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Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?
Vladimir Lenin
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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 Lenin
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The true leader must submerge himself in the fountain of the people.
Vladimir Lenin
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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
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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
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Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Vladimir Lenin
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The goal of socialism is communism.
Vladimir Lenin
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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
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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
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Any cook should be able to run the country.
Vladimir Lenin
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The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
Vladimir Lenin
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Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions.
Vladimir Lenin
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Imperialism, in a sense, is the transition stage from capitalism to Socialism. . . . It is capitalism dying, not dead.
Vladimir Lenin
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Act with the greatest determination and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising.
Vladimir Lenin
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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
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Imperialism: The final stage of Capitalism.
Vladimir Lenin
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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
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Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.
Vladimir Lenin
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A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistic philistines
Vladimir Lenin
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Recovery proceeding excellently. Am sure that the crushing of the Kazan Czechs and whiteguards, as well as of the kulak extortioners supporting them, will be exemplarily ruthless.
Vladimir Lenin
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The most important thing when ill is to never lose heart.
Vladimir Lenin
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The establishment of a central bank is 90% of communizing a nation.
Vladimir Lenin
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The working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery," and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.
Vladimir Lenin
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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
