Antonio Gramsci Quotes on Knowledge

Quotes

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

  Prison Notebooks

• Attributed to Antonio Gramsci:

  “The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is.”

• “Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson , Edinburgh University Student Publications .”

  To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act.

• “Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications .”

  History teaches, but it has no pupils.

• “Cited in Davidson's (1977) Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. London: Merlin Press., p. 77.”

  The history of education shows that every class which has sought to take power has prepared itself for power by an autonomous education. The first step in emancipating oneself from political and social slavery is that of freeing the mind. I put forward this new idea: popular schooling should be placed under the control of the great workers’ unions . The problem of education is the most important c

• “Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.”

  It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew

• “Gramsci cited in Garuglieri's Garuglieri, 'Ricordo di Gramsci.' Societa, 691-701., 1946, p. 700.”

  When I was a child the boys of the town never came near me except to make fun of me. I was almost always alone. Sometimes, finding me by chance among them, they hurled themselves against me, and not only with words. One day – and while he told me this his great eyes shone with an inner light - … they started to throw stones at me with more violence than usual, with the evilness which is found amon

• “Gramsci cited in Fiori, 1970, pp. 22-23.”

  I can’t think why Delio [son] has not been told that I’m in prison, and why no one reflected that he might then find out about it indirectly, that is, in the most disagreeable way for a child, who then begins to doubt the truthfulness of those educating him, to think about it on his own account and draw apart. At least, that was my experience as a child: I remember it perfectly . . . I believe in

• “Gramsci cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 70.”

  For two years I have lived outside the world: in a dream world. One by one, I let each strand tying me to the world and to my fellow men be cut. I live entirely for the mind, for the heart not at all …. I turned myself into a bear, inside and outside … other people did not exist for me. For perhaps two years, I didn’t laugh once and I didn’t cry … but I never hurt anyone but myself.