Joseph Stalin quotes:

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  • Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.

  • I trust no one, not even myself.

  • A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

  • Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.

  • Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.

  • Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.

  • The Pope? How many divisions has he got?

  • In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance.

  • This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.

  • The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.

  • It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

  • Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

  • Farmers present by themselves the basic force of the national movement. Without farmers there can be no strong national movement. This is what we mean when we say that the nationalist question, is actually, the farmers' question.

  • In war I would deal with the Devil and his grandmother

  • Artillery is the god of war.

  • When there's a person, there's a problem. When there's no person, there's no problem. Josef Stalin

  • We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism.

  • Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.

  • The easiest way to gain control of the population is to carry out acts of terror. The public will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened.

  • You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.

  • The way to handle people is to treat them like chickens. Take away everything they have by plucking all their feathers and then throw them a few bread crumbs. They will then follow you forever.

  • As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality , must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia.

  • Nobody respects a country with a poor army, but everybody respects a country with a good army. I raise my toast to the Finnish army

  • America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.

  • Is it possible, then, to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the German invaders? The enemy is not as strong as some terror-stricken pseudo-intellectuals picture him. The devil is not as terrible as he is painted.

  • History shows that there are no invincible armies.

  • If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a 'peace conference,' you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

  • A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

  • I believe in one thing only, the power of human will.

  • You do not lament the loss of hair of one who has been beheaded.

  • The Red Army and Navy and the whole Soviet people must fight for every inch of Soviet soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages...onward, to victory!

  • It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.

  • Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats.

  • When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.

  • One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.

  • Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

  • Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.

  • Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

  • If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.

  • We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?

  • Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

  • By May, 1st, 1937, there should not be one single church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ages, which has been used for the purpose of oppressing the working classes.

  • Great Britain provided time; the United States provided money and Soviet Russia provided blood.

  • When you chop wood, splinters fly

  • The only real power comes out of a long rifle.

  • - Oh no, The Collective Farm policy was a terrible struggle... Ten million (he said holding up his hands). It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary.

  • The writer is the engineer of the human soul.

  • Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.

  • The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.

  • If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a 'peace conference', you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

  • To assert that we desire to bring about revolution in other countries, by interfering with their lives, is to speak of something which does not exist and which we never preach.

  • Everybody has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege.

  • We have not yet built a communist society.It is not so easy to build such a society.

  • Remember how the first world war broke out. It broke out as a result of the desire to redivide the world.

  • It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes.

  • A certain inequality in regard to property still exists in a socialist society. But in a socialist society there is no unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities.

  • It is difficult to say which is more menacing. But both of [points of war danger -Japan and Germany] exist and both are smoldering. In comparison with these two principal focal points of the war danger, the Italo-Ethiopian war represents an episode.

  • Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship.

  • It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.

  • [State] finds [frontier] either with the aid of force, as in 1914, when Germany invaded Belgium in order to deal a blow against France or it "borrows" a frontier, such as Germany did with regard to Latvia, for instance, in 1918, in attempting to break through to Leningrad across Latvia.

  • American Communists have the opportunity to preach freely their ideas. It would be absolutely wrong to hold the Soviet government responsible for activities of the American Communists.

  • Nowadays wars are not declared. They simply start.

  • We desire to give the Soviet people absolute liberty of voting for those they desire to elect, those whom they trust to ensure their interests.

  • In speaking of the capitalists who strive only for profit, only to get rich, I do not want to say that these are the most worthless people capable of doing nothing else. Many of them undoubtedly possess great organising talent, which I would not dream of denying. We Soviet people learn a lot from the capitalists. But if you mean people who are prepared to reconstruct the world, of course you will not be able to find them in the ranks of those who faithfully serve the cause of profit. ..The capitalist is riveted in profit and nothing can tear him away from it.

  • To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed ... There is nothing sweeter in the world.

  • Words are one thing - deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

  • World dictatorship can be established only when the victory of socialism has been achieved in certain countries or groups of countries ... [and] when these federation of republics have finally grown into a world union of Soviet Socialist Republics uniting the whole of mankind under the hegemony of the international proletariat organized as a state.

  • Have not fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany claimed that they have attained similar results [as in U.S.S.R.]? Have not both been achieved at the price of privation and personal liberty sacrificed for the good of the state?

  • Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.

  • The death of one man is tragic, but the death of thousands is statistic

  • We Marxists believe that revolution will occur in other countries, as well. But it will occur at a time when it will be considered possible or necessary by revolutionaries of those countries.

  • A man's eyes should be torn out if he can only see the past

  • I have in mind repeated statements by Japanese military men containing threats against other states.

  • I fail to see what dangers surrounding states can see in the ideas of the Soviet people if these states are really firmly seated in their saddles.

  • You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.

  • In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians.

  • [After Communism succeeds] ...then, there will come a peace across the earth.

  • [American Communist Party] legally exists in the U.S.A., it nominates its candidates in the elections, including Presidential elections.

  • We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.

  • It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" the unemployed can have who go hungry and cannot find utilization of their labor.

  • Die, but do not retreat.

  • World War II was fought for the abolition of racial exclusiveness, equality of nations and the integrity of their territories, liberation of enslaved nations and restoration of their sovereign rights, the right of every nation to arrange its affairs as it wishes, economic aid to nations that have suffered and assistance to them in attaining their material welfare, restoration of democratic liberties, and destruction of the Hitlerite regime.

  • Ah, these diplomats! What chatterboxes! There's only one way to shut them up - cut them down with machine guns. Bulganin, go and get me one!

  • In a socialist society, everybody is obliged to work even though he is remunerated for his labor and not yet according to his needs, but according to the quantity and quality of the labor expended.

  • Our new Soviet constitution will, in my opinion, be the most democratic constitution of all those existing in the world.

  • Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx's proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism.

  • Admittedly communism has not been achieved in Russia. State socialism has been built.

  • This war is not an ordinary war. It is the war of the entire Russian people. Not only to eliminate the danger hanging over our heads, but to aid all people groaning under the yoke of Fascism

  • He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power.

  • There are capitalist states which consider themselves cheated, during previous redivisions of spheres of influence, territories, sources of raw materials, markets, etc., and which would again desire to redivide them to their own advantage.

  • At this point the question of Ukraine is the most important. The situation in Ukraine is very bad. If we don't take steps now to improve the situation, we may lose Ukraine. The objective should be to transform Ukraine , in the shortest period of time, into a real fortress of the U.S.S.R.

  • There is not, nor should there be, an irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of an individual person and the interests of the collective.

  • As you can see, even when [Adolf] Hitler desires to speak for peace, he cannot dispense with threats. This is symptomatic.

  • Quantity has a quality all its own.

  • So far, the Far Eastern focal point of danger is the most active.It is possible, however, that the center of the menace may shift to Europe. Evidence of this is provided, for instance, by [Adolf] Hitler's recent interview given to a French paper. In this interview, Hitler seems to attempt to say peaceful things. But this "peacefulness" of his is so thickly interspersed with threats against France and the Soviet Union that nothing remains of the "peacefulness".

  • The United States should get rid of its militias.

  • music's a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

  • How do you expect the Germans to revolt when they don't even dare walk on the grass?

  • It was necessary, temporarily, to limit certain requirements, accumulate necessary means, strain forces. We acted precisely in this way and built a socialist society.

  • Take some exercise, try to recover the look of a human being.

  • The leaders come and go, but the people remain. Only the people are immortal.

  • The reason why there is now no communist government in Paris is because in the circumstances of 1945 the Soviet army was not able to reach French soil.

  • We built this [socialistic] society not for the curbing of personal liberty, but in order that human personalities should really feel free.

  • I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this - who will count the votes, and how.

  • We built [socialistic society] for the sake of real personal liberty, liberty without quotation marks.

  • The Jews are not a nation!

  • Why will our elections be equal? Because neither differences in regard to property (differences partly existing) nor differences of race and nationality will cause any privileges or disadvantages. Women will enjoy the right to elect and be elected equally with men. Our elections will be really equal.

  • In my opinion, there are two focal points of the war danger. The first focal point is the Far East zone of Japan. The second focal point in the zone is Germany.

  • One of the successes of the cause of the friends of peace is the ratification of the Franco-Soviet Pact of Mutual Assistance.

  • It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.

  • Personel selection is decisive. People are our most valuable capital.

  • According to our constitution, political emigres have the right to reside on our territory. We accord them the right of asylum, the same as the United States accords the right of asylum to political emigres.

  • Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain.

  • Voters decide nothing. Vote counters decide everything!

  • There is talk ... of our constructing Dnieprostroy through our own means. The means needed are great, several hundred millions. Let us not get into the position of the peasant who, after accumulating a nest-egg, instead of repairing his plough and renewing his equipment, buys a gramophone and goes bankrupt.

  • The art of leadership is a serious matter. One must not lag behind a movement, because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for to rush ahead is to lose contact with the masses. He who wished to lead a movement must conduct a fight on two fronts--against those who lag behind and those who rush ahead.

  • To slacken the tempo...would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten...

  • In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

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