“We Marxists – at least, we orthodox Communists – have always maintained that the dictatorship of a class can be expressed only through the dictatorship of the vanguard of that class; that is, the dictatorship of the class can be realised only through the dictatorship of the Communist Party.”
Nikolai Bukharin
“A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.”
Will Durant