Tariq Ali Quotes

Nothing in Chicago seems to be working the way it’s supposed to.

There are programs that don't work.

How our government works... it doesn't.

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.

Government is dysfunctional.

Failures happen in any system.

Marxism-Leninism is a worn-out dress that should be thrown away.

The Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.

Washington isn't utterly dysfunctional.

If something doesn't work, it becomes obvious immediately. This just isn't going to work.

Our political systems clearly are not working.

A drunkard is unprofitable for any kind of good service.

Breakdowns come, and breakdowns go.

The world is sagging, snagging, scaling, spalling, pilling, pinging, pitting, warping, checking, fading, chipping, cracking, yellowing, leaking, stalling, shrinking, and in dynamic unbalance.

The status quo cannot work.

When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.

Most things don't work like they are supposed to work.

The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe.

Something will break very bad.

In all spheres of modern life the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future.

Can true function arise from basic dysfunction?

The people who are unemployed want to do the work, but the system is such a catastrophic failure that it cannot bring together idle hands and work. This is all hailed as a great success, and it is a great success - for a very small sector of the population.

The Soviet Union was pretty much what Lenin and Trotsky said it was.

Everything went great right up to the explosion.

Things seem to fall apart inevitably.