Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes
Cursed be all those on land and sea who eat their fill, cursed be all those who starve yet raise no hand in protest, cursed be all the bread, the wine, the meat which day by day descends deep in the entrails of the exploited man and turns not into freedom's cry, the murderer's ruthless knife!
Kazantzakis, Nikos. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. Translated by Kimon Friar, Simon and Schuster, 1958, p. 660.
The Whites were the old nobility and conservatives who, after the Czar had been deposed, fought a civil war for control of Russia against the Reds—the Bolsheviks. The Whites were allied with the Cossacks, a particularly vicious, and cruel groups of traditional cavalry who previously had done much of the Czar’s dirty work. They were responsible for most of the Anti-Semitic pogroms, and their affiliation with the Whites pushed most Jewish Russians to the Reds.
On higher taxes for wealthier classes:
The nobles of the city were in rebellion and fought the English Prince of Wales. When the city was taken, the poor people as well as the nobles were executed for their part in the “rebellion.” However, the poor had no say in the matter, and it was not they who ordered the city gates shut and decided to undergo a siege, which in this case was not successful. Limoges was a heavily walled city, well provisioned for a siege, but the English had miners who undermined part of the city walls and crashed them into the moat and allowed the English to walk in easily.
Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer. Widely considered a giant of modern Greek literature, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in nine different years.
