Leninism Quotes

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

The official ideology [of Poland] is Marxism-Leninism, which no one openly admits to believing. For Marx expressed the German view, and Lenin the Russian one, and the meeting of these particular minds has always spelled Polish ruin. ~ Norman Davies

The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as a dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution. It is not just a matter of understanding the general laws derived by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from their extensive study of real life and revolutionary experience, but of studying their standpoint and method in examining and solving problems. ~ Mao Zedong

Evil comes in many forms and seems to reinvent itself time and again. But whatever it calls itself - Nazism, Marxist-Leninism, today, terrorism - they all have one thing in common: the destruction, the end of human liberty. ~ Stephen Harper

We too aspire to communism as the most perfect achievement of human solidarity, but it must be anarchist communism, that is, freely desired and accepted, and the means by which the freedom of everyone is guaranteed and can expand; for these reasons we maintain that State communism, which is authoritarian and imposed, is the most hateful tyranny that has ever afflicted, tormented and handicapped mankind. ~ Errico Malatesta

Despite being some of the most powerful people in the world, the top men in the Kremlin were scared of stepping out of line. Marxism-Leninism answered all questions, so the eventual decision would be infallibly correct. Anyone who had argued for a different outcome was therefore revealed to be culpably out of touch with orthodox thinking. Dimka sometimes wondered if it was this bad in the Vatican. ~ Ken Follett

anarchism is to Marxism-Leninism what Anabaptism was to the magisterial Reformation: a revolutionary movement predicated upon negating, rather than seizing control of, state power. ~ Mark Van Steenwyk

How is Marxist-Leninist theory to be linked with the practice of the Chinese revolution? To use a common expression, it is by "shooting the arrow at the target". As the arrow is to the target, so is Marxism-Leninism to the Chinese revolution. Some comrades, however, are "shooting without a target", shooting at random, and such people are liable to harm the revolution. ~ Mao Zedong

For Marx, nature is to be subjugated in order to obey history; for Nietzsche, nature is to be
obeyed in order to subjugate history. It is the difference between the Christian and the Greek. Nietzsche,
at least, foresaw what was going to happen: "Modern socialism tends to create a form of secular
Jesuitism, to make instruments of all men"; and again: "What we desire is well-being. ... As a result we
march toward a spiritual slavery such as has never been seen. . . . Intellectual Caesarism hovers over
every activity of the businessman and the philosopher." Placed in the crucible of Nietzschean philosophy,
rebellion, in the intoxication of freedom, ends in biological or historical Caesarism. The absolute negative had driven Stirner to deify crime simultaneously with the individual. But the absolute affirmative leads to
universalizing murder and mankind simultaneously. Marxism-Leninism has really accepted the burden
of Nietzsche's freewill by means of ignoring several Nietzschean virtues. The great rebel thus creates with
his own hands, and for his own imprisonment, the implacable reign of necessity. Once he had escaped
from God's prison, his first care was to construct the prison of history and of reason, thus putting the
finishing touch to the camouflage and consecration of the nihilism whose conquest he claimed. ~ Albert Camus

The Party justified its "dictatorship" through purity of faith. Their Scriptures were the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, regarded as a "scientific" truth. Since ideology was so important, every leader had to be - or seem to be - an expert on Marxism-Leninism, so that these ruffians spent their weary nights studying, to improve their esoteric credentials, dreary articles on dialectical materialism. It was so important that Molotov and Polina even discussed Marxism in their love letters: "Polichka my darling . . . reading Marxist classics is very necessary . . . You must read some more of Lenin's works coming out soon and then a number of Stalin's . . . I so want to see you. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

Lenin and Stalin created the idiosyncratic Soviet system in the image of their ruthless little circle of conspirators before the Revolution. Indeed much of the tragedy of Leninism-Stalinism is comprehensible only if one realizes that the Bolsheviks continued to behave in the same clandestine style whether they formed the government of the world's greatest empire in the Kremlin or an obscure little cabal in the backroom of a Tiflis tavern. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

But there was never any such thing as Stalinism. It was contrived by Khrushchev and his group in order to blame all the characteristic traits and principal defects of Communism on Stalin - it was a very effective move. But in reality Lenin had managed to give shape to all the main features before Stalin came to power. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Even if we have to go without bread, we Albanians do not violate principles. We do not betray Marxism - Leninism. ~ Enver Hoxha

The arrow of Marxist-Leninism must be used to hit the target of the Chinese Revolution. ~ Mao Zedong

Many people, observing religious conflict in the contemporary world, have become hostile to religion as such and regard it as a source of violence and intolerance.5 In a world of overlapping and plural religious environments, this can clearly be the case. But they fail to put religion in its broader historical context, where it was a critical factor in permitting broad social cooperation that transcended kin and friends as a source of social relationships. Moreover, secular ideologies like Marxism-Leninism or nationalism that have displaced religious beliefs in many contemporary societies can be and have been no less destructive due to the passionate beliefs that they engender. ~ Francis Fukuyama

I am proud that I have devoted all my life to the struggle for the triumph of Leninism. ~ Tim Buck

The very agony
of death experienced in the humiliation of the entire being lifts the slave to the level of human totality. He
knows, henceforth, that this totality exists; now it only remains for him to conquer it through a long series
of struggles against nature and against the masters. History identifies itself, therefore, with the history of
endeavor and rebellion. It is hardly astonishing that Marxism-Leninism derived from this dialectic the
contemporary ideal of the soldier worker. ~ Albert Camus

Science fiction has traditionally been economically naive, with a strong libertarian streak, which I think is like a crude Leninism. That's attractive because it could be used to explain everything, and if only we lived by its tenets, everything would be perfect. ~ Charles Stross

There is nothing illogical in the desire of the "have-nots" to appropriate the wealth of the "haves"; in fact, it is part and parcel of the law of animal life. The bear robs the hive and the wolf the fold, and when "nature red in tooth and claw" is stretched into its human dimension, there is nothing irrational in Marx's theory that, granted the power, one social class should devour another. But what is irrational is, to assume that by robbing the hive the bear will assume the industry of the bee, or by robbing the fold the wolf will become as pacific as the sheep. It is astonishing that a man of Marx's high intelligence could have believed in ritualistic cannibalism on the social plane; that by wresting the forces of production from the bourgeoisie and centralizing them in the hands of the proletariat, the proletariat would automatically aacquire the skills of the ruling class. And it is equally astonishing that a man of Lenin's mental calibre could have attempted to put this magic into practice. ~ J.F.C. Fuller

At the same time, of course, Marxism arose - Rosa Luxembourg, Leninism, anarchism - and art became political. ~ Douglas Sirk

My response to the end of Soviet tyranny was similar to my reaction to the defeat of Hitler and Mussolini. In all cases, it is a victory for the human spirit. It should have been particularly welcome to socialists, since a great enemy of socialism had at last collapsed. Like you, I was intrigued to see how people - including people who had considered themselves anti-Stalinist and anti-Leninist - were demoralized by the collapse of the tyranny. What it reveals is that they were more deeply committed to Leninism than they believed. ~ Noam Chomsky

Bakunin's warnings about the "Red bureaucracy" that would institute "the worst of all despotic governments" were long before Lenin, and were directed against the followers of Mr. Marx. There were, in fact, followers of many different kinds; Pannekoek, Luxemburg, Mattick and others are very far from Lenin, and their views often converge with elements of anarcho-syndicaIism. Korsch and others wrote sympathetically of the anarchist revolution in Spain, in fact. There are continuities from Marx to Lenin, but there are also continuities to Marxists who were harshly critical of Lenin and Bolshevism. Teodor Shanin's work in the past years on Marx's later attitudes towards peasant revolution is also relevant here. I'm far from being a Marx scholar, and wouldn't venture any serious judgement on which of these continuities reflects the "real Marx," if there even can be an answer to that question. ~ Noam Chomsky

Around 1967 I began backing away from dogmatic Leninism, not so much because I thought it was false, I just decided there was nothing utopian about it. ~ Henry Flynt

After 1968 the restored communist regime required all Czech rock musicians to sit a written exam in Marxism Leninism ~ Niall Ferguson