Thursday, December 27, 2007

Shah of Shahs

The causes of a revolution are generally sought in objective conditions - general poverty, oppression, scandalous abuses. But this view, while correct, is one-sided. After all, such conditions exist in a hundred countries, but revolutions erupt rarely. What is needed is the consciousness of poverty and the consciousness of oppression, and the conviction that poverty and oppression are not the natural order of this world. It is curious that in this case, experience in and of itself, does not suffice. The indispensible catalyst is the word, the explanatory idea. More than petards or stillettoes, therefore, words - uncontrolled words, circulating freely, underground, rebelliously, not gotten up in dress uniforms, uncertified - frighten tyrants.


Shah of Shahs, Ryszard Kapuscinski
1982

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.