Quotes About Vladimir Lenin

#1. Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.

Michael Johns

#2. Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.

Vladimir Lenin

#3. 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.

Vladimir Lenin

#4. Any cook should be able to run the country.

Vladimir Lenin

#5. This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important - if not the most important - phenomena of modern capitalist economy,

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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.

Vladimir Lenin

#9. 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.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#10. Soviet power is a new type of state in which there is no bureacracy, no police, no standing army.

Vladimir Lenin

#11. 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

#12. You must have your heart on fire and your brain on ice.

Vladimir Lenin

#13. America, like a few other nations, has become characteristic for the depth of the abyss that divide a handful of brutal millionaires who are stagnating in a mire of luxury, and millions of laboring starving men and women who are always staring want in the face.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. Every cook must learn to rule the State.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

#18. 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

#19. It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain.

Vladimir Lenin

#20. 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?

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#21. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.

Vladimir Lenin

#22. 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

#23. 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

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

Vladimir Lenin

#25. For any truth, if overdone ... if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its applicability, can be reduced to absurdity.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

#27. 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

#28. The entire trend of development is towards abolition of coercive domination of one part of society over another.

Vladimir Lenin

#29. International unity of the workers is more important than the national.

Vladimir Lenin

#30. Those who are opposed to armed uprising ... must be ruthlessly kicked out as enemies, traitors and cowards.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

#32. The Poor Peasants' Committees are necessary to fight the kulaks, the rich, the exploiters, who shackle the working peasants.

Vladimir Lenin

#33. There can be nothing more abominable than religion.

Vladimir Lenin

#34. Man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it.

Vladimir Lenin

#35. Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

#37. 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

#38. One of the chief symptoms of every revolution is the sharp and sudden increase in the number of ordinary people who take an active, independent and forceful interest in politics.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

#40. Every society is three meals away from chaos

Vladimir Lenin

#41. To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin.

Vladimir Lenin

#42. Truth is the most precious thing. That's why we should ration it.

Vladimir Lenin

#43. Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.

Vladimir Lenin

#44. We do not have time to play at "oppositions" at "conferences." We will keep our political opponents ... whether open or disguised as "nonparty," in prison.

Vladimir Lenin

#45. Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.

Vladimir Lenin

#46. Imperialism: The final stage of Capitalism.

Vladimir Lenin

#47. The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour. But both these facts manifest themselves in extremely diverse processes in different branches of the national economy.

Vladimir Lenin

#48. The only one who doesn't make mistakes is the one who doesn't do anything.

Vladimir Lenin

#49. The Jewish bourgeoisie are our enemies, not as Jews but as bourgeoisie. The Jewish worker is our brother.

Vladimir Lenin

#50. In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#51. 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

#52. 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

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

Vladimir Lenin

#54. Lenin, the greatest man of action in our century and at the same time the most selfless.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#57. 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

#58. Learning is never done without errors and defeat.

Vladimir Lenin

#59. Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.

Vladimir Lenin

#60. For the complete extinction of the state, complete Communism is necessary.

Vladimir Lenin

#61. The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.

Vladimir Lenin

#62. 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

#63. 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.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#64. People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.

Vladimir Lenin

#65. Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#67. 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

#68. 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.

Vladimir Lenin

#69. Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature.

Vladimir Lenin

#70. You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw

Vladimir Lenin

#71. Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

#73. War cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished.

Vladimir Lenin

#74. Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#75. One would like to stroke and caress human beings, but one dares not do so, because they bite.

Vladimir Lenin

#76. Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

#78. The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it.

Vladimir Lenin

#79. The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic.

Vladimir Lenin

#80. 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

#81. You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind.

Vladimir Lenin

#82. Ideological talk and phrase mongering about political liberties should be disposed with; all that is just mere chatter and phrase mongering. We should get away from those phrases.

Vladimir Lenin

#83. Destroy the family and you destroy society

Vladimir Lenin

#84. It is necessary - secretly and urgently to prepare the terror.

Vladimir Lenin

#85. Democracy is indispensable to socialism.

Vladimir Lenin

#86. The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not lifelessly but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.

Vladimir Lenin

#87. History causes the military problem to become the essence of the political problem.

Vladimir Lenin

#88. 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

#89. Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin

#91. 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

#92. 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.

Vladimir Lenin

#93. One man with a gun can control a hundred without one.

Vladimir Lenin

#94. It is at moments of need that one learns who one's friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson.

Vladimir Lenin

#95. You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action.

Vladimir Lenin

#96. For the first time the peasant has seen real freedom - freedom to eat his bread, freedom from starvation.

Vladimir Lenin

#97. Victory will belong only to those who have faith in the people, those who are immersed in the life-giving spring of popular creativity.

Vladimir Lenin

#98. There was an old bastard named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.

Robert Conquest

#99. It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that
great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie.

Vladimir Lenin

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

Vladimir Lenin