political upper hand and the emancipation of society through education and art became a political concern.

Nise da Silveira was granted amnesty and transferred back to her previous position at the Pedro II Psychiatric Centre in Engenho de Dentro, Rio de Janeiro. She was deeply shocked by the invasive and, for her, brutal treatment methods that had become the norm in international psychiatry: Insulin shock therapy, electroshock, lobotomy (a neurosurgical operation in which steel needles are driven deep into the patient’s brain to sever the neural pathways between the thalamus and frontal lobe and parts of the grey matter). The Portuguese doctor António Egas Moniz (1874 – 1955) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949 for the development of lobotomy. When Nise da Silveira was asked to apply these therapies herself, she flatly refused – which earned her the title “psiquiatra rebelde” from that moment on. For her, these methods were risky, aggressive and ineffective, akin to torture. She was convinced that “all these techniques […] represent an attack on the integrity of man in the noblest of his organs”. Sensitised to a life in captivity by her own imprisonment, she was equally horrified by the housing of the 1,500 or so schizophrenic patients at the time in closed rooms and walled courtyards.

In order to keep her job, the only solution offered to her was to be transferred to the neglected occupational therapy department. Even though the job had previously only consisted of cleaning and maintenance work, Nise da Silveira accepted the offer. She took over an unused administrative area of the hospital complex and founded the Secao de Terapeutica Ocupacional e Reabilitacao, the Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Section, on 9 September 1946, and from then on began her ground-breaking work. Nise da Silveira developed a clinical method based on affection and respect for the dignity of each person.

Nise da Silveira became known worldwide for the avant-garde idea of using affection as a scientific method in the treatment of mental illness. Empathy, commitment and charity overcame hospital walls, prejudice and abuse of patients. In 1956, Nise da Silveira founded the Casa das Palmeiras, the first Brazilian clinic for psychiatric treatment in the form of a day school.

Nise Da Silveira – Uma Psiquiatra Rebelde (Em Portuguese do Brasil), 1. Januar 2000
https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/nise-da-silveira/
Museu virtual – Ocupação Nise da Silveira – Itaú Cultural
Livro –MELLO, L.. Encontros. Nise da Silveira. São Paulo: Azougue Editorial, 2009. Entrevistas e depoimentos que Nise da Silveira concedeu entre 1976 e 1997

Memória do Mundo da UNESCO: Arquivo Pessoal de Nise da Silveira
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtUhmbHqeXM&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Frevistacult.uol.com.br%2F&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE&feature=emb_title
Nise, el corazón de la locura.. (subtitulada)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcLpV3a_hZ4&t=2953s
Nise da Silveira – Posfácio: Imagens do Inconsciente
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDg0zjMe4nA
Leon Hirszman, Imagens do Inconsciente
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxYx4obbARE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-uN1lsWFjM&t=4322s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgong5EYqUE&t=3585s
Robert Berliner, Nise – O Coracao da Loucura (Nise – in the Heart of Madness)QUEM É NISE DA SILVEIRA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbWP3JEUV1s

The apostle Paul or Paul of Tarsus (10 BC – 60 AD), who was a missionary, in his letter to Timothy (1.11 – 14) from the New Testament. There are doubts, however, as to whether Paul was actually the author, or whether it was a later imitator who passed himself off as Paul. The New Testament, which begins with the birth of Jesus, is the part of the Bible that distinguishes Christianity from Judaism.

Roberta Magnani (2017): “Powerful Men have Tried to Silence Abused Women since Medieval Times.” In: The Independent, 02.11.2017. The quote is apparently from between 48 and 61 AD.

The idea of Eve as seductress illuminates a deep-seated tradition in which women are viewed as scapegoats for various evils. In biting the apple, she banishes humankind from paradise. This tradition is widespread in all three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) as well as in other world religions (Stover and Hope 1984). Some have argued, however, that the three religions initially aimed at liberating the oppressed, but as they got established and accumulated power, these liberating impulses were eradicated (Swidler, 1974: 168). The disciplining of women played an important role in Christian colonial missionary work. This was because missions aimed to plant Western ideas of civilization, virtue and morality in the thinking of colonised countries.

*Roberta Magnani (2017): Powerful men have tried to silence abused women since Medieval times.
*Ronald G. Stover & Christine A. Hope (1984): Monotheism and Gender Status: A Cross-Societal Study. In: Social Forces
Vol. 63, No. 2, S. 335-348.
*Leonard Swidler (1974): Is Sexism a Sign of Decadence in Religion? In Judith Plaskov & Joan A. Romero: Women and Religion. Scholar Press.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a British novelist and author of The Jungle Book.

Rudyard Kipling (1899): “The White Man’s Burden”, first published in McClure’s Magazine on 12.02.1899.

“The White Man’s Burden” expresses the colonial sense of mission, which first emerged before the end of the 19th century when Kipling wrote the poem. European colonisation and Christian missions had been justified as civilising missions for centuries before that (Teno 2004). Shortly after Kipling published his work, a satire appeared, a poem called The Brown Man’s Burden by the British Henry du Pré Labouchère. In it, the poet wrote that colonialism was not a civilising mission and did not have a positive impact on the lives of the colonised, but instead constituted imperialist domination of others: ‘The brown man’s loss must ever. Imply the white man’s gain. (…) Let all your manifestoes. Reek with philanthropy. And if with heathen folly. He [the brown man] dares your will dispute. Then, in the name of freedom. Don’t hesitate to shoot.’

*Henry Labouchère (1899): The Brown Man’s Burden. London: Truth.

Warsan Shire (born 1988 in Kenya) is a Somali-British author.

Warsan Shire (2011): Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth. UK: Flipped Eye Publishing.

Warsan Shire deals with flight and migration experiences in a literary way. In the poem from which the quote comes, motives, ambivalences, conflicts, hopes, feelings of guilt, the spirit of optimism, partings and other emotional states are named and given as reasons for migration. The poem is a subjective report from an emancipated and self-determined perspective, which recounts the decision to flee and documents the migration process from a first-person perspective.

*glokal e.V. (2017): Willkommen ohne Paternalismus. Hilfe und Solidarität in der Unterstützungsarbeit. Berlin.