Milovan Djilas Quotes

The terrible thing is that one cannot be a Communist and not let oneself in for the shameful act of recantation. One cannot be a Communist and preserve an iota of one's personal integrity.

I would rather do what I did than crawl in front of a ritualistic Left and lie the way those other comrades did betray my own soul.

This isn’t a religion, it’s a political party. So there are times I agree and times I disagree …. I don’t think you sacrifice your … integrity and ability to do your job to a political party.

No convention on God's foot-stool can, or has a right to, run me and make anything but a Democrat out of me.

Sometimes people with strong ideology, whether left-wing or right-wing, refuse to do something simply because they believe it is wrong, when doing it actually benefits them. For some people, it's not just about money and political power.

There could be no greater act of madness than to imagine that we can reform Communists by marrying them.

The menace is ideology, the dogma of politics. It is a prison that makes the American experiment impossible.

I am very distrustful of collectivist ideologies of any kind

For about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was [earlier] condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin

When I kissed a girl, nobody was around. So I didn't do it for anybody. I'm not a lesbian. I encourage anybody to try anything, just make sure you have integrity and character. It doesn't matter who anyone loves. I am for gay rights and I also have a boyfriend.

There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity

I will live and die by this testimony: that I loved a good conscience; that I never invaded another man's liberty; and that I preserved my own.

In Soviet Russia, party always finds you!

Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.

Good moral character is the first essential in a man.

I threw my whole life and lived my life in a certain way to make sure that I would never violate any law.. certainly never any criminal laws.. and always maintained that most important to me was my integrity, was my character, were my values.

I hate extremes of any kind. Communism [seeks] the domination of the state over the individual... All my life I have stood against banning Communism or other extremist organisations because, if you do that, they go underground and it gives them an excitement that they don't get if they are allowed to pursue their policies openly. We'll beat them into the ground on argument...

If there is one word that describes the meaning of character, it is the word honor. Without honor, civilization would not long exist. Without honor, there could be no dependable contracts, no lasting marriages, no trust or happiness. What does the word honor mean to you? To me, honor is summarized in this expression by the poet Tennyson, "Man's word [of honor] is God in man."

I will raise my voice as long as God gives me sound or ability, against this Communistic idea that the Government will take care of us all, and everything belongs to the government. It is wrong!

Whatever you think of Romney and his politics, as a human being there's none better. As a man of integrity, man of character, there's none better.

Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.

For me as a man, philosophically, when you talk about honor and integrity, that’s the way I want to live my life. It moved me.

Things own you. That's the trouble with capitalism. Things own you. With communism and fascism - ideas own you. One idea and you can't have any other.

Communism is a form of society where the less people have to eat, the more they have to swallow.

The contradiction [trying to use Russian model to reshape Italy] grew to such an extent that I felt totally cut off from the communist world and, in the end, from politics. That was fortunate. The idea of putting literature in second place, after politics, is an enormous mistake, because politics almost never achieves its ideals.