For a number of years the deeds and actions of party and government bodies trailed behind the needs of the times and of life. The problems in the country's development built up more rapidly than they were being solved. The inertness and stiffness of the forms and methods of administration, the decline of dynamism in our work and an escalation of bureaucracy - all this was doing no small damage. Signs of stagnation had begun to surface in the life of the society. The situation called for change, but a peculiar psychology - How to improve things without changing anything? - took the upper hand. But that cannot be done, comrades. Stop for an instant, as they say, and you fall behind a mile.
Mikhail GorbachevRelated topics
administration anything begin behind built changing change damage development done dynamism fall government mile needs number party psychology situation small stagnation stiffness stop surface take times work deeds years things escalationRelated quotes
Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short. For thousands of years it has existed and has been growing older; but in the earlier part of this period it cannot boast of any continuous progress toward a riper and richer development. In the fourth century before our era that giant thinker, Aristotle, built it up into an edifice comparing very favorably with any other science of that time. But this edifice stood without undergoing any noteworthy changes or extensions, well into the eighteenth or even the nineteenth century. Only in recent times do we find an advance, at first slow but later increasing in rapidity, in the development of psychology.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
A fight between several parties of the British people: Nothing of the kind! A fight between two or three big money combines, that and nothing else. Without the weight of money behind the party machines, in an electoral battle today determined purely by principle and by the number of active workers...British Union could fight and beat today the old parties over the whole electoral field. But you know and I know, the battle is nothing of the kind. The battle is between big money combines who spend a thousand pounds or more on every constituency they fight. Or when they speak democracy, they don't mean government by the people...they mean financial democracy, in which money counts and nothing but money.
Oswald Mosley
But the privation, especially of the upper and middle-class peasantry, was very great, and often it seemed that the whole ambitious scheme would collapse, and perhaps carry the Soviet Government with it. It required immense courage to hold on. Many prominent Bolsheviks thought that the strain and suffering caused by the agricultural programme were too great and there should be a relaxation. But not so Stalin. Grin-fly and silently he held on. He was no talker, he hardly spoke in public. He seemed to be the iron image of an inevitable fate going ahead to the predestined goal. And something of his courage and determination spread among the members of the Communist Party and other workers in Russia.
Jawaharlal Nehru
The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country – these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.
Friedrich Engels
Democracy is incapable of perseverance. Since it is shared by political parties that rule for one, two, or three years, it is unable to conceive and carry out plans of longer duration. One party annuls the plans and efforts of the other. What is conceived and built by one party today is destroyed by another tomorrow. In a country in which much has to be built, in which building is indeed the primary historical requirement, this disadvantage of democracy constitutes a true danger. It is a situation similar to that which prevails in an establishment where masters are changed every year, each new master bringing in his own plans, ruining what was done by some, and starting new things, which will in turn be destroyed by tomorrow's masters.
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu