Top 100 Mao Quotes
#1. If this valley is indeed cursed," Atherton continued, "there's the source. The Muslims named this set of ruins Mao Balegh, which means Cursed City.
James Rollins
#2. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog.
Ron Bloom
#3. Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara ... are as germane to our highly technological, computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.
Saul Alinsky
#4. Of course, Mao made his mistakes, because everybody does, but at least he allowed working people to smoke, even in the most trying circumstances, such as when, for one reason or another, they found themselves up before the firing squad.
Tony Benn
#5. I want it to serve as a reminder of the terrible human consequences of Mao's dictatorship and of how good and talented people living under his regime were forced to violate their consciences and sacrifice their ideals in order to survive.
Li Zhisui
#6. Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.
Anthony Hopkins
#7. 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
#8. I knew I could not maintain that leadership in open struggle against Moscow influence. Only two Communist leaders in history ever succeeded in doing this - Tito and Mao Tse-tung.
Earl Browder
#9. When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family.
Jung Chang
#10. I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution.
Lynne Stewart
#11. The Chinese government is quickly losing its ideological legitimacy, maintain its rule with force, but cannot draw strength from the ideology of Marx and Mao.
Steve Forbes
#12. Comrade Mao, whether he was crossing 'a sea of surging waves' or scaling 'a mountain pass impregnable as iron' always held unwaveringly to his course, setting a shining example for the Chinese Communist Party.
Xi Jinping
#13. 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
#14. In 1924 Mao took a Chinese friend, newly arrived from Europe, to see the notorious sign in the Shanghai park, 'Chinese and Dogs Not Allowed'.
Paul Johnson
#15. I was Chairman Mao's dog. What he said to bite, I bit.
Jiang Qing
#16. Stalin and Mao killed over 80 million and did not make omelets despite the broken eggs.
Victor Davis Hanson
#17. If that lad makes a First Division footballer, then I'm Mao Tse Tung.
Tommy Docherty
#18. Six decades ago, as Mao's Communists seized power, the question in Washington was, 'Who lost China?' Now, as his capitalist descendants stand astride the world stage and Washington worries about decline, it seems to be, 'Who lost America?'
Eric Liu
#19. Chairman Mao has never seen a greater show of red strength.
Bill Shankly
#20. We in China had been trained not to draw conclusions from facts, but to start with Marxist theories or Mao thoughts or the Party line and to deny, even condemn, the facts that did not suit them. I
Jung Chang
#21. Mao has never accepted the failure of the "Great Leap". As one of the texts reproduced below demonstrates, he would have preferred to see China perish from famine rather than readjust his own vision or recognize his mistakes.
Simon Leys
#22. 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
#23. I have been compared to Mao since we were both junior skaters. We've felt the rivalry since then, so we wanted to avoid each other. However, she has been my motivation.
Kim Yuna
#24. That car, as with the rest of Mr. Mao's lifestyle, was brand new. He had gotten rich, and gotten rich quick. But like the rest of his generation of Chinese Jay Gatsbys, the source of his wealth was murky.
Michael Levy
#25. The Korean War, which China entered on the side of North Korea, fixed Mao's image in the United States as another unappeasable Communist.
Pankaj Mishra
#26. I was Chairman Mao's dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite,
Jiang Qing
#27. Soon, all that was permitted to be taught was the chairman's Little Red Book. Chairman Mao's quotes were treated like the words of God.
Liao Yiwu
#28. Remember the words of Chairman Mao: 'It's always darkest before it's totally black.'.
John McCain
#29. The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings.
Jung Chang
#30. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology had been replaced by Fundamentals of Industry and Agriculture, because of Chairman Mao's instruction to "combine education with practical experience.
Ji-li Jiang
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. In 1949, Mao Tse-tung's Communists established the People's Republic of China, and the following year, his People's Liberation Army invaded central Tibet.
Barbara Demick
#34. The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader's charisma. What matters is the leader's mission.
Peter F. Drucker
#35. I have always loved the Mao cap, though I hate violent revolution.
Vivienne Westwood
#36. Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao.
Jung Chang
#37. 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
#38. The idea that man is a tabula rasa, or Mao's sheet of blank paper upon which the most beautiful characters can be written, is an old one with disastrous implications. I do not think though that the cults you mention could survive honest thought about human nature.
Theodore Dalrymple
#39. It's taken us 10 years, and it was constant excitement. I was constantly shocked by how evil he could be. Mao was very, very shrewd but he didn't have human feeling.
Jung Chang
#40. 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
#41. Mao would hardly be deterred by the universal condemnation of the civilized world. He saw Stalin as his model. In the agrarian reforms, Stalin had killed seven million; Mao himself killed an estimated forty million Chinese in his reforms.49
William J. Bennett
#42. Mao Tse Tung lives and his name is Barack Hussein Obama. This country should be ashamed. I wanna throw up.
Ted Nugent
#43. I'm using Mao as my inspiration. "Cast away illusions. Prepare for struggle." I'm back in business, baby. You don't know you're stuck until you get moving.
Hanif Kureishi
#44. Millions of Germans had absolute faith in Hitler. Millions of Russians had faith in Stalin. Millions of Chinese had faith in Mao. Billions have had faith in imaginary gods.
Steve Allen
#45. 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
#46. Here is the opportunity for you to help Chairman Mao's revolution. Who can win the most honor by telling us first?
Ji-li Jiang
#47. Now let's sincerely and wholeheartedly wish long life to our great leader, great teacher, great commander, and great helmsman, Chairman Mao." Her
Ji-li Jiang
#48. Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.
Azar Nafisi
#49. 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
#50. Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao's China or Stalin's Soviet Union.
Terry Eagleton
#51. It's the camel's nose in the tent. Look at Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin
every one of these monsters, on seizing power, their first act was to confiscate all firearms in private hands ...
Charlton Heston
#52. Mao had decided to make the city his new capital, and he had its name changed from Peking to Beijing.
Anchee Min
#53. And yet at Yan'an, Mao said that art and literature were crucial to revolution. Conversely, he warned, art and literature could also be tools of domination. Art
Viet Thanh Nguyen
#54. I no longer have the terrible nightmares that I used to have. Mao had just died in 1976, and China began to open up. For the first time scholarships to go to the West to study were awarded on academic merit.
Jung Chang
#55. Central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao, and it won't work for an entrepreneur either.
Michael Bloomberg
#56. When I see hipsters wearing Mao hats or Lenin T-shirts, I'm grateful. It's like truth-in-labeling. For now I know you are: Woefully ignorant, morally stunted, purposively asinine, or all three.
Jonah Goldberg
#57. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality.
Steve Sailer
#58. Is a lifelong student of the world's wisdom literature, it is my duty to inform students that ridding the world of evil is a goal very different from any recommended by Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad, though not so different from some recommended by Joseph Stalin, Joseph McCarthy and Mao Tse Tung.
David James Duncan
#59. It is in that spirit, the spirit of '76, that I ask you to rise and join me in a toast to Chairman Mao, to Premier Chou, to the people of our two countries, and to the hope of our children that peace and harmony can be the legacy of our generation to theirs.
Richard M. Nixon
#60. Her Mao tse-tung t-shirt was stretched so tightly across her chest that the Chairman was grinning broadly
Armistead Maupin
#61. Now, you have to choose between two roads." Thin-Face looked straight into my eyes. "You can break with your family and follow Chairman Mao, or you can follow your father and become an enemy of the people." His
Ji-li Jiang
#62. Intellectuals and celebrities venerated monsters like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, & Ho Chi Minh. The New Left of the 1960s didn't have a change of heart, just a change of icons from Stalin to third world tyrants. The homicidal and sadistic Che Guevara is still held up as a hero ...
Jamie Glazov
#64. 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
#65. Mao relied on propaganda and education - "Thought Reform," as he called it, which became known colloquially as xinao, or "mind-cleansing." (In 1950, a CIA officer who learned of it coined the term brainwashing.)
Evan Osnos
#66. Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao
Dai Sijie
#67. 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
#68. One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era.
Ken Livingstone
#69. On top of my to-do list in preparing for Beijing is 'On China' by Henry Kissinger, who has had firsthand experience with every top Chinese leader since Mao, so his insights are valuable and his access is perhaps unrivaled.
Gary Locke
#70. The detective had been watching the video of Julie Mao's fight with her captors over and over again while they'd waited on Naomi and Amos to finish their work. It gave Holden the disquieting feeling that Miller was storing the footage in his head. Fuel for something he planned to do later.
James S.A. Corey
#71. While I listened to the words of homage to Mao, I remembered Mao's awesome power, like a blanket over China threatening to smother whomever he chose. Pg. 218
Nien Cheng
#72. More than four decades after Nixon met Mao, the relationship between the U.S. and China has reached a pivotal moment. To date, even as China has become more powerful and present in our lives, Americans have generally found it to be an unsatisfying 'enemy.'
Evan Osnos
#73. Robert Conquest once suggested that 'a curious little volume might be made of the poems of Stalin, Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh, with illustrations by A. Hitler.
Martin Amis
#74. The cult of Mao and the cult of Lei Feng were two faces of the same coin: one was the cult of personality; the other, its essential corollary, was the cult of impersonality
Jung Chang
#75. Study Chairman Mao's writings, follow his teachings and act according to his instructions.
Lin Biao
#76. On one occasion, in the middle of an intimate talk, Mao leaned over and whispered in the Dalai Lama's ear, "I understand you very well, but of course religion is poison.
John Avedon
#77. Another foreign-policy triumph for Reagan was his 1984 visit to China, where he met for more than three hours with Mao Zedong before realizing that Mao was dead.
Dave Barry
#78. Two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa - not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most.
Anita Dunn
#79. I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me.
George Jackson
#80. Leadership is all hype. We've had three great leaders in this century-Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
Peter Drucker
#81. The United States attorney in South Carolina was a Barack Obama appointee. Politically, he is to the left of Mao Zedong.
Trey Gowdy
#82. Although I never marched through the streets shouting for Mao, I do believe that the liberation of China at the end of the 1940s was a wonderful thing and to provide its people with a billion pairs of shoes and trousers was a fantastic achievement.
Henning Mankell
#83. Years later, a Japanese visitor tried to apologize to Mao for his country's invasion of China. Mao interrupted, "Should I not thank you instead?" Without a worthy opponent, he explained, a man or group cannot grow stronger.
Robert Greene
#84. For entertainment there were only Mao Thought Propaganda Teams, who sang Mao's quotations set to raucous music.
Jung Chang
#85. When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.
Zaha Hadid
#86. Mao is a sometime Yin sometime Yang strange man, he has a soft-as-cotton outer layer, but at the same time has sharp needles hiding inside ... I do not think he could achieve anything, at the end he will be crushed inside my palm.
Chiang Kai-shek
#87. We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler.
Seymour Hersh
#88. French philosophers had been able to admire Mao and his works because they did not have to live in China at the time.
Alexander McCall Smith
#89. It was an aspiring neighbourhood that retained a faint edge of slum, typical of Shanghai. Pensioners in Mao-era padded jackets would sit on doorsteps playing mah-jong, oblivious to the Prada-clad girls sweeping past on their way to work.
Hyeonseo Lee
#90. Don't wait untill problems pile up and cause a lot of trouble before trying to solve them. Leaders must march ahead the movement, not lag behind it.
Mao Zedong
#91. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance.
Mao Zedong
#92. Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
Mao Zedong
#93. Conditions are changing all the time, and to adapt one's thinking to the new conditions, one must study. Even those who have a better grasp of Marxism and are comparatively firm in their proletarian stand have to go on studying, have to absorb what is new and study new problems.
Mao Zedong
#94. The exemplary vanguard role of the Communists is of vital importance. Communists in the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies should set an example in fighting bravely, carrying out orders, observing discipline, doing political work and fostering internal unity and solidarity.
Mao Zedong
#95. When you point a finger at the moon to indicate the moon, instead of looking at the moon,the stupid ones look at your finger.
Mao Tse-tung
#96. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.
Mao Zedong
#97. Therefore, before any action is taken, we must explain the policy, which we have formulated in the light of the given circumstances, to Party members and to the masses. Otherwise, Party members and the masses will depart from the guidance of our policy, act blindly and carry out a wrong policy.
Mao Zedong
#98. What is common to both, however, is the accumulation of many minor victories to make a major victory.
Mao Zedong
#99. It's always darkest before it becomes totally black.
Mao Tse-tung
#100. Our attitude towards ourselves should be 'to be satiable in learning' and towards others 'to be tireless in teaching.
Mao Zedong
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