Vladimir Lenin Quotes

What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. [Addressing to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922] ~ Vladimir Lenin

Every cook must learn to rule the State. ~ Vladimir Lenin

All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The Jewish bourgeoisie are our enemies, not as Jews but as bourgeoisie. The Jewish worker is our brother. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Trust is good, but control is better. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The only one who doesn't make mistakes is the one who doesn't do anything. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The revolution does not need historians. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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! ~ Vladimir Lenin

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! ~ Vladimir Lenin

Let the "socialist" snivellers croak, let the bourgeoisie rage and fume, but only people who shut their eyes so as not to see, and stuff their ears so as not to hear, can fail to notice that all over the world the birth pangs of the old, capitalist society, which is pregnant with socialism, have begun. ~ Vladimir Lenin

In capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong. ~ Vladimir Lenin

When a liberal is abused, he says, 'Thank God they didn't beat me.' When he
is beaten, he thanks God they didn't kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay. ~ Vladimir Lenin

One must always strive to be as radical as reality itself. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

One fool can ask more questions in a minute than 12 wise men can answer in an hour. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Be as radical as Reality. ~ Vladimir Lenin

We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding, governing with the aid of a new machine. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic. ~ Vladimir Lenin

History causes the military problem to become the essence of the political problem. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist. ~ Vladimir Lenin

You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

It is in prison ... that one becomes a real revolutionary. ~ Vladimir Lenin

It is stupid to tolerate Nikola; all Chekists have to be on alert to shoot anyone who doesn't turn up to work because of Nikola. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

International unity of the workers is more important than the national. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

In the end, one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet republic or over world capitalism. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

Hundreds of thousands and millions of wage slaves of capital and peasants downtrodden by the serf-owners are going to the slaughter for the dynastic interests of a handful of crowned brigands, for the profits of the bourgeoisie in its drive to plunder foreign lands. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Destroy the family, you destroy the country. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery," and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

Logic is the science not of external forms of thought, but of the laws of development "of all material, natural and spiritual things", i.e., of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and of its cognition, i.e., the sum-total, the conclusion of the History of knowledge of the world. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Sometimes - history needs a push. ~ Vladimir Lenin

One quick way to destroy a society is through its music. ~ Vladimir Lenin

We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters
then we are for it! ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

121.George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
122.Max Planck – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
123.Henri Bergson – Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124.John Dewey – How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic; the Theory of Inquiry
125.Alfred North Whitehead – An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas
126.George Santayana – The Life of Reason; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Persons and Places
127.Vladimir Lenin – The State and Revo ~ Mortimer J. Adler

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The goal of Socialism is Communism. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

I don't care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics. ~ Vladimir Lenin

One must not count in thousands, like the propagandist belonging to a small group that has not yet given leadership to the masses; in these circumstances one must count in millions and tens of millions. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Ideology must be our foundation as it was for the Bolsheviks, but the new archives show that the personalities and patronage of a minuscule oligarchy were the essence of politics under Lenin and Stalin, as they were under the Romanov emperors - and just as they are today under the 'managed democracy' of twenty-first-century Russia. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don't clutch at us and don't besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are "free" to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh! ~ Vladimir Lenin

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

It would be the greatest mistake, certainly, to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind. Concessions are nothing but a new form of war. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Thus, the twentieth century marks the turning-point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Where and when have riots and anarchy been provoked by wise measures? If the government had acted wisely, and if their measures had met the needs of the poor peasants, would there have been unrest among the peasant masses? ~ Vladimir Lenin

When it comes to hang the capitalists they will compete with each other to sell us the rope at a lower price. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

I must say that the tasks of the youth in general, and of the Young Communist Leagues and all other organisations in particular, might be summed up in a single word: learn. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted
or rather tend to be corrupted
by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Germany will militarize herself out of existence, England will expand herself out of existence, and America will spend herself out of existence. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

When we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Unity must be won, and only the workers, the class-conscious workers themselves can win it - by stubborn and persistent effort. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Honesty in politics is the result of strength; hypocrisy is the result of weakness. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learned to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Every cook has to learn how to govern the state. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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. ~ Vladimir Lenin

We shall not bind ourselves by treaties. We shall not allow ourselves to be entangled by treaties. We reject all clauses on plunder and violence, but we shall welcome all clauses containing provisions for good-neighbourly relations and all economic agreements; we cannot reject these. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Fascism is capitalism in decay. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The true leader must submerge himself in the fountain of the people. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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

Chess is only a recreation and not an occupation. ~ Vladimir Lenin

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