BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian

From chapters 4, 5, 6

Oppressed people who are unable or unwilling to confront reality as it actually is, are condemned to remain enslaved and oppressed.

Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind
and Radically Changing the World, 2008

The notion of a god, or gods, was created by humanity, in its infancy, out of ignorance. This has been perpetuated by ruling classes, for thousands of years since then, to serve their interests in exploiting and dominating the majority of people and keeping them enslaved to ignorance and irrationality.

Bringing about a new, and far better, world and future for humanity means overthrowing such exploiting classes and breaking free of and leaving behind forever such enslaving ignorance and irrationality.

Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind
and Radically Changing the World, 2008

The whole point of principle is that you have to fight for it when it is not easy to do. There is no need for principle if the only time it is applied is when it doesn’t matter.

"Methods and Principles,"
Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy, 2005

There is not one human nature. There is not some uniform and unchanging way that everybody is and how everybody sees the world. Human nature has different meanings in different times and for different classes and groups in society.

Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible,
What It's All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian.
Available at revolutiontalk.net and in a DVD set from RCP Publications.

If you have had a chance to see the world as it really is, there are profoundly different roads you can take with your life. You can just get into the dog-eat-dog, and most likely get swallowed up by that while trying to get ahead in it. You can put your snout into the trough and try to scarf up as much as you can, while scrambling desperately to get more than others. Or you can try to do something that would change the whole direction of society and the whole way the world is. When you put those things alongside each other, which one has any meaning, which one really contributes to anything worthwhile? Your life is going to be about something—or it's going to be about nothing. And there is nothing greater your life can be about than contributing whatever you can to the revolutionary transformation of society and the world, to put an end to all systems and relations of oppression and exploitation and all the unnecessary suffering and destruction that goes along with them. I have learned that more and more deeply through all the twists and turns and even the great setbacks, as well as the great achievements, of the communist revolution so far, in what are really still its early stages historically.

From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from
Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist,
A Memoir by Bob Avakian, 2005

If you don't have a poetic spirit—or at least a poetic side—it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leader of a socialist state.

“Materialism and Romanticism: Can We Do Without Myth?”
Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy, 2005
(quote originally published 1990)

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