Antonio Gramsci

Political Theory Italian 1891 – 1937 100 quotes

An Italian Marxist philosopher and politician who developed the concept of cultural hegemony, explaining how dominant ideologies maintain power in society.

Quotes by Antonio Gramsci

The intellectual must be a 'specialist plus politician'.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The philosophy of praxis is the philosophy of the dialectic, of contradiction and resolution.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The 'national-popular' is the unity of the nation and the people, led by the working class.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The intellectual must be a 'democratic philosopher', not an elitist one.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The philosophy of praxis is the philosophy of the 'superstructure' as well as the 'base'.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The 'civil society' is the realm of hegemony, where consent is manufactured.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The intellectual must be a 'moral and intellectual leader'.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The philosophy of praxis is the philosophy of the 'collective intellectual'.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The 'integral State' includes both political society (coercion) and civil society (hegemony).

Prison Notebooks 1930

The intellectual must be a 'permanent educator'.

Prison Notebooks 1930

The philosophy of praxis is the philosophy of the 'historical subject'.

Prison Notebooks 1930

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

Article 1917

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

Prison Notebooks 1930

All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.

Prison Notebooks 1929

Is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one's own personality?

Prison Notebooks 1930

The philosophy of praxis is consciousness full of contradictions in which the philosopher-critic, himself a 'practical man', criticises himself in order to develop.

Prison Notebooks 1932

To tell the truth is a communist and revolutionary act.

Speech 1920

Education is the weapon with which the ruling class maintains its power.

Prison Notebooks 1930

In the political field, the struggle assumes the form: either the other classes win and the worker loses, or the worker wins and the other classes lose.

Article 1919

Every relationship of 'hegemony' is necessarily an educational relationship.

Prison Notebooks 1930