Chairman Mao Quotes

Remember the words of Chairman Mao: 'It's always darkest before it's totally black.'. ~ John McCain

One word from Chairman Mao is worth ten thousand from others. His every statement is truth. We must carry out those we that understand as well as those we don't. ~ Lin Biao

With all deference to Chairman Mao and other authors whose quotations derive from longer works, it seemed that I was becoming the world's first writer of self-contained ready-made quotations. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else. ~ Jung Chang

Basically no, I mean I think that it's very easy to like I say, smoke a joint or even to wear a Chairman Mao button, or do a lot of these things with out knowing what's behind it, and what it really means. ~ Lester Bangs

Greatness lies not in high or outstanding ability. It lies simply in the willingness to use what we have for others. The greater the `other people` dimension, the greater our personal `greatness`. ~ Chairman Mao

Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao ~ Dai Sijie

Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao. ~ Jung Chang

Study Chairman Mao's writings, follow his teachings and act according to his instructions. ~ Lin Biao

When one loves another without considering marriage as the goal, it's sexual harassment. ~ Chairman Mao

Our textbooks were ridiculous propaganda. The first English sentence we learned was "Long live Chairman Mao!" But no one dared to explain the sentence grammatically. In Chinese the term for the optative mood, expressing a wish or desire, means 'something unreal." In 1966 a lecturer at Sichuan University had been beaten up for 'having the audacity to suggest that "Long live Chairman Mao!" was unreal!" One chapter was about a model youth hero who had drowned after jumping into a flood to save an electricity pole because the pole would be used to carry the word of Mao.

With great difficulty, I managed to borrow some English language textbooks published before the Cultural Revolution from lecturers in my department and from Jin-ming, who sent me books from his university by post. These contained extracts from writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, and stories from European and American history. They were a joy to read, but much of my energy went toward finding them and then trying to keep them.

Whenever someone approached, I would quickly cover the books with a newspaper. This was only partly because of their 'bourgeois' content. It was also important not to appear to be studying too conscientiously, and not to arouse my fellow students' jealousy by reading something far beyond them. Although we were studying English, and were paid par fly for our propaganda value by the government to do this, we must not be seen to be too devoted to o ~ Jung Chang

First, there was Confucius. Then, the sayings of Chairman Mao. And now the pithy, ironic, and humorous insights of Ai Weiwei. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection, which reflects a well-developed philosophy as well as a keen understanding of the Chinese Communist system. This is China made easy and interesting. ~ Jerome A. Cohen

Our great leader, Chairman Mao, has taught us, 'Every reactionary is the same; if you do not hit him, he will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish by itself.'" Her ~ Ji-li Jiang

Chairman Mao not only introduced Pinyin in China, but also simplified half the Chinese characters, believing that fewer strokes would enable more people to learn to write the characters. ~ David Tang

It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics. ~ Lester Bangs

Once there was a dictator. He drove millions to various kinds of deaths, by war, in prison, or simply in harsh deserts farming their lives away. He destroyed temples, burned books, and ruined the art of calligraphy. He wrote terrible poetry and forced everyone to learn it, so destroying the literary taste of one quarter of humanity. He remained a warrior even as Chairman. He was at his best as a warrior, because as a warrior, he was fighting for his people, dreaming for them. After that, he only ground them down. But I forgive him for saying one beautiful thing:
'Women hold up half the sky.'
Chairman Mao Tse Tung ~ Geoff Ryman

When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms. ~ Zaha Hadid

On July 3, 1968, Chairman Mao issued an order calling for the ruthless suppression of class enemies. He wanted all members of the Five Black Categories to be eliminated, together with TWENTY THREE NEW TYPES of enemy , which included anyone who had ever served as a policeman before the Liberation, or who had been sent to prison or labor camp. And not only them but their family and distant relatives as well.
That's a lot of people.
Yes. Just think, the literal meaning of the Chinese characters for "revolution" is "elimination of life ~ Ma Jian

The author describes megalomania as seen in Chairman Mao by saying that what he was familiar with, he was really familiar with. This zeal moved the megalomaniac with a complete lack of appreciation for what he DID NOT know. ~ David Halberstam

Published in this month's Harper's, from a conversation held in Beijing in February 1973:
Chairman Mao Zedong: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million.
U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger: The chairman is improving his offer.
Mao: We can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children, and our children are too many. ~ Mao Tse-tung

Socialists are convinced socialism will work if it's only managed by the right people. It's one of the reasons so many socialist countries wind up led by dictators. Socialist leaders inevitably become convinced that only they can manage the state properly, so it would be folly, they reason, to give up their hard-won power. That's how socialism always seems to wind up with people like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao in charge. ~ Tom King

The most effective method of propaganda directed at the enemy forces is to release captured soldiers and give the wounded medical treatment ... Whenever soldiers of enemy forces are captured, we immediately conduct propaganda among them ... This immediately knocks the bottom out of the enemy's slander that the Communist bandits kill everyone on sight. ~ Mao Zedong

Swlmmlng After swallowing some water at Changsha I taste a Wuchang fish in the surf and swim across the Yangtze River that winds ten thousand li. I see the entire Chu sky. Wind batters me, waves hit me-I don't care. Better than walking lazily in the patio. Today I have a lot of time. Here on the river the Master said "Dying-dying into the past-is like a river flowing." ~ Mao Zedong

The defeats which many small Red areas have suffered have been due either to the absence of the requisite objective conditions or to subjective mistakes in tactics. ~ Mao Zedong

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun. ~ Mao Tse-tung

To win countrywide victory is only the first step in a long march of ten thousand li ... The Chinese revolution is great, but the road after the revolution will be longer, the work greater and more arduous. This must be made clear now in the Party. The comrades must be helped to remain modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness in their style of work. The comrades must be helped to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle. ~ Mao Zedong

After the assassination of my wife, our nation was perilously close to civil strife. If I, as the co-chairman of the Party, had asked my people to take to the streets, the very existence of the federation would have been threatened. ~ Asif Ali Zardari

P. 274 ... his trademark decision to surrender power as commander in chief and then president, was not ... a sign that he had conquered his ambitions, but rather that he fully realized that all ambitions were inherently insatiable and unconquerable. He knew himself well enough to resist the illusion that he transcended human nature. Unlike Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell before him, and Napoleon, Lenin, and Mao after him, he understood that the greater glory resided in posterity's judgment. If you aspire to live forever in the memory of future generations, you must demonstrate the ultimate self-confidence to leave the final judgment to them. And he did. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

I read slave narratives, books like Bullwhip Days, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. [The Root's chairman] Henry Louis Gates has an amazing documentary called Many Rivers to Cross - really, his whole writings; he's such a wealth of knowledge. ~ Jurnee Smollett

I think every responsible public board at every board meeting should be discussing succession. And, of course, Walmart has a very mature board: our chairman Rob Walton and other members. So succession is an ongoing. I think when I first joined the board of directors, it was discussed then. And it's discussed at every board meeting continually. ~ Mike Duke

If something is not right we give out about it. He is almost a Yorkshireman with a Portuguese accent. ~ Neil Warnock

Keep going, no matter what."
--Reginald F. Lewis: Lawyer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, Chairman, CEO --- ~ Reginald F. Lewis

After a few Republicans on the Houston city council supported the Democratic majority's proposal that stalled cars be towed immediately off the city's notoriously clotted freeways, local Republican officials promised retribution. 'We're not looking for council members who are going to go along and get along,' said Jared Woodfill, chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. 'We're looking for council members who are going to stand up for conservative values.' Surely, political ideology has teetered over some high cliff when towing can be described as a 'value.' What's next, a doctrine of potholes, the water pressure credo? ~ Bill Bishop

(1) a sound mass base, (2) a sound Party organization, (3) a fairly strong Red Army, (4) terrain favourable to military operations, and (5) economic resources sufficient for sustenance. ~ Mao Zedong

Ask your subordinates about matters you do not understand or do not know, and do not lightly express your approval or disapproval. . . . We should never pretend to know what we do not know, we should "not feel ashamed to ask and learn from people below" and we should listen carefully to the views of the cadres at the lower levels. Be a pupil before you become a teacher; learn from the cadres at the lower levels before you issue orders. . . . What the cadres at the lower levels say may or may not be correct, after hearing it, we must analyse it. We must heed the correct views and act upon them. . . . Listen also to the mistaken views from below, it is wrong not to listen to them at all. Such views, however, are not to be acted upon but to be criticized. ~ Mao Zedong

Our national defense will be consolidated and no imperialist will be allowed to invade our territory again. Our People's armed forces must be maintained and developed with the brave and steeled People's Liberation Army as their foundation. We will have not only a powerful army but also a powerful air force and a powerful navy. ~ Mao Zedong

The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds well universally, for China and for all other countries. ~ Mao Zedong

China during the Mao era was a poor country, but it had a strong public health network that provided free immunizations to its citizens. That was where I came in. In those days there were no disposable needles and syringes; we had to reuse ours again and again. Sterilization too was primitive: The needles and syringes would be washed, wrapped separately in gauze, and placed in aluminum lunch boxes laid in a huge wok on top of a briquette stove. Water was added to the wok, and the needles and syringes were then steamed for two hours, as you would steam buns.

On my first day of giving injections I went to a factory. The workers rolled up their sleeves and waited in line, baring their arms to me one after another – and offering up a tiny piece of red flesh, too. Because the needles had been used multiple times, almost every one of them had a barbed tip. You could stick a needle into someone's arm easily enough, but when you extracted it, you would pull out a tiny piece of flesh along with it. For the workers the pain was bearable, although they would grit their teeth or perhaps let out a groan or two. I paid them no mind, for the workers had had to put up with barbed needles year after year and should be used to it by now, I thought. But the next day, when I went to a kindergarten to give shot to children from the ages of three through six, it was a difference story. Every last one of them burst out weeping and wailing. Because their skin was so tender, the needles wo ~ Yu Hua

Anyone who sees only the bright side but not the difficulties cannot fight effectively for the accomplishment of the Party's tasks. ~ Mao Zedong

I think Chairman Davis has said he would always prefer that baseball strengthens its own policies and not leave it to Congress to legislate. In the absence of any action, he believes Congress is ready to move forward. ~ Robert J. White

Dalai Lama was leading his country during the rigors of World War II, he was in Beijing for a year in 1954; he was up against Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai from the time that he was fifteen. So he's no newcomer or naive when it comes to politics. ~ Pico Iyer

In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles that oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. ~ Mao Zedong

There are some militarists who say: 'We are not interested in politics but only in the profession of arms.' It is vital that these simple-minded militarists be made to realize the relationship that exists between politics and military affairs. Military action is a method used to attain a political goal. While military affairs and political affairs are not identical, it is impossible to isolate one from the other." - Mao Zedong, Yu Chi Chan ~ Mao Zedong

Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy's rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people
and the troops. The former may be likened to water the latter to the fish who inhabit it. How may it be said that these two cannot exist together? ~ Mao Zedong

Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society. ~ Jung Chang

Once all struggles are grasped, miracles are possible. ~ Mao Zedong

New things always have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow. It is sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and setbacks or the exertion of tremendous efforts. ~ Mao Zedong

As the proud father of two teens and past Chairman to the Presidents Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, I am committed to educating parents and especially young people on ways to live a long, healthy and active life. ~ Lee Haney

Power says if you are a committee chairman, your idea is good only because you have got power. ~ Dan Webster

How important is failure - yes, failure - to the health of a thriving, innovative business? So important that Ratan Tata, chairman of India's largest corporation, gives an annual award to the employee who comes up with the best idea that failed. ~ Naveen Jain

And, as a matter of fact, I am the chairman of the Amadou Diallo Foundation. ~ David Dinkins

Pilfering was common in Communist China's state-owned enterprises, as the Party secretaries were slack in guarding properties that belonged to the government and poorly paid workers felt it fair compensation for their low pay. The practice was so widespread that it was an open secret. The workers joked about it and called it "Communism," which in Chinese translation means "sharing property." Pg. 390 ~ Nien Cheng

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage ...
As chairman emeritus of the extreme right-wing National Organization for Marriage ~ Orson Scott Card

A potential revolutionary situation exists in any country where the government consistently fails in its obligation to ensure at least a minimally decent standard of life for the great majority of its citizens. ~ Mao Zedong

In transforming backward agricultural China into an advanced industrialized country, we are confronted with arduous tasks and our experience is far from adequate. So we must be good at learning. ~ Mao Zedong

All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right. ~ Mao Zedong

All reactionaries are paper tigers. ~ Mao Zedong

I'm bored, I'm the chairman of the board. ~ Iggy Pop

Wind and rain escorted Spring's departure,
Flying snow welcomes Spring's return.
On the ice-clad rock rising high and sheer
A flower blooms sweet and fair.
Sweet and fair, she craves not Spring for herself alone,
To be the harbinger of Spring she is content.
When the mountain flowers are in full bloom
She will smile mingling in their midst. ~ Mao Zedong

Since I became chairman, I've tried to turn EFF into civil liberties and responsibilities. ~ Esther Dyson

Tweet from Julius Genachowski chairman of the FCC.

@FCC: David Ortiz spoke from the heart at today's Red Sox game. I stand with Big Papi and the people of Boston – Julius ~ Chairman Of The FCC

That has less significance than a dog's fart. ~ Mao Zedong

Well we certainly don't want to see that kind of thing,' admonished Jeff Stelling. 'Did it calm down?'

'No,' shouted Kamara. 'It got worse. The police were just getting involved when the chairman was hit by a pie thrown from the crowd.'

'Was he injured?' asked Stelling, struggling to suppress a giggle.

'I don't think so,' laughed Kamara. 'He sat down and started eating it! ~ Dougie Brimson

In waking a tiger, use a long stick. ~ Mao Zedong

When we look at thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, we must, once we cross the threshold, grasp the essence of the thing. ~ Mao Zedong

Dare I ask Mao and his Communist Party?
I fear my throat will be cut into two pieces.
In the name of revolution, for thought crimes,
Such questions can turn me to ashes. ~ Zoe S. Roy

Whoever sides with the revolutionary people is a revolutionary. Whoever sides with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism is a counter-revolutionary. Whomever sides with the revolutionary people in words only but acts otherwise is a revolutionary in speech. Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense. ~ Mao Zedong

Don't make a fuss about a world war. At most, people die ... Half the population wiped out - this happened quite a few times in Chinese history ... It's best if half the population is left, next best one-third ... ~ Mao Zedong

We've been beaten before but never defeated. Tonight we were defeated. ~ Helenio Herrera