19 quotes
Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.
Dirty Hands (1948)
As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
Dirty Hands (1948)
I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.
Dirty Hands (1948)
The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.
Dirty Hands (1948)
The [Communist] Party has one objective: the creation of a socialist economy; and one means: the utilization of the class struggle.
Dirty Hands (1948)
Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.
Dirty Hands (1948)
You take souls for vegetables.... The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.
Dirty Hands (1948)
As for us, my little friend, we entered [the Communist Party] because we were tired of dying of hunger.
Dirty Hands (1948)
I entered the [Communist] Party because its cause was just and I will leave it when it ceases to be just.
Dirty Hands (1948)
I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey foolish rules made especially to humiliate me.
Dirty Hands (1948)
I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man's politics, for the living.
Dirty Hands (1948)
It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!
Dirty Hands (1948)
Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?
Dirty Hands (1948)
In any case, if you ever leave me with a handsome man, do not tell me that you trust me because, let me warn you: that is not what will prevent me from deceiving you, if I want to. On the contrary.
Dirty Hands (1948)
I know nothing, I am neither woman nor girl; I have been living in a dream and when someone kissed me, it made me want to laugh. Now I am here before you, it seems as though I have just awakened and it is morning.
Dirty Hands (1948)
It is the same thing: killing, dying, it is the same thing: one is just as alone in each. He is lucky, he will only die once. As for me, for ten days I have been killing him at every minute.
Dirty Hands (1948)
They made me take cod liver oil: that is the height of luxury: a medicine to make you hungry while the others, in the street, would have sold themselves for a beefsteak. I saw them passing my window with their signs: "Give me bread".
Dirty Hands (1948)
I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.
Dirty Hands (1948)
What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never use it for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.
Dirty Hands (1948)