Leszek Kołakowski - Century Quotes

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Marxism has been the greatest fantasy of our century. It was a dream offering the prospect of a society of perfect unity, in which all human aspirations would be fulfilled and all values reconciled.

Leszek Kołakowski

Communism was not the crazy fantasy of a few fanatics, nor the result of human stupidity and baseness; it was a real, very real part of the history of the twentieth century, and we cannot understand this history of ours without understanding communism. We cannot get rid of this specter by saying it was just human stupidity, or human corruptibility. The specter is stronger than the spells we cast on it. It might come back to life.

Leszek Kołakowski

But we may safely predict that Marx himself will become more and more what he already is: a chapter from a textbook of the history of ideas, a figure that no longer evokes any emotions, simply the author of one the 'great books' of the nineteenth century - one of those books that very few bother to read but whose titles are known to the educated public.

Leszek Kołakowski