Mao Zedong: The object of war is specifically "to preserve oneself and destroy the enemy" (to destroy the enemy means to disarm him or "deprive him of the power to resist", and does not mean to destroy every member of his forces physically). In ancient warfare, the spear and the shield were used, the spear to attack and destroy the enemy, and the shield to defend and preserve oneself. To the present day, all weapons are still an extension of the spear and the shield. The bomber, the machine-gun, the long-range gun and poison gas are developments of the spear, while the air-raid shelter, the steel helmet, the concrete fortification and the gas mask are developments of the shield. The tank is a new weapon combining the functions of both spear and shield. Attack is the chief means of destroying the enemy, but defense cannot be dispensed with. In attack, the immediate object is to destroy the enemy, but at the same time, it is self-preservation, because if the enemy is not destro
... Show more...Mao Zedong: The object of war is specifically "to preserve oneself and destroy the enemy" (to destroy the enemy means to disarm him or "deprive him of the power to resist", and does not mean to destroy every member of his forces physically). In ancient warfare, the spear and the shield were used, the spear to attack and destroy the enemy, and the shield to defend and preserve oneself. To the present day, all weapons are still an extension of the spear and the shield. The bomber, the machine-gun, the long-range gun and poison gas are developments of the spear, while the air-raid shelter, the steel helmet, the concrete fortification and the gas mask are developments of the shield. The tank is a new weapon combining the functions of both spear and shield. Attack is the chief means of destroying the enemy, but defense cannot be dispensed with. In attack, the immediate object is to destroy the enemy, but at the same time, it is self-preservation, because if the enemy is not destroyed, you will be destroyed. In defense, the immediate object is to preserve yourself, but at the same time defense is a means of supplementing attack or preparing to go over to the attack. Retreat is in the category of defense and is a continuation of defense, while pursuit is a continuation of attack. It should be pointed out that destruction of the enemy is the primary object of war and self-preservation the secondary, because only by destroying the enemy in large numbers can one effectively preserve oneself. Therefore, attack, the chief means of destroying the enemy, is primary, while defense, a supplementary means of destroying the enemy and a means of self-preservation, is secondary. In actual warfare, defense plays the chief role much of the time and by attack for the rest of the time, but if war is taken as a whole, attack remains primary.
Quotes
- Fannie Lou Hamer: Christianity is being concerned about [others], not building a million-dollar church while people are starving right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I get my strength.
- Fannie Lou Hamer: If the white man gives you anything - just remember when he gets ready he will take it right back. We have to take for ourselves.
- Fannie Lou Hamer: If I fall, I will fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.
- Fannie Lou Hamer: Just because people are fat, it doesn't mean they are well fed. The cheapest foods are the fattening ones, not the most nourishing.
- Fannie Lou Hamer: [On her Freedom Farm Cooperative:] If you give a hungry man food, he will eat it. [But] if you give him land, he will grow his own food.
- Enver Hoxha: How sorry I feel for the Palestinian people, expelled from their homeland and persecuted in the cruellest ways by the Israeli aggressors and other reactionary forces. And why? Because they are fighting for their rights, to return to their homeland, because they demand justice from those who do not want to know what justice is, but simply trample the rights of other peoples underfoot, as the Israelis and their patrons, the American imperialists, do.
- Lenin: Either the lice will defeat socialism, or socialism will defeat the lice!
- Albert Einstein: If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
- Albert Einstein: Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
- Stalin: It is not surprising that fascism has now become the most fashionable commodity among war-mongering bourgeois politicians. I am referring not only to fascism in general, but primarily to fascism of the German type, wrongly called national-socialism - wrongly because the most searching examination will fail to reveal even an atom of socialism in it. In this connection the victory of fascism in Germany must be regarded not only as a symptom of the weakness of the working class and a result of the betrayals of the working class by Social-Democracy, which paved the way for fascism; it must also be regarded as a sign of the weakness of the bourgeoisie, a sign that the bourgeoisie is no longer able to rule by the old methods of parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy. As a consequence, it is compelled in its home policy to resort to terrorist methods of rule - a sign that it is no longer able to find a way out of the present situation on the basis of a peaceful foreign policy, and, as a consequence, is compelled to resort to a policy of war.
