Vladimir Lenin quotes:

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.

Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

Fascism is capitalism in decay.

When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward - or go back. He who now talks about the 'freedom of the press' goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.

Crime is a product of social excess.

This fear of criticism displayed by the advocates of freedom of criticism cannot be attributed solely to craftiness. No, the majority of the Economists look with sincere resentment upon all theoretical controversies, factional disagreements, broad political questions, plans for organising revolutionaries, etc.

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers Communist and the disarming of the bourgeoisie the middle class.

The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.

Behind the October Revolution there are more influential personalities than the thinkers and executors of Marxism.

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.

A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.

Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.

The most important thing in illness is never to lose heart.

Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom.

You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.

A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistic philistines

Perfect definition of atheist dogma. Your mind has been subjected to subtle mental conditioning year after year. Now the atheist lie has become the truth to you. A lie that can be blown away with the real truth. It just takes time to unwind the atheist mental conditioning. The truth is out there. Outside of atheist dogma lies the truth!

The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavor to keep them disunited.

In brainwashing communism deceit lies manipulation marxism socialism truth A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament-this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.

I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.

And is it not sects, bodies of definite, uncompromising principles, that lead us into revolutions?

Face the truth squarely. In politics that is always the best and the only correct attitude.

But democracy is by no means a limit one may not overstep; it is only one of the stages in the course of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to Communism.

Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless.

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would develop capitalism trade more rapidly. Is it not a fact that the more rapidly trade and capitalism develop, the greater is the concentration of production and capital which gives rise to monopoly?

Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited.

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.

The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.

All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all.

No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!

Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capitalism is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations -- all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.

The most important thing when ill is to never lose heart.

Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.

Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?

Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.

Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.

The whole struggle of our Party (and of the working class movement in Europe generally) must be directed against opportunism. The latter is not a current of opinion, not a tendency; it (opportunism) has now become the organised tool of the bourgeoisie within the working class movement.

An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence - such is our ideal, but only bourgeois sophists can seduce the masses with this ideal, if the latter is divorced from a direct and immediate call for revolutionary action.

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.

Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital.

Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat.

Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.

The sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind.

Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.

Bah, tombstones are only good for pigeons to sit on

We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.

Fascism is capitalism in decay

Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers' cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.

One man with a gun can control 100 without one. ... Make mass searches and hold executions for found arms.

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

The Bolshevik slogans and ideas on the whole have been confirmed by history; but concretely things have worked out differently; they are more original, more peculiar, more varied than anyone could have expected.

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

The constitution of Soviet Russia must insure equal rights for all citizens regardless of sex, creed, race, or nationality.

It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to agree to any and every sacrifice, and evenif need beto resort to all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres and illegal methods, to evasion and subterfuges in order to penetrate the trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry on Communist work in them at all costs.

Sometimes - history needs a push.

It is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a Marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality, and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity.

The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without violent revolution.

It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives. It is far more difficult--and far more precious--to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist.

Show me who your friends are, and I will tell you what you are.

If we can effectively kill the national pride and patriotism of just one generation, we will have won that country. Therefore, there must be continued propaganda abroad to undermine the loyalty of citizens in general, and teenagers in particular. By making drugs of various kinds readily available, by creating the necessary attitude of chaos, idleness and worthlessness, and by preparing him psychologically and politically, we can succeed.

Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.

Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.

Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.

If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.

The goal of socialism is communism.

When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state.

While the State exists there can be no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no State.

A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.

A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses.

A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery.

Act with the greatest determination and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising.

All contemporary religions and churches, all and every kind of religious organization, Marxism has always viewed as organs of bourgeois reaction, serving as a defense of exploitation and the doping of the working-classes.

All countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done.

All extremes are bad. All that is good and useful, if carried to extremes, may become-and beyond a certain limit is bound to become-bad and injurious.

All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery.

America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism.

Any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may possess, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

As an ultimate objective, "peace" simply means communist world control.

Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.

Atheism is the natural and inseparable part of Communism.

Attention, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not our task to descend to the level of the 'working masses'.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Be as radical as Reality.

Behind the epistemological scholasticism of empirio-criticism one must not fail to see the struggle of parties in philosophy, a struggle which in the last analysis reflects the tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society.

But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.

But I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid, nice things, and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.

By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat... Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier... Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.

Capital, created by the labour of the worker, crushes the worker, ruining small proprietors and creating an army of unemployed.

Capitalists will sell us the rope we will hang them with.

Chess is only a recreation and not an occupation.

Communists have become bureaucrats. If anything will destroy us, it is this.

Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.

Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity. You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ...Find tougher people.

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich -- that is the democracy of capitalist society.

Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state.

Destroy the family and you destroy society

Destroy the family, you destroy the country.

Does not the whole history of socialism, particularly of French socialism, which is so rich in revolutionary striving, show us that when the working people themselves take power in their hands the ruling classes resort to unheard-of crimes and shootings if it is a matter of protecting their money-bags.

Don't be afraid to admit defeat. Learn from defeat. Do over again more thoroughly, more carefully, and more systematically what you have done badly.

During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.

Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.

Every cook must learn to rule the State.