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About this quote

What does it mean?
Human history involves both free choices and unavoidable constraints that shape outcomes.
In plain terms
History mixes our freedom with forces we can't control.
What can you take from it?
Acknowledge both agency and limits in historical change.

Where it applies

  • policy making
  • historical study
  • planning

Putting it to work

  • identify what can change
  • respect structural limits

Questions to consider

  • How much control do we really have?
  • What is fixed versus what is flexible?

Another view

The balance between freedom and necessity is often debated.

More from Antonio Gramsci

  1. Economy and ideology. The claim (presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism) that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presente…

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  2. We can see that in putting the question 'what is man?' what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he 'make himself,' …

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  3. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

    Permalink to quote #3

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